Poultry or Beef?

Poultry or beef? Which meat is healthier for us to eat? Due to the importance that society today has put on our health due to health consequences and prices differences I am choosing to compare and contrast poultry and beef. Although many of us may think that chicken is so much healthier then beef, I will show to you that each of the meats have their own good and bad purposes in or healthy lifestyle habits. For me it all started about two years ago when my best friend was in the emergency room just about every night with terrible stomach pain and no doctor knew why. He is a pretty health conscious person since he is a personal trainer and is always exercising. But it was still unknown on why he was in so much pain so often. Until one day a specialist asked him to make a food diary for one complete week of everything he was eating. And that was when we all realized he was eating too much red meat. This is when our eating habits changed for the good. We then begin to only eat ground turkey in place of ground beef, turkey bacon instead of pork, and switched steak for chicken. This made such a difference for him by being able to stay out of the emergency room and also helped me to lose weight. But through my extensive research I have found out that cold cuts, bacon, and sausages made from turkey or chicken can contain just as much of the unhealthy ingredients as the other meats. Sometimes even the lower fat versions of the foods are often even higher in sodium then the regular varieties. If you compare lean ground turkey with lean ground beef you will find out they have the same amount of fat and calories. But the ground beef has almost twice as much iron, zinc, and vitamin B12. Although it varies from cut to cut, beef and pork tend to contain a greater percentage of heart healthy monosaturated fats than turkey or chicken. So if you are doing an overall comparison, chicken is the healthiest without skin of course. Red meat tends to be higher in saturated fat.

Cited: http://gablesguaranteedfitness.com/199/199/ http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/chicken-versus-beef.aspx