Rotten meat will raise awareness of risk of animal food: FIAPO

"With the extraordinary increase in lifestyle diseases, from kidney disease to heart disease, may be it is time we re-look at our diet...to move towards a greener diet over one including animal products," FIAPO director Varda Mehrotra said in a statement here.

Stating that it has information that meat consumption in the city is going down, Mehrotra said that many people were avoiding it after reports that meat was coming from dead animals of dumping grounds.

"Meat being sourced from rotten bodies of cats, dogs and even diseased animals in unhygienic conditions is not uncommon. Animals bred for the purpose of meat are routinely given anti-biotics, growth hormones and other drugs and their meat may contain these drugs with many viruses and bacteria.

"Hopefully this situation can bring awareness... the FIAPO director said.

He said many people could not make the difference between the meat of carcass of dumping grounds and slaughtered animals as they were used to consume the final product with little or no consideration to where it was sourced.

Mehrotra said research showed that multiple lifestyle diseases were routinely caused or heightened by consumption of meat, milk and eggs.

The FIAPO referred to cardiovascular diseases where 'elevated level of LDL cholesterol' (commonly called bad cholesterol) is the major reason for development of vascular (cardiovascular and cerebrovascular) diseases.

"To reduce the LDL cholesterol, we need to avoid trans fats, saturated fats and dietary cholesterol. The main sources of these three foods are meat, eggs, dairy, fish and seafood," he said.

Dr Pramod Tripathy, founder of 'Freedom from Diabetes' was quoted as saying, "hypothyroid, osteoporosis, diabetes, high cholesterol cardiovascular disease and cancer... all seemingly unrelated diseases have one thing in common. And that is, raised fasting insulin levels.

"Insulin rises in the body because of insulin resistance. And insulin resistance increases because of excess fat, excess acid and insulin like growth factor (present in all animal products)," he said.

Leading nutritionist and holistic wellness counselor Dr Ira Rattan said, "progression of PreDialysis Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) is slower on diets based on soya protein than on diets based on animal protein."