exist very common foods that shorten your life and, consumed in large quantities, they can increase the risk of heart disease or premature death. This is the recent discovery of a preliminary study conducted at Penn State University School of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Which are the foods that shorten your life? Those rich in sulfur amino acids, such as chicken, dairy products or beef.
The sulfur amino acids, such as cysteine or methionine, are mainly found in animal protein sources. Although they are important for metabolism and health in general, the problem is their excessive consumption.
A person in the United States consumes many more amino acids of this type than necessary, multiplying by 2.5 the amount that is required.
This would be one of the reasons why diets that prioritize plant-based foods have lower rates of cardiovascular disease than those that include copious amounts of meat and high proportions of dairy products.
The study examined data from 120,699 people in two long-term national studies, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. On average, participants eat twice as much of the necessary amount of beef, chicken and milk.
Those people who consumed the most sulfur amino acids they had a 12% increased annual risk of developing cardiovascular disease and a 28% increased risk of dying from the disease.
Pending peer review of the results, the study has biases, such as ethnicity, as 94% of the participants were non-Hispanic white men and women with a high socioeconomic status.
Restricting sulfur amino acids delays aging
The scientific evidence available to date recommends restrict sulfur amino acids, particularly methionine and cysteine, to delay aging. In studies carried out with animals, it has helped them live longer.
In a report conducted with people and published in the journal eClinicalMedicine from The Lancet in 2020, a higher consumption of sulfur-containing amino acids was associated with an increased risk of cardiometabolic disease.
Another analysis, published in the BMJ in 2020, suggested that replace red meat with high-quality plant foods, such as legumes, nuts or soy has the ability to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in men.
Among the recommendations, you can substitute the 15 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day that you need of sulfur amino acids for vegetable sources or fish instead of meat and dairy. Lentils, tuna, tofu… you have many healthy alternatives for this type of protein at your disposal.
It also does not mean that you should delete them completely. “We don’t need to completely eliminate foods rich in sulfur amino acids like meat and dairy, but we do need to focus on creating healthy dietary patterns“, he says Eat This, Not That nutritionist Lisa Young.
This article was published in Business Insider Spain by Andrea Núñez-Torrón Stock.