Cut back on meat, but be careful what you eat instead

MY WIFE Clare and I have gone flexitarian, aiming to be vegetarian a few days a week. We are clearly part of a trend, with a study published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health revealing British people are eating 17% less meat, particularly red meat, than ten years ago.

But while there are ethical and environmental reasons for cutting back on meat, I’m not convinced there are good health reasons, particularly as many people replace it with ultra-processed foods, which are bad for our hearts and waists, and therefore our brains. It’s the sort of food, produced in factories from cheap ingredients, that is increasingly being targeted at the vegetarian and vegan market. Just because a vegan sausage roll is plant-based doesn’t mean it is healthy. This, is what my friend Professor Giles Yeo of Cambridge University, an obesity expert, calls ‘ultraprocessed food with good PR’.

A study published this year on the eating habits of more than 21,000 French adults found that vegetarians and vegans eat a higher percentage of their diet in the form of ultra-processed food than fish or meat eaters do. This is unfortunate, as vegetarians and vegans tend to have higher rates of depression, and eating ultra-processed food (which is low in nutrients and high in fat and sugar) will make it worse.

So if you’re cutting back on meat, don’t turn to convenience foods – cook from scratch and stay topped up with the vitamins and minerals that come with meat, such as iron, vitamin B12 and omega fatty acids (you can take supplements or look for foods such as edamame beans for iron, nutritional yeast for B12 and seaweed).