There are sound nutritional reasons for poor and malnourished people to wish to add more meat to their diet. Food staples like rice and maize offer calories but are not dense in micronutrients or protein. Christopher Delgado says, You can get complete protein from vegetables, but you need to eat a wide variety of them. Eating meat is an easy way to get usable protein into your diet. Meat can also aid in the absorption of other nutrients.
Meat contains iron, but it also helps the body absorb iron from other foods.
This trait is known as the meat factor, says Catherine Geissler of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at King s College London. Only small amounts of meat are required to do this. Vegetarians can get an adequate diet, but a mixed omnivore diet is an easier way to get all your nutrients. In Bangladesh, says Bouis, people get only about 2 to 3 percent of their calories from meat, and their diet contains insufficient amounts of bioavailable iron. This iron deficiency retards mental development, particularly for infants, and reduces work capacity for adults.