​Chicken meat is most often used in the kitchens of Romania, as well as around the world. At first glance, it has the most advantages – it is easily and quickly prepared, the price is affordable, and many years ago chicken meat was considered the most useful. It was because of the very high consumption of chickens that they were raised with feed and leavening agents in just a few days. It so happened that even pork, which has long been accused of being a meat with more fat and bringing more cholesterol, is healthier than chicken, if we talk about meat from the supermarket, I directly tell nutritionists.

Is commercial chicken healthy? Yes, you can, but you need to pay attention to the packaging

Ideally, the healthiest meat is that which is raised naturally on a farm, not for commercial purposes. But what if you don’t have access to a source of poultry or farm-raised meat, and you have to rely exclusively on commercial meat? Which option is the healthiest? What is better to go for, and what to avoid?

Ligia Alexandrescu, consultant in sports nutrition, food education and food communication, explains to HotNews.ro which options are the best and which we should avoid.

Lihiia Alexandrescu, nutritionist / Photo: Agerpres

The fact that even pork, which for a long time was blamed for its high fat content, has become healthier than chicken, is a reality, frankly says nutritionist Ligia Alexandrescu.

“It’s a fact that chickens grow fast on feed that at one time also contained the hormone estrogen, but in the meantime it turned out that everything has changed for the better, but it is the leavening agents that make them grow very fast. . Previously, the chicken was raised from March-April, when it hatched, until October, when it barely weighed one and a half kilograms. Now they grow even in a few days, and in 2-3 weeks we find a chicken of 4-5 kilograms grown in a month, which is not natural. Obviously, there are some added growth stimulants.”

However, even in the supermarket there are chicken options, which nutritionists recommend especially for allergic children, but not only, grown on corn. “These options are really balanced in the sense that we can tell very easily if there’s a growth enhancer, a fast growth agent, in that poultry meat.”

Egg meat / Photo: Nitr | Dreamstime.com

How do we recognize these healthier chicken options? “For example, if the bone is softer or harder – the harder it is, the less the bird had osteoporosis, that is, it did not have a hormonal imbalance until growth agents were added. It’s just like people. These growth agents loosen the bone and you can practically chew the bone. The bone becomes very, very easy to blend. The stronger the bone, the more we understand that the feed was of better quality,” explains nutritionist Ligia Alexandrescu.

And also: there are chickens on the packaging of which it is clearly written: grown in 55 or 58 days. “And this is completely different. We are talking about two months, that is, a slower growth process, natural, and with turkey we are actually talking about more than 3 months,” says Ligia Alexandrescu.

You can safely eat turkey meat, but better avoid the wings

I also asked Ligia Alexandrescu about commercial turkey meat – is it in the same situation as chicken meat or not? “With the turkey, we only need to look at the skin and the wings because when the treatment is done, it’s done in the wing. Instead, turkey breast, turkey leg, and even mixing are highly recommended – you can make mixtures of turkey with pork, with pork muscles, you can also offal, and then we are already talking about a dietary product.

Turkey meat / Photo: Enjoyphoto | Dreamstime.com

Beef needs no introduction – it is a very healthy and hearty meat, just like pork.

Fish, among the healthiest meats and mercury pollution

But there are all kinds of legends about fish. How to choose fish meat that will not bring us more harm than good?

Fish contain mercury, heavy metals, and traces of plastic because they feed on polluted water. However, Ligia Alexandrescu teaches us a trick: “The smaller the fish, the better, the healthier it is. Rather than shark and tuna, we would be wise to choose fish at the beginning of the food chain, ie sea bream, sea bream, trout – small white and freshwater fish if possible. Of course, we are talking about caught trout. But at least it’s a white fish, a light fish. Of course, the Danube catfish is also very good. You can’t graze the saddle, because it dies.”

more / Photo: Ilfede | Dreamstime.com

There are certain types of small fish whose meat is very healthy, this is Ligia Alexandrescu’s conclusion: “The bigger the fish, the greater the risk of being contaminated with heavy metals, eating leftovers and eating anything that means foods that can increase the amount of toxins in the to his body.”

But do not forget about the nutritionist’s recommendation: you should eat meat about 3 times a week. At other times, vegetables and fruits should not be missing from our diet.

Photo: Dreamstime.com.