Hormones In Animals And Meat Quality

If you have ever had a pet, chances are that you already know that animals can get stressed for many different reasons. There is no doubt that most animals experience fear prior to being slaughtered. Just before terrified animals are slaughtered, they release a host of hormones and toxic substances into their bodies. Why does this matter? Because after the animals have been slaughtered, those hormones remain in their bodies and begin to alter the animal meat. The quality of the meat deteriorates significantly. When you eat the "tainted" animal meat, you ingest those hormones into your body. Doing so can cause a host of unwanted medical conditions and diseases.

Animals that are subject to constant light, usually as a result of living in factory farm environments, have a difficult time regulating their sleep cycles. The light prevents them from receiving adequate sleep. When animals are deprived of sleep, over time, they become stressed. Stress in animals also occurs when they are subject to constant noise for machinery and factory farming equipment. Obviously, animals that live in confinement rather than being permitted to roam freely, are subject to an abundance of unnatural living conditions that subject them to repeated stress.

In addition to an unnatural living environment, every day occurrences can cause stress in certain animals. Examples include animals who are excessively tired and fatigued, and those that experience chronic pain, hunger or thirst. Another common stressor is moving the animal from a familiar home environment into unfamiliar surroundings.

How Do Stress Hormones in Meat Affect Humans?

Speculation about the negative health effects of consuming meat have been circulating for years. There is a very long list of potential health problems that are associated with the consumption of meat derived from stressed animals. The major health conditions cited by thorough studies on the topic are conditions that affect the heart. Your risk of developing heart disease has now been found to be associated with the consumption of any red meat, especially regularly in large quantities, regardless of the presence of stress hormones in the meat. When you introduce stress hormones and poor quality meat into the equation, you could be amplifying the negative effects on the heart.
 

Additional negative health effects associated with poor quality hormone-laden meat include general fatigue and malaise, erectile dysfunction, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and diseases that affect the digestive tract. So what are you to do if you want to avoid the negative health effects associated with meat? You only have a few options. For starters, the simplest way to know that you are not consuming poor quality meat is to give up meat altogether.

Because it can be difficult to know the quality of the meat you are eating, going vegetarian is the only way to be absolutely certain that you are not eating poor quality meat. If this is too drastic for you, do your best to purchase meat that has been raised in humane and free range conditions. Organic meats from local farmers are best, but meat from local farmers you know and trust is a very good choice as well. If you visit your local butcher, be sure to ask where the meat is acquired from and question the practices used to manufacture the meat.

As time goes on, more and more people are turning their attention to the ways in which animals are slaughtered for meat, however, including Temple Grandin, who developed a humane system that does not stress animals. To find out whether your meat is humane, find out how the animals lived as well as how they were slaughtered. It will not only benefit your mental health, but maybe also your physical health!