The Health Benefits Of Eating Free Range Turkey

Just because Christmas has been and gone for another year, it doesn’t mean that you have to stop eating free range turkey for 12 months! In fact, including it as a regular option at mealtimes could actually yield all sorts of health benefits, so if one of your new year’s resolutions is to focus on your health and wellbeing, turkey could be a great choice as a dietary addition.

One of the biggest benefits of eating turkey is that it’s very lean and very high in protein, with around 26g of protein in 85g of meat.

Protein is an important part of any healthy diet, made up of chemical building blocks called amino acids. As well as being an energy source, your body uses these amino acids to build and repair muscles and bones, as well as making hormones and enzymes.

If you’ve been hitting the gym over the last few weeks and plan to continue in 2022 and beyond, eating high-protein foods like turkey can help you with your fitness goals.

For example, it can help speed up your physical recovery after exercise or injury, helps you build lean muscle and reduce muscle loss, can help you maintain a healthy weight and can even curb your hunger.

Interestingly, turkey could also help improve your sleep each night - which is also important for any health and fitness gains you want to see this year.

Turkey contains high levels of an amino acid called L-tryptophan which, when eaten, travels in our blood from the digestive system and eventually enters the brain. From here, it’s turned into another chemical called serotonin, which can help calm us down and help us sleep.

Where your wider health is concerned, it’s possible that turkey could help reduce the risk of certain types of cancer, including lung, stomach, breast and bladder - all because it contains selenium! Studies have shown that following a diet rich in this particular mineral could help prevent various types of the disease.

And not only that but turkey and other kinds of poultry are also part of the MIND diet, which was created by scientists to help slow the cognitive decline seen with dementia. It’s a combination of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet (which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), focusing specifically on brain health.

Both these diets are widely regarded as some of the healthiest to follow, with research showing they can lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

To follow the MIND diet, simply start eating more green leafy vegetables, as well as all other veggies. Eat berries at least twice a week, eat more nuts, use olive oil as your main cooking oil, eat more wholegrains, eat fish at least once a week, increase your consumption of beans, eat poultry at least twice a week and aim for no more than one glass of wine a day.

Limit your consumption of red meat (no more than three times a week), avoid fried food, avoid processed food like pastries and sweets, limit how much cheese you eat and try to eat less butter and margarine.