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How meat and poultry fit in your healthy diet
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How meat and poultry fit in your healthy diet
When you follow these methods to cut the fat, meat and poultry can be both a tasty and healthy part of your diet.
By Mayo Clinic staffMeat and poultry are valuable — and for many people, favorite — sources of protein and other important nutrients. They also can be high in fat — adding unhealthy saturated fat and cholesterol to your diet. Higher-fat meat and poultry also tends to be tastier, and you may be tempted to follow in the footsteps of popular celebrity cooks who use higher-fat meat and poultry to in their recipes. But before you do, consider this: With a few simple tricks and tips you can have it both ways — taste and health.
Learn how to choose the healthiest selections of meat and poultry and how to prepare them using low-fat methods. With these tips, you can reduce the fat even in higher-fat marbled cuts.
Selecting meat and poultry
- Look for key words. Certain words on packaging indicate cuts that are lower in fat. Lean cuts of beef include round, chuck, sirloin or tenderloin. Lean pork or lamb includes tenderloin, loin chops or leg. The leanest poultry is white meat from the breast with no skin.
- Check percentages. When buying ground beef, look for packages with the highest percentage of lean meat — 90 percent or higher.
- Check the ground. Ground poultry can have as much fat as ground beef has, or more, because it often includes dark meat and skin. To make the leanest choice, choose ground breast meat, or look for low-fat ground chicken or turkey.
- Be selective. Choose beef that is labeled "Choice" or "Select" instead of "Prime," which usually has more fat. If you can't resist the higher-fat choices, use them as an occasional indulgence rather than a regular option.
Preparing meat and poultry
- Trim the fat. Cut off any visible, solid fat from meat and poultry. This includes the skin on poultry. When roasting a whole chicken or turkey, leave the skin on during cooking, but remove it and the fat underneath before eating. Also, remove any remaining visible fat from pork and beef before eating.
- Use marinades. Marinades tenderize meat and keep it moist while cooking. They also can enhance flavor that may be lost when you trim fat. Choose low-fat marinades, such as mixtures of herbs or spices with wine, soy sauce or lemon juice.
- Go low. Low-fat cooking methods include grilling, broiling, roasting, sauteing and baking. Cooking melts away much of the fat in meat and poultry. So when you cook meat or poultry in your oven, be sure to put it on a rack on a baking pan so that the fat drips away.
- Skim ahead. Make soups, stews and other dishes in which you boil the meat in liquid a day or two in advance and then refrigerate it. As the dish chills, the fat hardens on the top and you can easily skim it off.
- Drain the fat. After cooking ground meat, drain the fat from the pan and rinse the meat with hot water. Blot the meat with a paper towel to remove the water.
- Watch serving sizes. Reducing your portion size reduces your fat and cholesterol intake. Don't exceed 3 ounces (85 grams) of meat. That's about the size of a deck of cards. Three ounces also equals half of a boneless, skinless chicken breast, or one skinless chicken leg with thigh or two thin slices of lean roast beef.
- Duyff RL. The American Dietetic Association's Complete Food and Nutrition Guide. 3rd ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons; 2006:323.
- Meat, poultry and fish: AHA recommendation. American Heart Association. http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4627. Accessed March 19, 2009.
- Gerber N, et al. The influence of cooking and fat trimming on the actual nutrient intake from meat. Meat Science. 2009;81:148.
- Look for lean cuts of meat. American Dietetic Association. http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/home_19518_ENU_HTML.htm. Accessed March 19, 2009.
- Zeratsky KA (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., March 22, 2009.
