… Europe and Asia. These regions eat considerably more duck and other fowl, too. Newer research, published in February 2016 in PLoS One, found a lower stroke risk for women who had never smoked who had higher blood levels of taurine. “More research needs to be done, but these two studies suggest that one day we may be able to suggest that people with high cholesterol eat more poultry and dark cuts of meat,” says Dr. Chen.
A little more than a quarter of American adults (27.8 percent) have hypercholesterolemia, a condition characterized by very high levels of cholesterol in the blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A person whose total cholesterol level is less than 200 mg/dL is in a “desirable” overall cholesterol range, while someone whose blood level count is more than 240mg/dL has “high” cholesterol, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women and men in the United States.
Many energy drinks have high levels of taurine — more than 1,000 mg, or 10 times that of a serving of dark meat. Chen warns, however, that this is synthetic taurine. These high levels and the synthetic nature have not been tested, she said, and thus one cannot assume the synthetic version can be a substitute for natural, diet-based taurine. These drinks are also chockfull of caffeine and sugar.
READ: Types of Fake Meat and Meat Substitutes: Which is better?
So remember, it’s okay to come over to the dark side 😉