Nutritional Effects of Removing a Serving of Meat or Poultry from Healthy Dietary Patterns—A Dietary Modeling Study

Meat and poultry are nutrient-dense sources of protein and typically are recommended as part of an overall healthy diet. The objective was to assess the nutritional impact of removing a serving of meat/poultry in Healthy Dietary Patterns (HDPs) using a similar approach to that used by the USDA for Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Composites of minimally processed and further processed meat and poultry were developed and their nutrient profiles were used to accomplish modeling by removing nutrients of each meat and poultry composite from the HDPs. The removal of a 3 oz (85 g) serving of meat or poultry resulted in decreases (10% or more from baseline) in protein and several key micronutrients including iron, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, selenium, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B(6), vitamin B(12), and choline as well as cholesterol and sodium in the HDPs, and the decreases were consistent for most nutrients with the removal of either minimally processed (fresh) or further processed meat or poultry and even after adjusting for changes in calories. In conclusion, the results of this dietary modeling study show that the removal of a meat and poultry serving from HDPs resulted in decreases in protein and several key nutrients.