Eat offal every day? heart

Can you eat offal every day?

Maybe some of you prefer to eat meat from animal bodies such as chicken, cow, or goat. However, some others prefer to eat offal, such as liver, gizzard, heart, tongue, brain, and tripe.

Indeed, many experts say that offal contains many nutrients. Even offal is often referred to as super food because it is rich in various vitamins and minerals, namely vitamin B, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, iron, phosphorus, and magnesium.

Even though it has a variety of great nutrients, that doesn't mean you are allowed to eat offal frequently - especially almost every day. Reporting from the Healthy Eating page, health experts are of the opinion that you should consume offal no more than once per week.

This is because the good nutritional content of offal cannot be utilized maximally by the body if consumed in excessive amounts. Therefore, it is important to limit their consumption according to the adequacy of your body.

What are the side effects of eating too much offal?

As mentioned earlier, even though it has a good taste and contains a lot of nutrients, you are not recommended to eat offal too often.

Instead of contributing to good nutrition for the body, offal can actually backfire on your health. Health risks that can lurk you if you eat offal too often, namely:

Body cholesterol increases

Offal also has high levels of fat and cholesterol. Although fat is actually needed by the body as a source of reserve energy, regulating hormones, and brain function, it is important to pay attention to the amount consumed.

Fat intake recommendation from WHO, which is no more than 30 percent of total energy intake per day. This is equivalent to the Nutrition Adequacy Rate (RDA) from the Indonesian Ministry of Health, which is around 75 grams of fat for women and 91 grams of fat for men per day. Or simply, the equivalent of 67 grams of fat per day if your total energy needs are 2000 per day.

In addition, the American Heart Association recommends that adults should lower body cholesterol levels. So, the consumption of fat should not be more than 5-6 percent of the total recommended daily calories.

If the intake of fat exceeds the proper portion, it will cause a buildup of fat in the body which then forms plaque in your blood vessels so that the blood vessels constrict and lead to heart disease.

Excess vitamin A levels

The National Institutes of Health recommends limiting the amount of vitamin A that is safe for consumption per day, which is no more than 10,000 IU.

Meanwhile, vitamin A contained in offal is high enough so that if consumed frequently, vitamin A will accumulate in the body and can cause health problems. For example, headaches, nausea, and liver damage.

Even pregnant women are encouraged to pay attention to the consumption of foods with high vitamin A content. The reason is, if it is consumed more than the limit it should be, it will cause serious birth defects in the baby. These birth defects include abnormalities of the heart, spinal cord, eyes, ears, nose, and defects in the digestive tract and kidneys.

A study reported that a pregnant woman who consumed more than 10,000 IU of vitamin A per day, had an 80 percent higher risk of giving birth to a child with birth defects than a mother who consumed 5,000 IU or less of the recommended limit per day. Therefore, it is important to monitor your daily vitamin A intake, especially if you regularly take supplements containing vitamin A.

Worsens gout

Uric acid will appear when you eat foods with high levels of purines (substances found in various foods that are converted into uric acid in the body). The more purines produced by the food you eat, the higher the uric acid levels are released by the body.

High purine levels then become crystals, which will accumulate around joints and other body tissues. That's why joints become painful and swollen. Therefore, gout sufferers are advised to avoid eating offal, because offal contains high levels of purines.