January brings many “news” to college students: new year, new semester and new resolutions. A majority of these resolutions include implementing healthier diets. While it’s great to see so many young people trying to be proactive with their health, myself included (#SpringBreakBod), they sometimes think that in order to be “healthy” they need to cut meat out of their daily routine.

While everyone is entitled to control their own diets, they are surpassing some of the important health benefits that come with animal-derived protein that you can’t supplement with another source. 

Contrary to vegan ideologies, humans are omnivores. Our bodies function the most efficiently with both meat and plants. While plants are chock-full of many vital vitamins and minerals, our short digestive tracts have a hard time breaking down the cellulose to physically utilize those nutrients.

Luckily, our bodies can break down meat protein rather quickly. This easily digestible protein source can provide us with Vitamin B12, B3, B6, iron, zinc and selenium, which is essential for a balanced diet. There is also a bounty of omega-3s infused in meat and it contains nine essential amino acids our bodies can’t make themselves.

Finally, meat contains nutrients that aren’t found in plants at all. Creatine, derived only in meat proteins, forms energy reserves in the muscle and brain. Carnosine is an antioxidant that also is found exclusively in animal protein.

After all the negative press on eating meat found in the media, many people wonder if the benefits really outweigh the costs. But in reality, a lot of the information found on social media is skewed or falsified to satisfy anti-livestock political agendas.

Research done through universities around the world have proven that meat doesn’t increase the risk for cardiovascular disease and there is an extremely weak correlation between eating meat and cancer.

In fact, the American Heart Association has added lean ground beef, beef sirloin, pork tenderloin, chicken and turkey under the list of heart healthy foods. Most importantly, there are no proven health benefits to avoiding meat.

Traditionally, most vegetarians and vegans have a more health conscious lifestyle than meat eaters, so they tend to exercise more and avoid processed foods that contain high amounts of sugar. That is where the health benefits of vegetarianism truly come from, not the deletion of meat.

Indulging in a healthier lifestyle is a wonderful and progressive way to start a new year. While it’s up to the individual to decide what to include in their diet, that decision should be based on science-based, unbiased research and results, not opinions. With all the information available on the benefits of meat in a diet, hopefully that protein source won’t get cut from your life in 2017!