Many foods are important for the various functions in our body. Chicken specifically has many of these nutrients we need. However, chicken can also cause damage to our environment and our body. The way chicken is produced affects the way our body functions and reacts. The overconsumption of chicken leads to health risks, but the normal consumption of chicken gives us the daily vitamins and nutrients we need for our body to function correctly.
Chicken consumption has increased nearly every year since the 1960s. Our love for this type of meat has rapidly grown and changed the health for Americans today. But how is chicken produced? Commercial meat chickens are placed in large poultry sheds and fed “chicken starter”. Chicken …show more content…
To produce feed for the mass number of organisms required for production, many land areas would need to be reverted to allow the space for the necessary crops. This creates habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity. Also, to allow these crops to grow, more fertilizers and pesticides would be needed, which causes pollution in the water and nitrogen cycles. It has been recorded that the deforestation and the change of land uses has caused a great increase in greenhouse gases. It produces eighteen percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, which is more than cars, boats, and planes combined. Because of the abundance of need to convert land to its desired state that is suitable for the growth of animals, animal production also produces nine percent of the carbon dioxide in the air. Another major impact it has is that it uses eight percent of the world’s freshwater for the growth and feed of organisms, but it also pollutes the water systems due to all the animal waste in the lakes and …show more content…
Eating too much chicken can potentially cause your body to remove more nitrogen wastes from your blood, this can cause stress on your kidneys, which can also lead to chronic dehydration. If more protein is consumed than the body needs, the calories will be converted to sugar and then fat, which can eventually cause obesity. Another major health risk is cancer. Overconsumption of too much protein can affect the important biochemical pathway called the mammalian target of rapamycin. The mammalian target of rapamycin has a significant role in causing many different cancers, the perfect amount of protein intake makes it remain inhibited, which minimizes the chances of cancer. Grilled chicken contains a great deal of saturated fat, which can lead to an increase in LDL, or low-density lipoproteins. LDL is harmful cholesterol in the bloodstream; it narrows arteries and can lead to stroke or heart attack because pieces of fat molecules break off the artery walls and prevent blood flow to the heart or brain. The main reason for health risks of chicken is that they are not raised correctly. A huge amount of poultry produced today, was most likely at one point raised in confined animal feeding operations, where they were mistreated and fed genetically engineered grains. Many of the products are contaminated with pesticides from farms as well. 90 percent of food poisoning