ISLAMABAD: The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says in a study that meat, eggs and mill( offer crucial sources of muchneeded nutrients which cannot easily be obtained from plantbased foods.

This is particularly vital during key life stages such as pregnancy and lactation, childhood, adolescence and older age, said the study, entitled `Contribution of terrestrial animal source food to healthy diets for improved nutrients and health outcomes`, released by the FAO on Tuesday.

Meat, eggs and milk provide a range of important macro-nutrients such as protein, fats and carbohydrates and micro-nutrients that aredifficult to obtain from plant-based foods in the required quality and quantity, the report says.

High-quality protein, a number of essential fatty-acids, iron, calcium, zinc, selenium, Vitamin B12, choline and bioactive compounds like carnitine,creatine, taurine are provided by foods from terrestrial animals and have important health and developmental functions.

Iron and Vitamin A are among the most common micronutrient deficiencies around the world, particularly in children and pregnant women. Globally, more than one in two preschool aged children (372 million) and 1.2 billion women of child-bearing age suffer from the lack of at least one of three micro-nutrients: iron, Vitamin A or zinc.

Three quarters of these children live in South and East Asia, the Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa.

Not surprisingly, according to the report, consumption of food from animals (including milk, eggs, meat) varies widely around the world. A person in Congo consumes on average only 160 grams of milk a year, while someone in Montenegro consumes 338 kilograms.

Meanwhile, the evidence of any links between milk, eggs and poultry consumption in healthy adults anddiseasessuchascoronaryheart disease, strokes and hypertension is inconclusive (for milk) or nonsignificant (for eggs and poultry).

-Amin Ahmed