Failure to eat animal products does not only affect the psychological state. Experts explain that this restriction on food can also result in a “chemical change” in the human body. Know how.
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14/08/2026
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A change in the typology of a diet not only goes through a change of mindwhen you decide stop eating meat and passes the restrict all products of animal origin on your diet, the body records a “chemical change”.
Some do so for health reasons, others for environmental priorities and others for religious reasons. The motivations may even be different, but the effects produced in the body do not differ much, except for metabolic and genetic conditions.
Although the impact is not immediate, experts reveal to Science Alert that the decision to stop eating meat may imply not only repercussions on the emotional state, but also on metabolism.
What does science say about this food restriction?
After testing the effects of the restriction of food products in more than 200 people, the scientific article “Proteogenomic Effects Responsive to the diet after short-term restriction of animal products in humans”, published this month in the journal Nature Communications, reports on “evident physiological signs” that relate to “browning”, a phenomenon also known as “beiging white adipose tissue”.
What is white adipose tissue beiging?
This biological process is commonly explained as a “darkness of cells”. In a practical way, this is explained by the time these cells acquire characteristics similar to the brownest fat cells and burn more fatty acids and glucose “to be able to generate heat.”
Researchers therefore relate this dietary restriction to a “chemical change in the body”.
What do you know about this investigation?
Can you imagine not eating meat overnight? For this investigation, a group of 200 people in Thessaloniki, Greece, did so simultaneously. However, do not think that you have submitted to sacrifice only for this study.
The origin of this withdrawal from animal products such as meat, fish, dairy products and eggs for a total of 180 to 200 days a year was explained as part of a religious practice linked to Orthodox Christianity.
“ These practicing Orthodox Christians carry out this form of fasting on the Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, as well as over four longer periods throughout the year, which includes the 40 days preceding Christmas; 48 days before Easter (Fourth); from 8 to 42 days during what is known as the Fast of the Apostles or the Fast of Peter and Paul; and for 15 days in August for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary”, they describe.
According to the researchers, the “extensive metabolic reprogramming, with mostly beneficial effects on health, including the altered abundance of key immunometabolic proteins, including the potent metabolic hormone FGF21” allowed this study to become still a type of “diet intervention”.