Eat Less Processed Red Meat To Live Longer

Picture I took at our local NTUC

Wanna live a couple of years longer? Than you need to stop eating processed meat as it decreases your lifespan by about 2 years.

Processed red meat includes sausages (or your favourite hot dog), luncheon meat (a popular local favourite), cold cuts, ham and liver pate to name a few.

How do I know this? Well I didn't make this up, I read a paper in which 75,000 people were studied from 1998 to 2012. They were asked about the frequency and types of red meat in the diet. Researchers measured total red meat consumption (fresh pork, beef and veal) and processed red meat consumption listed above as a subset.

More than 22 % of the participants died during the study period. Those who didn't eat much meat products (less than 100 grams or about 3.5 ounces per day) had similar survival rates as vegetarians. Those who ate more than 100 grams per day had a lower life expectancy as the quantity of red meat grew larger.

Those eating processed red meat had the highest mortality rates. The researchers concluded that eating non processed red meat alone was not associated with shorter survival rates though.

References

Bellavia A, Larsson SC et al (2014). Differences In Survival Associated With Processed And With NonProcesssed Red Meat Consumption. Am J C Nutrition. DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.114.086249.

Used to eat this often when I was a kid (Picture from Flickr)