Eating red meat increases death risk

Eating red meat regularly may increase the risk of all-cause mortality and death from cardiovascular disease and cancer, a new study has found.

According to the study, substituting other foods including fish and poultry for red meat is associated with a lower death risk.

Meat is a major source of protein and fat in many diets and previous studies had suggested that eating meat is associated with increased risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and certain cancers, the researchers have written in their study background.

An Pan, PhD, of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues analysed data from two prospective cohort studies with repeated measures of diet and up to 28 years of follow-up.

Data from 37,698 men and 83,644 women were used. Researchers documented 23,926 deaths, including 5,910 from CVD and 9,464 from cancer.

We found that a higher intake of red meat was associated with a significantly elevated risk of total, CVD and cancer mortality, and this association was observed for unprocessed and processed red meat, with a relatively greater risk for processed red meat," the authors said.

"Substitution of fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy products and whole grains for red meat was associated with a significantly lower risk of mortality," they said.

The elevated risk of total mortality in the pooled analysis for a one-serving-per-day increase was 12 percent for total red meat, 13 per cent for unprocessed red meat and 20 per cent for processed red meat, the results indicate.

In their substitution analyses, the researchers estimated that replacing one serving of total red meat with one serving of fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy products or whole grains daily was associated with a lower risk of total mortality: 7 per cent for fish, 14 per cent for poultry, 19 per cent for nuts, 10 per cent for legumes, 10 per cent for low-fat dairy products and 14 per cent for whole grains.

We estimated that 9.3 per cent in men and 7.6 per cent in women of total deaths during follow-up could be prevented if all the participants consumed fewer than 0.5 servings per day of total red meat in these cohorts," they said.

"In addition to their health benefits, the food choices we make each day affect other important areas as well. What is personally sustainable is globally sustainable. What is good for you is good for our planet," Dean Ornish, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, said.

More than 75 per cent of the 2.6 trillion dollars in annual US health care costs are from chronic disease. Eating less red meat is likely to reduce morbidity from these illnesses, thereby reducing health care costs," he added.

The study has been published online in Archives of Internal Medicine.