Eating processed meat is the cause of 1 in 30 early deaths. That was the headline in English newspapers yesterday after a paper was published on the BMC medicine website.
The researchers wanted to see if there was a link between eating processed meat, red meat or poultry and overall or cause specific mortality. The analysis was of just under 500,000 men and women from 10 European countries. Their findings? After correction for other factors the people who tended to eat more processed meat had a higher incidence of death than the others. They recommend not to eat more than 20g of processed meat per day. But, they also pointed out that people who tended to eat more processed meat also had a more unhealthy lifestyle. There was no significant increase in incidence of death in people that ate alot of red meat.
There was a great quote in the telegraph from Dr Carrie Ruxton, a dietitian from the Meat Advisory Panel, “If you’ve got someone who’s overweight, watching television for hours, munching a meat pie and smoking a fag, which one of those is relevant?”.
The publication is open access and available from the BMC website.