Delicious, delicious red meat.
Put down that raw hamburger, Scott Shover! The health risks of red meat are pretty obvious by now. Red meat is higher in fat and cholesterol, may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, and is generally pretty terrible for you. That’s why it tastes to delicious. Well, scientists have determined just how much going over that 2 or 3 servings of red meat a week can hurt you, and the answer is that it’s pretty not good: eating too much red meat will shorten your lifespan in a measurable way.
“Our message is to try to reduce the red meat consumption to less than two to three servings per week,” said researcher An Pan from the Harvard School of Public Health, who conducted the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. “We don’t want everyone to be a vegetarian. It’s better to go with unprocessed products and plant-based foods.”
The study tracked the eating habits of 121,000 middle-aged people for up to 28 years. Each additional serving of red meat eaten per day caused a 13% higher risk of dying during the study (20% of study participants died during the study). If the red meat was processed, as in hot dogs, bacon, and salami, the death risk increase was 20 percent higher per serving. That’s a whole lot of death. Consequently, swapping a serving of red meat with some other sort of protein reduced death risk by 7 to 19 percent.
Tags: red meat, red meat health effects, red meat shortens your lifespan, red meat is bad for you, health news, human health news, diet and health, unusual food news, Archives of Internal Medicine, An Pan, Harvard School of Public Health, processed red meat increases death risk, meat health risk
