Here, the investigators register a project from within EPIC-Heidelberg on prediagnostic iron status as a potential mediator of associations between pre-diagnostic red meat consumption and cardiovascular disease risk. For this particular project, an embedded case-cohort set-up was chosen, i.e. iron status markers (primary marker: serum ferritin; secondary markers: serum transferrin, serum iron) were measured in baseline blood samples from a random subcohort (n=2738) and all validated incident cases of myocardial infarction (n=556), stroke (n=513), and CVD death (n=327) that occured until the closure date of the present study (12-31-2009).