BlogsCan Red Meat Shorten Your Life? A diet high in red meat
greatly increases the risk of death from certain diseases. Red
meat kills. Eating a diet high in foods such as steak, slabs of
bacon, or pepperoni sticks greatly increases your risk of
dying—in particular from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Red
meat has been linked to chronic diseases before, but a new study
by Harvard Medical School shows how strong of a negative effect
it can have on your health. Researchers looked at over 120,000
men and women, and found that eating an extra serving a day of
unprocessed red meat increased the overall risk of death by 13%.
For processed meats, the overall risk increased by 20%. The risk
of death by cardiovascular disease increased by 18% and 21% for
unprocessed and processed meats, respectively. Death by cancer
increased 10% and 16%. Researchers suspect that the saturated
fat in red meat—and the sodium in processed meats—is partially
responsible for the shortened lifespans of red meat-eaters.
Sodium is known t