Eating less red meat helps reduce the risk of dying prematurely, especially from cardiovascular disease and cancer, suggests a new analysis from a long-term study of more than 120,000 health care professionals, recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
People who ate the most red meat (averaging two servings a day) were 30 percent more likely to die over a two-decade period than those eating little or none. That included processed meats such as hot dogs and bologna.
This was true even when the researchers adjusted the findings for major lifestyle factors and other dietary variables. In contrast, people who ate fish, poultry, nuts, beans, whole grains and/or low-fat dairy products instead of meat had a reduced mortality rate.