Research
Mixed
High consumption of processed meat (≥160 g/day) is associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality compared to low consumption (10-19.9 g/day), with a hazard ratio of 1.44.
Limit processed meat intake to less than 20 grams per day. The study estimates that doing so could prevent 3.3% of deaths in this population. Focus on unprocessed meats and plant-based proteins instead.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
After multivariate adjustment, a high consumption of red meat was related to higher all-cause mortality (hazard ratio (HR) = 1.14, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01 to 1.28, 160+ versus 10 to 19.9 g/day), and the association was stronger for processed meat (HR = 1.44, 95% CI 1.24 to 1.66, 160+ versus 10 to 19.9 g/day).
Why this rating
Large prospective cohort (EPIC, n=448,568), long follow-up, rigorous adjustment for confounders, though observational design limits causal inference.
Source
Meat consumption and mortality - results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition
Sabine Rohrmann et al. · BMC Medicine · 2013
DOI 10.1186/1741-7015-11-63
cohort · n=448568Cited 447×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- High consumption of red meat (≥160 g/day) is associated with higher all-cause mortality, but this association attenuates and becomes non-significant after correcting for measurement error.Good
- Processed meat consumption is associated with increased mortality from cardiovascular diseases and cancer.Good
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