Research
Micronutrients & recovery
Substituting red meat with white meat, particularly unprocessed white meat, is associated with a 25% reduction in all-cause mortality.
Try swapping your red meat meals for white meat, like chicken or fish. This study shows that making this swap, while keeping your total meat amount the same, can significantly lower your risk of dying from common diseases.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
When the total meat intake was constant, the highest fifth of white meat intake was associated with a 25% reduction in risk of all cause mortality compared with the lowest intake level.
Why this rating
Large cohort study with substitution models controlling for total meat intake.
Source
Mortality from different causes associated with meat, heme iron, nitrates, and nitrites in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study: population based cohort study
Arash Etemadi et al. · BMJ · 2017
DOI 10.1136/bmj.j1957
cohort · n=536969Cited 292×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- High intake of red meat (both processed and unprocessed) is associated with increased all-cause mortality and mortality from nine specific causes, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease.Good
- Heme iron and nitrate/nitrite from processed meat independently contribute to increased mortality risk, with nitrate accounting for a larger proportion of the risk from processed red meat.Good
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