I grew up in Oakville with a very typical eclectic, primarily “British diet”; burgers, chicken, pasta, bacon and eggs, casseroles, through the week and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding every Sunday.

For lunch, I went through a decade of processed lunchmeat sandwiches, an apple, and maybe a wagon wheel or Jo Louis.

Fast forward to present day. I’m 2 years shy of 40, and things have come full circle. Nutrition is now a passion of mine, and a near obsession with my wife. Through education we have grown to understand the perils of excessive meat intake, particularly red meat. That said, we still do eat meat….just less. And when we do, we like to know where it’s from and ideally how it was raised.

The above picture is me outside a bison farm that I frequent in Uxbridge.   The farmer is obsessive about how he raises his herd. He won’t even allow you to buy his meat unless you first visit his farm, and spend an hour hearing about how he raises his Bison. He essentially has 3 customers: the Toronto Maple Leafs, Gary Roberts High Performance Academy…..and the Kissels.

Are we unique in our lessened red meat consumption?

Hardly. In the United States (and likely Canada too), the overall average red meat consumption has plummeted in recent decades. That said it still remains over twice the global average.

It seems you can’t go a month without reading a newspaper article touting the latest research linking red meat consumption to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and overall early death. In fact, these articles are so frequent that their impact is now lost.

This hot off the press, June article from the British Medical Journal is different. It’s the first of its kind and it’s very important.

It is the first article to look long term at how a REDUCTION in red meat consumption impacts US men and women’s risk of death. Instead of just linking red meat consumption to death, it looks at the impact of lessening red meat, and processed red meat intake and replacing it with fish, nuts, poultry, vegetables and legumes. It then shows us the impact of how these dietary changes affected a very large sample of US adults in a 4, 8, and 12 year time period.

First, let’s spell out what we already know:

Red meat consumption has been shown to be associated with increased risk of: type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, certain types of cancer like colorectal cancer, and all cause mortality (all kinds of death).

Processed red meat consumption (think bacon, hot dogs and sausages) has additionally been associated with COPD, heart failure and hypertension.

This study took data from 2 ongoing giant US observational groups. One group is 121,700 nurses who beginning in 1976 did baseline survey’s and subsequent questionnaires every second year. A second group was 51, 529 US male health professionals who completed surveys in a similar fashion. One very specific question was asked every 4 years. The researchers asked how often on average they consumed a standard portion of each food in the past year. Included in this data was if they ate on average one serving of red meat (85 grams) daily and also processed meats (28 grams). Total red meat included the combined processed and unprocessed consumption.

From all this data, they were able to determine how actual changes in red meat consumption over any 4 year period affected death in subsequent years. Brilliant!

First the good news:

Overall total meat consumption from 1986-2006 had a reduction in mean servings per day from 1.05 to 0.74 in women and from 1.14 to 1.03 in men. Processed red meat decreased from 0.3 to 0.21 in women, yet stayed the same in men. Guys….put down the delicious bacon!!

Also, in the same time period, more people of both sexes reduced their red meat consumption compared to the total number that increased it.

And now the bad news:

• Increased red meat consumption over any 8 year period was DIRECTLY associated with risk of death during the subsequent 8 years. This was completely independent of initial red meat intake and any lifestyle factors. This means if you start eating more red meat, you are more likely to die sooner. It was worse for processed red meat.
• An increase of one serving per day of unprocessed meat consumption over a 4 year period was associated with a 20% increase in all cause mortality in the subsequent 4 years. For processed meat, it was even worse.
• An increase in one serving per day of processed red meat over 8 years had a 19% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 57% increase in neurodegenerative diseases in the next 8 years.

Ouch!

And now the silver lining:

• If you eat the same number of calories, but lower your red meat consumption, you will naturally increase your intake of items such as fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, grains, eggs and dairy. Any and all of these changes were associated with a lower risk of mortality when compared to red meat consumption.
• An example of the above: If you decrease your red meat intake by one serving per day and replace it with fish, over an 8 year period your related chance of death is lowered by 17%. Let that sink in for a second…..that is nearly a 1 in 5 lowered risk.
• It is even higher for processed meat.

The overall conclusion can be summed up as follows:

Reducing red meat consumption and moving to other protein sources or plant based foods significantly increases longevity in any of 4, 8 and 12 year increments.

Certainly some food for thought.