People Who Love Eating Red Meat Have A Higher Risk Of Dying Early

Although having a big greasy burger on a stressful day could bring you utter comfort, you might want to slow it down for a bit. A new study on protein has just confirmed that eating red meat may be related to an increased risk of death.

What you can do is replace animal protein in your diet with plant protein which was found to be connected with a decrease in the risk of death according to a research published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday. Scientists have always linked processed red meats with a wide range of chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, CNN reported.

Dr. Mingyang Song, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who served as lead author of the paper, said that the new paper shows that the associations made with these food may still exist when analyzing the overall protein intake. "While it is important to know how much protein people should consume to achieve the optimal health benefit, from a broad dietary perspective, what foods people choose to consume to get protein is equally important," Song said.

According to Fox News, for the study, Song and colleagues studied over 130,000 nurses and other health professionals for several years. fifty percent of the participants were getting at least 14 percent of their calories from animal protein while there were at least 4 percent who take it from plant protein. When the study started, participants had an average age of 49 years old and most of them were women.

By the end of the study, researchers found that about 36,000 people died, and around 8,850 were caused by cardiovascular disease and roughly 13,000 of cancer. After checking lifestyle factors such as smoking, drinking, obesity and physical inactivity, it was discovered that for each 3 percent increase in calories from plant protein, there was a 10 percent lowered risk of death during the study period. However, as for the benefits seen with plants, it was found that in every 10 percent increase in the proportion of calories from animal protein, there was a 2 percent higher risk of death from any cause and an 8 percent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease during the study period. Eurekalert.com also reported that after analyzing specific sources of protein, they found that animal-protein associated mortality risk was primarily caused by processed and unprocessed red meats including include both beef and pork products, and not to protein from fish or poultry.

"While we expected we might find the associations to be weaker in the healthy lifestyle group, we did not expect them to completely disappear," says Song. "But when we looked deeper into the data, we found that - at similar levels of animal protein intake - those in the unhealthy lifestyle group consumed more red meats, eggs and high-fat dairy, while the healthy lifestyle group consumed more fish and poultry. So we suspect the different sources of animal protein between the two groups may contribute to the stronger results in the unhealthy lifestyle group."

He also added saying, "Our findings suggest that people should consider eating more plant proteins than animal proteins, and when they do choose among sources of animal protein, fish and chicken are probably better choices. Future studies should examine the mechanisms underlying the different effects of plant and animal proteins - along with different sources of animal proteins - on overall health."