A 30 percent reduction in processed meat consumption could prevent thousands of cases of diabetes, cancer and heart disease, according to a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a modeling tool to estimate the multiple health impacts of reducing consumption processed and unprocessed red meatThey used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health Interview Survey to create a simulated representative sample of the U.S. adult population, called a microsimulation. Effects were estimated for the total population and separately by age, gender, household income and ethnicity.
They estimate that cutting processed meat by a third could prevent more than 350,000 cases of diabetes, 92,500 cases of heart disease, and 53,300 cases of colon cancer over a decade. Reducing consumption of both processed and unprocessed red meat by 30% would result in 1,073,400 fewer cases of diabetes, 382,400 fewer cases of heart disease, and 84,400 fewer cases of colon cancer.
Finally, a 30% reduction in unprocessed red meat consumption would result in 732,000 fewer cases of diabetes, 291,500 fewer cases of heart disease, and 32,200 fewer cases of colon cancer.
The research team notes that these estimates should be interpreted with caution and more research is needed.
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