Swapping some red meat for fish or poultry
Eating two extra portions of processed or red meat per week increases the risk of death by approximately 3%. If replaced with the same number of portions of fish or poultry, no increase is observed. The effect of this meat substitution in this section is relatively small, belonging to the category of something to swap whenever convenient without needing to force it.
There’s no extra cost or time involved. You’re simply subs…
This conclusion comes from pooling data across six U.S. studies involving nearly 30,000 participants. Consumin…
There’s no extra cost or time involved. You’re simply substituting one type of meat for another — no additional purchases needed. The real challenge is adjusting your taste preferences.
This conclusion comes from pooling data across six U.S. studies involving nearly 30,000 participants. Consuming two extra servings of processed meat weekly raised mortality risk by about 3% (hazard ratio 1.03, 95% CI 1.02–1.05). The same increase applied to unprocessed red meat (1.03, 1.01–1.05). However, replacing those servings with poultry resulted in a ratio of 0.99 (0.97–1.02), and fish gave 0.99 (0.97–1.01); neither showed any statistically significant difference.
Zhong VW, Van Horn L, Greenland P, et al. (2020). Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality. JAMA Internal Medicine, 180(4), 503-512. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.6969
Open source linkThe impact of swapping just two servings per week is quite small; don’t expect a major lifespan extension from this change. When spending money on meat, choosing fish or poultry is the wiser option.