24Evidence A

Swapping some red meat for fish and poultry

Eating two extra servings of processed or red meat each week raises the risk of death by roughly 3% compared to eating the same amount of fish or poultry. This effect is relatively small within this section, so it’s an easy swap to make without much effort.

Cost

There’s no extra cost or time involved. You’re simply repl…

Benefit

This conclusion comes from combining data from six U.S. studies involving nearly 30,000 participants. Consumin…

Cost

There’s no extra cost or time involved. You’re simply replacing one type of meat with another, not buying more. The real challenge is adjusting your taste preferences.

Benefit

This conclusion comes from combining data from six U.S. studies involving nearly 30,000 participants. Consuming two extra servings of processed meat weekly increases mortality risk by about 3% (hazard ratio 1.03, 95% CI 1.02–1.05). The same increase applies to unprocessed red meat (1.03, 1.01–1.05). However, switching to poultry or fish shows no significant change: hazard ratios of 0.99 (0.97–1.02) and 0.99 (0.97–1.01) respectively.

Original sources

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

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Book note

The impact of swapping two weekly servings of meat is minimal, so don’t expect a major lifespan boost from this change. If you’re already spending money on meat, fish and poultry are the better choices.

My note