Cutting back on 10 slices of bacon per week could prevent more than 350,000 cases of diabetes in the U.S. over the span of 10 years, new research reveals.
A study, published in the Lancet Planetary Health Journal, has found that reducing processed meat intake by 30 percent among U.S. adults could result in tens of thousands fewer cases of cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer.
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A team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Edinburgh has collaborated to develop a simulation tool designed to assess the health impacts of reducing processed and unprocessed red meat intake.
According to the researchers, while previous studies have identified links between high levels of processed meat consumption and chronic disease, few have evaluated the impact on multiple health outcomes.
"Cutting consumption of meat has been recommended by national and international organisations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including the Climate Change Committee here in the UK and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC," Lindsay Jaacks, study author and personal chair of global health and nutrition at The University of Edinburgh, said in a statement.
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"Our research finds that these changes in diets could also have significant health benefits in the U.S., and so this is a clear win-win for people and planet."
The study utilized data from a national health survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop a microsimulation, which represents a sample of the U.S. adult population.
The team evaluated how changes in meat consumption affect the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer, and mortality in their sample.
They found that reducing processed meat consumption by 30 percent could prevent over 350,000 cases of diabetes, 92,500 fewer cases of cardiovascular disease and 53,300 less cases of colorectal cancer over a decade.
In this scenario, white males and those with an annual household income between $25,000 and $55,000 could reap the greatest health benefits.
In addition, reducing consumption of both unprocessed and processed meat by 30 percent in the simulation resulted in 1,073,400 fewer diabetes cases, 382,400 fewer cardiovascular disease cases and 84,400 fewer colorectal cancer cases.
According to the report, cutting unprocessed red meat intake alone by 30 percent in the simulation, the equivalent of eating around one less quarter-pound beef burger a week, resulted in more than 732,000 fewer diabetes cases. It also led to 291,500 fewer cardiovascular disease cases and 32,200 fewer colorectal cancer cases.
According to the report, the higher prevention of disease cases by reducing unprocessed red meat compared to processed meat can be attributed in part to the higher average daily intake of unprocessed red meat—47g per day versus 29g per day for processed meat.
However, as less is known about the effect of eating unprocessed red meat on chronic disease risk, the researchers warned that these estimates should be interpreted with caution and said that more research is needed.
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