A study published earlier this month revealed evidence that eating processed meats, including bacon and sausage, lowers life expectancy.
But the media missed out on a key finding when it quickly reported that processed meats are bad for you: the study found that not eating red meat also increases the risk of dying early.
The study, called the European Prospective Investigation in Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), looked at the health of 500,000 Europeans in 10 countries.
Of course, eating too much red meat certainly isn't good for you. But after not finding any evidence that meat is bad for you, the European team of researchers concluded that red meat was "no longer associated with mortality" and "all-cause morality was higher among participants with very low or no red meat consumption."
The study also mentions, as Mother Jones points out, that heavy processed-meat eaters face a lot of health risks, but not necessarily from all the meat they eat. They also eat fewer fruits and vegetables, are more likely to smoke and exercise less. Men who eat a large amount of processed meats in their diets also tend to drink far more alcohol than those who eat meat in moderation. They were also older, with many of the heavy processed-meat eaters over the age of 70, and were also less educated.
What's even more interesting is the way our meat-eating habits go hand in hand with our behavior. In the study, those who ate more than six sausage links' worth of processed meat (the heaviest consumers in the study), were also more likely to die in ways that had nothing to do with food, like accidental injuries or car accidents. Those who ate mostly chicken had the best behaviors of those studied: most went to college, few smoke, eat their vegetables, wear seatbelts, practice good oral hygiene and exercise.
Grouping the study's subjects into categories based on processed-meat consumption made for confounding groupings. The shortened lifespan linked to eating processed meat wasn't even statistically significant for women because of how few women ate enough processed meat to fit into the heavy user category. As Zoe Harcombe, a British obesity researcher and a participant in the study, told Mother Jones, "this is like doing a survey about alcoholism and mortality and making the top group so small that it includes Billie Holiday and George Best and making headlines on this basis."
