If you love sausages, hot dogs, and brats, you might be in for a shorter life, a new study suggests.
The study analyzed data from half a million men and women, as a part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. It was published in the journal BMC Medicine [PDF]. They found a link between "processed" meat — which includes all meat products, including ham, bacon, sausages; small part of minced meat that has been bought as a ready-to-eat product — and cardiovascular disease and cancer, they report.
Also, they found that the more processed meat you eat the more likely you are to die early (of anything). A previous study of just red meat came to a similar conclusion.
The researchers think the increased cancer risk could be due to the presence of preservatives like the salt, smoke and nitrate. Also, the high levels of fat in these meats. "Risks of dying earlier from cancer and cardiovascular disease also increased with the amount of processed meat eaten," study researcher Sabine Rohrmann, from the University of Zurich, said in a statement [PDF].
"Overall, we estimate that 3 percent of premature deaths each year could be prevented if people ate less than 20g processed meat per day."
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