Keep your red meat to these limits to protect your brain health, experts say – CTV
January 15, 2025
Reducing your red meat consumption could have many positive impacts — on your heart, the environment, and maybe even on your long-term cognitive health, according to a new study.
Those who ate a quarter of a serving or more of processed red meats — such as bacon, bologna and hot dogs — had a 13 per cent higher chance of developing dementia than those who had less than one-tenth of a serving per day, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Neurology.
A serving of red meat is usually around 3 ounces (85 grams), which would be either two slices of bacon, 1.5 slices of bologna or one hot dog, according to a news release on the study.
Researchers also found that an extra daily serving of processed red meat on average was associated with a 1.6-year acceleration in brain aging, according to the study.
The study methods are observational, meaning that researchers can’t say for sure that the processed red meats are causing the dementia, only that there is an association between the two. But investigation into the connection will continue, said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Daniel Wang, an assistant professor in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
