JANE BRODY
ESSAY


There was a time when meat was a luxury for most people, or was at least something special: cooking a roast for Sunday dinner, ordering a steak at a restaurant. Not anymore. The average amount of meat consumed per person has doubled over the last four decades, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Much of this growth is in developing countries like China and India.

Now a new study of more than 500,000 Americans has provided the best evidence yet that our affinity for meat has exacted a hefty price on our health and limited our longevity. The study found that, other things being equal, those who consumed the most meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts.

Results of the decadelong study were published in the March 23 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine. The study, directed by Rashmi Sinha, a nutritional epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute, involved 322,263 men and 223,390 women ages 50 to 71. Each participant completed detailed questionnaires about diet and other habits and characteristics, including smoking, exercise, alcohol consumption, education, use of supplements, weight and family history of cancer.

During the decade, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died, and the researchers kept track of the timing and reasons for each death. Consumption of beef, pork or lamb ranged from a low of less than 28 grams a day, on average, to a high of 113 grams a day, and processed meat consumption (ham, bacon, sausages) ranged from at most once a week to an average of 42 grams a day.

The increase in mortality risk tied to the higher levels of meat consumption was described as“modest,”ranging from about 20 percent to nearly 40 percent. But extrapolated to all Americans in the age group studied, the new findings suggest that over the course of a decade, the deaths of one million men and perhaps half a million women could be prevented just by eating less red and processed meats, according to estimates prepared by Dr.Barry Popkin, who wrote an editorial accompanying the report.

To prevent premature deaths related to red and processed meats, Dr.Popkin suggested in an interview that people should eat a hamburger only once or twice a week, a small steak once a week, and a hot dog every month and a half.

In place of red meat, nonvegetarians might consider poultry and fish. In the study, the largest consumers of“white”meat from poultry and fish had a slight survival advantage. Likewise, those who ate the most fruits and vegetables also tended to live longer.

Studies like this raise the question of whether meat is in fact a hazard or whether other factors associated with meat-eating are responsible for raising death rates.

Choosing protein from sources other than meat has also been linked to lower rates of cancer. When meat is cooked, especially grilled or broiled at high temperatures, carcinogens can form on the surface of the meat. And processed meats like sausages usually contain nitrosamines, although there are products now available that are free of these carcinogens.

Data from one million participants in the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition trial found that those who ate the least fish had a 40 percent greater risk of developing colon cancer than those who ate more than 50 grams of fish a day.

Likewise, while a diet high in red meat was linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer in the large Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, among the 35,534 men in the study, those who consumed at least three servings of fish a week had half the risk of advanced prostate cancer compared with men who rarely ate fish.

Another study, which randomly assigned more than 19,500 women to a low-fat diet, found after eight years a 40 percent reduced risk of ovarian cancer among them, compared with 29,000 women who ate their regular diets.