In a new study, researchers found that consuming a 25g serving of processed meat a day, the equivalent to one rasher of bacon, is linked to a 44% increased risk of dementia.
But their findings also show eating some unprocessed red meat, such as beef, pork or veal, could be protective, as people who consumed 50g a day were 19% less likely to develop dementia.
The research was conducted by scientists from the University of Leeds.
In the study, the team used data from 500,000 people aged 40 to 69 to explore a potential link between consumption of meat and the development of dementia, a health condition that affects 5%-8% of over 60s worldwide.
The data included how often participants consumed different kinds of meat, with six options from never to once or more daily, collected in 2006-2010 by the UK Biobank.
The team found 2,896 cases of dementia emerged over an average of eight years of follow-up.
These people were generally older, more economically deprived, less educated, more likely to smoke, less physically active, more likely to have stroke history and family dementia history, and more likely to be carriers of a gene that is highly linked to dementia.
Some people were three to six times more likely to develop dementia due to well-established genetic factors, but the findings suggest the risks from eating processed meat were the same whether or not a person was genetically predisposed to developing the disease.
Those who consumed higher amounts of processed meat were more likely to be male, less educated, smokers, overweight or obese, had lower intakes of vegetables and fruits, and had higher intakes of energy, protein, and fat (including saturated fat).
The team says further confirmation is needed, but the direction of effect is linked to current healthy eating guidelines suggesting lower intakes of unprocessed red meat could be beneficial for health.
The study is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. One author of the study is Huifeng Zhang.
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