16 March 2012 Last updated at 07:11 ET By Ruth Alexander BBC News
Eating an extra portion of red meat every day will increase your risk of death by 13% annually, according to a new study. It sounds scary - but is it?
Harvard Medical School researchers have concluded that a diet high in red meat can shorten life expectancy.
They studied the diets and health of more than 120,000 people over the course of more than 20 years and found that red meat is associated with an increased risk of fatal heart disease and terminal cancer.
Over the study period, an extra portion of unprocessed red meat was associated with an overall 13% increased risk of death annually (and the figure for processed meat was even higher).
But what does this mean?
The easiest way to understand it is to think of how this might affect two friends who live very similar lives, according to David Spiegelhalter, a Cambridge University biostatistician, and the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk.
When he's sitting eating his extra burger, that person is losing half an hour of life
Imagine that the two friends are men aged 40, who are the same weight, do the same amount of exercise and do the same job.
The only difference between them is that one eats an extra portion of red meat every day - an extra 85g, or 3oz.
The rest is here:
What is an 13% increased risk of death?
