People’s love for processed meat may return in the long run to bite it, new research from the UK indicates. The study found a link between larger consumption of processed meat and higher doses of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. At the same time, it also found a possible link between eating unprocessed meat and a lower risk of dementia.
Processed meats such as bacon, jerky and hot dogs do not have a reputation that they are healthy in the first place. Other research has suggested that diets that are abundant in these foods have been linked to chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer. Some studies have even shown to a link between processed meat and the increased risk of neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as episodes of bipolar depression.
There was already mixed evidence that a diet high in meat may increase the risk of dementia in their later years. But according to the authors of this new study, published Monday in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition there was less work done on the possible dementia risk of different types of meat (processed versus not) and whether genetics may play a role in risk.
The study is based on population data from the UK Biobank, an ongoing research project that collects health and genetic information from around half a million inhabitants. ages 40 tot 69, between 2006 and 2010. As part of the project, volunteers completed a questionnaire about their diet at the beginning of their enrollment and in periodic online surveys up to 16 months thereafter. As a result of the UK’s nationalized health system, the researchers were able to track the health outcomes of these participants, including whether they developed dementia or died from it.
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Approximately 2,900 cases of dementia were diagnosed in the entire group during an average of eight years of follow-up.on period. And when the researchers tried to take into account the diets of people, they found a clear link between processed meat and the risk of dementia, but they did not see the link when it comes to other types of meat.
The associated risk of dementia, for example, increased by 44% for every 25 grams of processed meat eaten daily. But there was no significant association between dementia risk and total meat consumption or between dementia risk and the daily intake of chicken by someone. Meanwhile, the associated risk of dementia has actually decreased for those who regularly ate unprocessed red meat (boiled beef, veal, pork, etc.).). The risk of dementia increased, as expected, for those who had the genetic variation of APOE ε4, but meat consumption is not affected.
“Our findings suggest that consumption of processed meat may increase the risk of incident dementia, and that unprocessed red meat intake may be associated with lower risks,” the authors wrote.
Nutrition studies like these obviously have their limitations. For example, they cannot show a direct cause-and-effect relationship between two things a correlation. Studying people’s diets is generally difficult, since we are not the best at remembering what and how much of the given food we eat regularly. And of course, a person’s diet at 40 or 50 can still change significantly between the time and the time of their dementia diagnosis years or decades later.
Any study should not be construed as the final verdict on a topic. More research will be needed to determine the potential consequences of a diet high in i.processed meat at our risk of dementia and how these diets can cause it. That said, as mentioned earlier, this would not be the first study that processed meat into deteriorating health. Although the details still need to be worked on, it is probably in the interest of many of us to save less bacon or sausage anyway.
“Globally, the incidence of dementia is increasing and diet may play a role as an adaptive factor,” said lead author Huifeng Zhang, a PhD student at Leeds University’s School of Food Science and Nutrition, in a statement. released by the British University. “Our research contributes to the growing body of evidence related to the consumption of processed meat, and increases the risk of a range of non-communicable diseases.”