u/lurkerer

A common refrain online is that studies always lump in hot dogs together with steaks and this is causing the negative associations. Nevermind that this establishes processed meat as a causal risk factor in order to do so, it isn't even the case.

EDIT: To make this point extra clear, it is an internal critique. So, the person who is saying "This is because of processed meats." Is making both the claim that negative health outcomes are because of processed meat and that it's not unprocessed meat. So because this is typically the kind of person to have "correlation is not causation" in their script of things to say, the irony is that this other criticism within the same script shows that they assert causation from correlation when it suits them.

This list took me about ten minutes to find. The formatting took longer than the research. Which I point out to highlight that this incredibly common complaint is just an admission someone hasn't bothered to look anything up. This is far beneath the standards of a science sub. Consider it an immediate giveaway the person is either parroting lines without doing the slightest bit of research or actively lying.

Here are a few:

• Pan A et al. (2012), Arch Intern Med — Red Meat Consumption and Mortality

> After multivariate adjustment for major lifestyle and dietary risk factors, the pooled hazard ratio (HR) (95% CI) of total mortality for a 1-serving-per-day increase was 1.13 (1.07-1.20) for unprocessed red meat and 1.20 (1.15-1.24) for processed red meat.

• Rohrmann S et al. (2013), BMC Medicine — Meat consumption and mortality (EPIC)

> After multivariate adjustment, a high consumption of red meat was related to higher all-cause mortality (hazard ratio (HR) = 1.14, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01 to 1.28, 160+ versus 10 to 19.9 g/day), and the association was stronger for processed meat (HR = 1.44, 95% CI 1.24 to 1.66, 160+ versus 10 to 19.9 g/day).

• Sinha R et al. (2009), Arch Intern Med — Meat Intake and Mortality (NIH-AARP)

> Regarding cause-specific mortality, men and women had elevated risks for cancer mortality for red (HR, 1.22 [95% CI, 1.16-1.29], and HR, 1.20 [95% CI, 1.12-1.30], respectively) and processed meat (HR, 1.12 [95% CI, 1.06-1.19], and HR, 1.11 [95% CI 1.04-1.19], respectively) intakes.

• Alshahrani SM et al. (2019), Nutrients — Red and Processed Meat and Mortality in a Low Meat Intake Population

> Unprocessed red meat was associated with risk of all-cause mortality (HR: 1.18; 95% CI: 1.07–1.31) and CVD mortality (HR: 1.26; 95% CI: 1.05–1.50). Processed meat alone was not significantly associated with risk of mortality.

• Wang X et al. (2016), Public Health Nutrition — Dose-response meta-analysis

> For processed meat, the pooled relative risk with an increase of one serving per day was 1·15 (95 % CI 1·11, 1·19) for all-cause mortality (five studies; P<0·001 for linear trend), 1·15 (95 % CI 1·07, 1·24) for cardiovascular mortality (six studies; P<0·001) and 1·08 (95 % CI 1·06, 1·11) for cancer mortality (five studies; P<0·001). Similar associations were found with total meat intake. The association between unprocessed red meat consumption and mortality risk was found in the US populations, but not in European or Asian populations.

• Abete I et al. (2014), Br J Nutr — Association between total, processed, red and white meat consumption

> Subjects in the highest category of processed meat consumption had 22 and 18 % higher risk of mortality from any cause and CVD, respectively. Red meat consumption was found to be associated with a 16 % higher risk of CVD mortality, while no association was found for total and white meat consumption.

• Han MA et al. (2019), Ann Intern Med (NutriRECS) — Red and Processed Meat Consumption and Risk for All-Cause Mortality

> Low-certainty evidence was found that a reduction in unprocessed red meat intake of 3 servings per week is associated with a very small reduction in risk for cardiovascular mortality, stroke, myocardial infarction (MI), and type 2 diabetes. Likewise, low-certainty evidence was found that a reduction in processed meat intake of 3 servings per week is associated with a very small decrease in risk for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, stroke, MI, and type 2 diabetes.