Armchair science is dangerous. Almost everyone I know that heard of this study said "oh it must be correlation wit other bad stuff like smoking". And nobody investigated further and they were all wrong.
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Overall, eating processed and unprocessed red meat was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and cancer mortality in men and women in risk models that adjusted for age and multiple risk factors, including physical activity, BMI, and smoking status, among others. When red-meat intake was treated as a continuous variable, each additional serving of red meat was associated with a significant 12%, 16%, and 10% increased risk of all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality.