A study published in the journal Circulation suggests that eating lamb, beef, and pork that is processed (i.e., preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or with the addition of chemical preservatives) raises the risk of heart disease and diabetes, while consuming unprocessed meats doesn’t.
“Most of the attention that this study is getting is to announce that processed meat is harmful,” says Stier. “However, the study also says that regularly eating unprocessed meat — even red meat — does not increase the risk of these diseases. Are the food police going to focus only on the negative message and ignore this other aspect of the study?”