If you love sausage and steaks, you have to brave away from dietary recommendations for many years. One adult a week should eat at most 600 grams of meat and sausage, advises about the German Society for Nutrition (DGE). With the remark: "Who eats a lot of red meat and sausage, has a higher risk for colorectal cancer."
Sausage was classified as a carcinogen in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), red meat, that of beef, pork and lamb, as a likely carcinogen.
Dear Muesli instead of Mettbrötchen?
Sausage has long been considered a risk factor, especially for the cardiovascular system. This finding is essentially based on large observational studies in which people are regularly asked over many years how they feed themselves and whether they become ill or even die during the study period. However, not all observational studies point in the same direction.
How big the risk actually is, if you prefer to start the morning with Mettbrötchen instead of cereal, is not so clear as some people think.
An international research team now presents in the journal "Annals of Internal Medicine" several so-called meta-analyzes in which the studies are summarized to a specific issue. In addition, they present a nutritional recommendation regarding red meat and sausage.
To sum up, adults should simply eat red meat and sausage in the crowd as they have done so far. But the scientists admit themselves: The recommendation is weak - because the scientific evidence is poor.
The current advice is based on the aforementioned meta-analyzes, which come to the conclusion that: Whether someone eats a lot or little sausage and red meat, influenced either little or no risk of getting cancer or heart disease.
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With the caveat that these are ultimately estimates based on unclear data, the team presents some figures on what would happen if people were to eat three portions less sausage or red meat per week. This may result in a handful of fewer diabetes and deaths from cardiovascular disease, with a thousand people over the age of 11 years.
At the same time, the research group itself points to one important point: people who eat a lot of meat simply do so. It enhances your well-being. Forced renunciation would interfere with this - and even that may be harmful to your health in the long term.
Anyway, most people choose not to change their eating habits based on dietary tips. What could explain why the Germans - despite many years of warnings - continue to eat more meat than recommended.
However, from the point of view of health researchers, it can also be quite another good argument to reduce meat consumption: ethical reasons as well as the impact of livestock on the environment.
