You may want to cut down on the intake of processed meat such as bacon which could dramatically increase the risk of getting dementia. A new study found that eating just one rasher of bacon a day could increase your chances of developing the disease by 44 per cent.
The findings of the study, titled ‘Meat consumption and risk of incident dementia: cohort study of 493888 UK Biobank participants’, were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Scientists from the University of Leeds’s Nutritional Epidemiology Group used data from 500,000 people, discovering that consuming a 25g serving of processed meat a day, the equivalent to one rasher of bacon, is associated with a 44 per cent increased risk of developing the disease.
However, meat-lovers need not despair, as their findings also showed that eating some unprocessed red meat, such as beef, pork, or veal, could be protective, as people who consumed 50g a day were 19 per cent less likely to develop dementia.
The researchers were exploring a potential link between consumption of meat and the development of dementia, a health condition that affects 5 per cent to 8 per cent of over 60s worldwide.
