You might love your bacon, but does bacon love you back? The evidence suggests not as much as you’d hope.

Yet another study has found that people who regularly eat processed red meat, like bacon, sausages and salami, are at greater risk of developing dementia later in life.

It was also found that each daily serving significantly aged the brain.

These were the main findings of research from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

The preliminary study was presented this week in Philadelphia, at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

The study

The study involved more than 130,000 US adults.

Female participants came from the Nurses’ Health Study, which investigates risk factors for major chronic diseases in women.

The male participants came from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which investigates the same risk factors in men.

The volunteers were followed for up to 43 years. During that time, 11,173 people developed dementia.

Those who consumed about two servings of processed red meat per week had a 14 per cent greater risk of developing dementia compared to those who ate fewer than three servings per month.

The researchers also assessed cognition using the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status.

This involved 17,458 study participants. It was determined that each additional daily serving of processed red meat was linked to:

•  An extra 1.61 years of cognitive ageing for global cognition –  overall cognitive function including language, executive function and processing
• An extra 1.69 years of cognitive ageing in verbal memory – the ability to recall and understand words and sentences.

According to a 2021 study, a single rasher of bacon a day was associated with a 44 per cent higher risk of dementia.

Any good news?

The new study found the risk for dementia dropped by 20 per cent for people who replaced that small daily serving of processed red meat with a daily serving of nuts and legumes.

What the researcher says

Yuhan Li, research assistant in the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is the lead author of the study.

In a statement from the Alzheimer’s Association, she said: “By studying people over a long period of time, we found that eating processed red meat could be a significant risk factor for dementia”.

She said processed red meat “has also been shown to raise the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes”.

It may affect the brain “because it has high levels of harmful substances such as nitrites (preservatives) and sodium”.

The reason why men get more bowel cancer?

Bowel cancer gets hold of more men than women. So why is that?

In Australia, the estimated number of colorectal cancer cases in 2020 is predicted to be 8300 males and 7413 females.

That roughly fits with Bowel Cancer Australia’s analysis that, on average, 54 per cent of cancer diagnoses are male, and 46 per cent are female.

The difference is partly explained by the fact that men smoke more cigarettes and drink more alcohol than women.

According to a 2022 study, a significant driver of this difference between men and women developing bowel cancer could be sausages and bacon.

The study looked at how ultra-processed foods – a known risk factor for colorectal cancer – are consumed differently by men and women.

Overall, they found that men who consumed high rates of ultra-processed foods were at a 29 per cent higher risk for developing colorectal cancer than men who consumed much smaller amounts.

Despite this clear link identified for men, particularly in cases of colorectal cancer in the distal colon, the study did not find an overall increased risk for women who consumed higher amounts of ultra-processed foods.

Why? Because men eat more bacon and sausage etc.

And the strongest association between colorectal cancer and ultra-processed foods among men came from processed meats.  

“These products include some processed meats like sausages, bacon, ham, and fish cakes. This is consistent with our hypothesis,” the researchers said.