Processed meats -- bacon, hot dogs or processed deli meats -- are linked to more than a 40 percent higher risk of heart disease, U.S. researchers found.
Lead author Renata Micha, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the researchers found no higher risk of heart disease or diabetes among people who ate unprocessed red meat -- beef, pork, or lamb.
Micha and colleagues Dariush Mozaffarian, assistant professor in the department of epidemiology and Sarah Wallace, a junior research fellow in the department of epidemiology, reviewed some 1,600 studies. Twenty studies involving more than 1.2 million people from 10 countries and four continents were found relevant for the review.
The review, published in the journal Circulation, found on average, a daily serving of processed meat -- about 1-2 slices of deli meats or one hot dog -- was linked to 42 percent higher risk of developing heart disease and a 19 percent higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
"Although cause-and-effect cannot be proven by these types of long-term observational studies, all of these studies adjusted for other risk factors, which may have been different between people who were eating more versus less meats," Mozaffarian said in a statement.