The truth about red meat and dementia

The scientific community loves to villainize red meat.

Over the years, they’ve tied it to everything from heart disease to diabetes to cancer.

And most recently, headlines scream that eating red meat raises your dementia risk.

But as a strong advocate for red meat, I decided to dig a little deeper.

What’s really going on here?

Read between the lines

As with most headlines, this one was misleading.

You see, the new study, published in the journal Neurology, analyzed the relationship between PROCESSED red meat and cognitive decline or dementia.

In other words, it’s the processed meats I always warn you about—like bacon, hot dogs, and bologna—not grass-fed and -finished red meat.

Before diving into the details, consider this: Americans eat less red meat than ever before, yet dementia cases continue to rise.

Plus, when people ate more red meat, cattle weren’t pumped full of antibiotics, growth hormones, and grains.

So, perhaps it isn’t the red meat after all! Could it be the processing of these meats instead? After all, regularly consuming chemicals is never a good idea. (That’s just another strike against our tainted food supply.)

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s turn our attention to the new study…

Unprocessed foods remain superior for health

Researchers analyzed nearly 134,000 middle-aged participants. The researchers’ primary outcome was dementia—and they considered a typical serving of red meat to be approximately three ounces.

They found that subjects who consumed roughly two servings of processed red meat per week had a 13 percent higher dementia risk compared with those who ate three servings per month.

Swapping one daily serving of processed red meat per day for fish, nuts and legumes, or chicken lowered dementia risk by 28 percent, 19 percent, and 16 percent, respectively.

But wait, it gets better—and I quote:

“Red meat is high in saturated fat and has been shown in previous studies to increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which are both linked to reduced brain health,” as explained by study investigator Dong Wang, MD, ScD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Now they’re also blaming red meat for heart disease and diabetes—and using that as the link to dementia?!

Look, I have stood behind a whole foods diet, which includes unprocessed red meat, for over 30 years now. And do you know what happens?

This healthy eating pattern helps reverse, if not ward off, conditions like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and yes—dementia!

And get this… in this study, there was NO statistically significant link between unprocessed red meat and dementia.

I’ll put that another way: Grass-fed and -finished beef, like hamburger meat or steak, was NOT significantly associated with any measure of objective cognitive decline.

Not to mention, researchers are looking at the role of the gut microbiome to better understand these potential disease links. And that just adds fuel to my argument. Because unprocessed, whole foods will help nourish your gut—while processed junk will disrupt its delicate balance.

So, I rest my case. Don’t be fooled by the headlines. Unprocessed red meat can and should be part of your healthy, balanced diet.

P.S. To discover an all-natural protocol to protect and restore your memory and fight dementia, check out my Alzheimer’s Prevention and Treatment Plan. Click here now!

Source:

“Red Meat Consumption Increases Risk of Dementia and Cognitive Decline.” Mass General Brigham, 01/15/2025. (massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/newsroom/press-releases/red-meat-increases-risk-of-dementia)