Eating a Hot Dog Takes Away 36 Minutes of Healthy Life

Dr. Susan Levin on
Eating processed meat such as hot dogs can negatively impact your health.

Eating a hot dog takes away 36 minutes of healthy life, according to a new study that evaluated more than 5,800 foods and ranked them by their nutritional disease burden, as well as their impact on the environment.

Foods with positive scores add healthy minutes of life – an increase in good-quality and disease-free life expectancy – while those with negative scores are detrimental and take away minutes of healthy life.

To evaluate the environmental impact of foods, the researchers looked at factors such as production, processing and preparation. They found that beef has the largest carbon footprint across its entire life cycle.

The study found that substituting 10% of daily calories from beef and processed meat for foods including whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes could add 48 minutes of healthy life per day and reduce your carbon footprint by one-third.

The foods were also classified into three color zones: green, yellow and red. The green zone contains foods that are nutritionally beneficial and have low environmental impacts, predominantly fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts. The red zone includes foods that negatively impact health and the environment, including processed meat, beef, shrimp, pork and lamb.

Many other studies have shown the negative impacts that processed meats have on health. The World Health Organization has determined that processed meat is a major contributor to colorectal cancer, classifying it as “carcinogenic to humans.” Just one hot dog or a few strips of bacon consumed daily increases cancer risk by 18%. The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AIRC) have also found that “the evidence on processed meat and cancer is clear-cut.”

“Processed meat refers to meat that has been transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavor or improve preservation. Most processed meats contain pork or beef, but processed meats may also contain other red meats, poultry, offal, or meat by-products such as blood. Examples of processed meat include hot dogs (frankfurters), ham, sausages, corned beef, and biltong or beef jerky as well as canned meat and meat-based preparations and sauces.” – World Health Organization

Colorectal cancer isn’t the only cancer risk that comes from consuming processed meat. Eating 50 grams of processed meat daily also increases the risk of prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and overall cancer mortality. And a study of more than 200,000 women found that eating about 20 grams of processed meat each day – less than half the size of a regular hot dog – increased breast cancer risk by 21%.

Those who consume the most processed meat also have an increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, according to a National Institutes of Health study of more than half a million people. A study published in JAMA found that processed meat consumption was tied to 57,766 deaths from cardiometabolic diseases in 2012.

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