Official food advice says to eat less red meat and processed meats like bacon, but this advice mostly comes from studies that can't prove cause and effect and don't show how much risk there really is.

Experts gave different advice for fresh red meat versus processed meat because they might affect your health differently, and people have different preferences. They only looked at health, not the environment or animal treatment.

Eating processed meats like bacon or sausage is more likely to cause long-term health problems than eating plain red meats like steak, according to health studies.

Eating even small amounts of red and processed meats regularly might increase your chances of getting long-term illnesses like heart disease or cancer, according to big reviews of past studies.

Eating processed meats like bacon or sausages every day is linked to a higher chance of heart disease, but eating regular red meat like steak or burgers doesn’t seem to raise the risk—so it might be the processing, not the meat, that’s the problem.

A group of experts looked at the best research to give advice on how much red meat and processed meat people should eat, considering health effects like heart disease and cancer, and what matters to people.