A recent study indicates that you do not have to cut red meat out of your diet completely in order to improve your heart health, however, if you eat red meat more than once a day, cutting back to one serving every other day can substantially reduce heart risks such as heart attacks and heart disease. 

Bernstein and his colleagues followed roughly 85,000 middle-aged women for an average of 26 years, during which time 2,210 of the women had heart attacks and 952 died from heart disease.  The women were all nurses, and were part of a long-running study on health behaviors that included lengthy diet questionnaires given every four years.  To zero in on the link between diet and heart health, the researchers took into account other health factors, such as body mass index, smoking, alcohol consumption, and exercise. Replacing red meat with healthier sources of protein will go a long way toward reducing heart risk, the researchers say.

For instance, they estimate that swapping one serving of red meat per day for one serving of beans will lower a woman’s long-term heart-disease risk by about one-third.  Replacing a daily serving of red meat with one of several other foods — including nuts (30 percent), fish (24 percent), chicken or other poultry (19 percent), and low-fat dairy (13 percent) — will also reduce heart-disease risk, the study found.

Though these are estimates, they represent the first time that researchers have been able to quantify the heart benefits of these food swaps.

The full article on CNN Health also indicates that some types of red meat are worse for your heart than others.  Women who eat one serving of bacon per day increase their risk of heart disease by 41 percent, 42 percent for one hamburger per day, and 35 percent for one hot dog per day, compared to only 8 percent when eating one serving of beef per day.

The study is not meant to indicate that red meat is always a bad thing, but consume in moderation in order to reduce your risk of heart disease.

What other ways do you try to live a healthier lifestyle?