There was a March 23rd article on the Reuters news wire. It was written by Maggie Fox, Reuter's Health and Science Editor.

The basic premise of the article is, to quote the second paragraph:

The National Cancer Institute study is one of the largest to look at the highly controversial and emotive issue of whether eating meat is indeed bad for health.

Given what we hear in the media, and some of the trends in our culture, this seems like a reasonable line of inquiry.

Their conclusion, contained in the first paragraph, is rather startling:

People who eat the most red meat and the most processed meat have the highest overall risk of death from all causes, including heart disease and cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

That's a pretty amazing conclusion. As a confirmed carnivore, I'm kind of scared.

The risk from heart disease, cancer, stroke, I can understand. It's the phrase "all causes" that caught my eye.

I want to know what methods this study used to ascertain that the eating of red meat, and other processed meat could lead to higher death risk from, among others, the following causes:

• traffic accidents
• shark attack
• snake bite
• lightning strikes
• road-side IED's
• natural disasters
• home invasion
• drive-by shootings
• the worst paper cuts of all time
  

...

You get the idea.

They did say ALL.