Swapping some red meat for fish or poultry

Cost: There’s no extra cost or time involved. You’re simply substituting one type of meat for another — no additional purchases needed. The real challenge is adjusting your taste preferences.
In plain terms: Eating two extra servings of processed or red meat each week raises the risk of death by roughly 3% compared to normal intake. Switching to the same amount of fish or poultry eliminates this increase. Within this section, this effect is relatively minor; it’s an easy swap worth making without much effort.
Benefit: This conclusion comes from pooling data across six U.S. studies involving nearly 30,000 participants. Consuming two extra servings of processed meat weekly raised mortality risk by about 3% (hazard ratio 1.03, 95% CI 1.02–1.05). The same increase applied to unprocessed red meat (1.03, 1.01–1.05). However, replacing those servings with poultry resulted in a ratio of 0.99 (0.97–1.02), and fish gave 0.99 (0.97–1.01); neither showed any statistically significant difference.
Evidence grade: A
Sources:Zhong VW, Van Horn L, Greenland P, et al. (2020). Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality. JAMA Internal Medicine, 180(4), 503-512. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.6969
Notes: The impact of swapping just two servings per week is quite small; don’t expect a major lifespan extension from this change. When spending money on meat, choosing fish or poultry is the wiser option.