Processed and unprocessed red meat consumption and hypertension in women

Background: High processed red meat consumption is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The high sodium content of processed red meat could increase blood pressure and explain the association with cardiovascular disease. Objective: We evaluated the relation between the consumption of unprocessed and processed red meat and incident hypertension. Design: In a prospective cohort of 44,616 disease-free French women who responded to a validated dietary questionnaire, we observed 10,256 incident cases of hypertension between 1993 and 2008. Cases were identified through self-reports of diagnosed or treated hypertension. Multivariate Cox regression models were adjusted for age, education, smoking, physical activity, body mass index, menopause, menopausal hormone therapy, and alcohol, bread, coffee, and fruit and vegetable consumption. Results: Women who consumed >= 5 servings of processed red meat/wk (50 g = 1 serving) had a 17% higher rate of hypertension than that of women who consumed <1 serving/wk (HR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.09, 1.26; P-trend = 0.0002). No association was observed between unprocessed red meat consumption and hypertension. When women who consumed >= 5 servings of unprocessed red meat/wk (100 g = 1 serving) were compared with women who consumed <1 serving unprocessed red meat/wk, the multivariate HR was 0.99 (95% CI: 0.91, 1.08; P-trend = 0.63). Conclusions: In this large prospective cohort of French women, we observed an association between the consumption of processed red meat and hypertension. We observed no association for unprocessed red meat consumption and hypertension.