The largest review of all evidence to date on whether curbing red and processed meat consumption equals better health and longer life last week turned the tables on recent dietary guidance.

Whether the findings were savoury or unpalatable depends on which side of the plant-based fence you sit, because as critics have pointed out, it’s more about interpretation than convincing new data.

Drawing on four separate meta-analyses covering more than six million participants and 100 studies, the authors from North America and two Cochrane centres declared they found scant evidence for a potential benefit to cancer, cardiometabolic or mortality outcomes if current Western red meat intake — three or four meals a week — was reduced.

They said the actual risk reductions in the observational studies were small and the quality of the evidence was poor. Even combining results of randomised control trials had little to no effect.