patterns of red and processed meat consumption and risk for cardiometabolic and cancer outcomes a systematic review and metaanalysis of cohort studies this article has been corrected the original version pdf is appended to this article as a supplementbackground studying dietary patterns may provide insights into the potential effects of red and processed meat on health outcomespurpose to evaluate the effect of dietary patterns including different amounts of red or processed meat on allcause mortality cardiometabolic outcomes and cancer incidence and mortalitydata sources systematic search of medline embase the cochrane central register of controlled trials cinahl web of science and proquest dissertations theses global from inception to april 2019 with no restrictions on year or languagestudy selection teams of 2 reviewers independently screened search results and included prospective cohort studies with 1000 or more participants that reported on the association between dietary patterns and health outcomesdata extraction two reviewers independently extracted data assessed risk of bias and evaluated the certainty of evidence using grade grading of recommendations assessment development and evaluation criteriadata synthesis eligible studies that followed patients for 2 to 34 years revealed low to verylowcertainty evidence that dietary patterns lower in red and processed meat intake result in very small or possibly small decreases in allcause mortality cancer mortality and incidence cardiovascular mortality nonfatal coronary heart disease fatal and nonfatal myocardial infarction and type 2 diabetes for allcause cancer and cardiovascular mortality and incidence of some types of cancer the total sample included more than 400 000 patients for other outcomes total samples included 4000 to more than 300 000 patientslimitation observational studies are prone to residual confounding and these studies provide low or verylowcertainty evidence according to the grade criteriaconclusion low or verylowcertainty evidence suggests that dietary patterns with less red and processed meat intake may result in very small reductions in adverse cardiometabolic and cancer outcomesprimary funding source none prospero crd42017074074