HEALTH WATCH: High meat and cheese diet as bad as smoking – study

WASHINGTON a diet with lots of  Meat and cheese can be as harmful as smoking, but a moderate protein intake is healthy after 65 years.

That's the  conclusion of a study published Tuesday, March 4 in the journal Cell Metabolism.

The researchers followed the diet and health conditions of a large sample of adults for two decades, and found that the continued consumption of animal protein makes a person four times more likely to die of cancer than someone with a diet low in protein.

 This is a comparable risk of death from cancer by run by a smoker.
 Excessive protein intake appears not only linked to a substantial increase in cancer mortality but middle-aged people who eat lots of animal protein , including meat , milk and cheese , are more susceptible to early death in general, according to this research.
 An important aspect of the study is that the researchers found that proteins from plants, such as beans do not seem to have the same effects on mortality as animal proteins.
 The findings of this study support the recommendations of several health agencies under which healthy eating is about 0.8 grams of protein per kilo of body weight each day in middle age.
 The researchers describe as a high protein diet one in which at least 20 % of calories come from protein, including proteins of plant or animal origin.
 A moderate diet includes 10% to 19 % of calories from protein, and low diet is one that includes less than 10 % protein.