Leeds, UK - A new study published by the University of Leeds and the Yale School of Public Health shows unsettling results for all the meat-lovers out there.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that consuming just 25 grams (0.8 ounces) of processed meats a day - around one strip of bacon - was associated with a 44% increased risk of dementia.

To draw this conclusion, the University of Leeds used data from the UK Biobank, which is a biomedical database containing detailed genetic and health information from nearly 500,000 people, aged 40 to 69.

The researchers monitored how frequently participants reported consuming processed and unprocessed meat, and then studied cases of dementia over an eight-year period.

"Worldwide, the prevalence of dementia is increasing, and diet as a modifiable factor could play a role," said Huifeng Zhang, a Ph.D. student at the University of Leeds, and lead researcher of the study.

"Our research adds to the growing body of evidence linking processed meat consumption to increased risk of a range of nontransmissible diseases," she adds.

In contrast, eating 1.7 ounces of unprocessed meat per day was linked to a 19% reduction in the risk of all-cause dementia and a 30% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

However, experts warn to take the study with a grain of salt.

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, explained the study's limitation for Science Media Center: "The researchers didn’t make people eat different amounts of processed meat – they simply recorded what they said they ate, followed them up for some time, recorded when any of them got a diagnosis of dementia, and looked whether the chance of getting a dementia diagnosis varied according to how much meat they said they ate."

He went on to say that "those who ate more processed meat were more likely (for instance) to be smokers, to be less educated, overweight, and to eat less fruit and vegetables. Those things have been identified as risk factors for dementia in previous research."