
A world without bacon egg and cheeses is a world we’re not interested in living in, but the next time you head to your local bodega in the morning you may want to think twice about ordering your baconeggncheesesaltpepperketchup. That’s because though we New Yorkers love and cherish this breakfast sandwich–it’s literally embedded in our DNA to do so–it doesn’t necessarily love and cherish us back…
A new study conducted by a team of researchers, most of whom are from the Harvard School of Public Health, has linked the BEC with a heightened risk of dementia–sadly, the sandwich could raise your dementia risk by 13%! Well, only part of the sandwich is the culprit, and carnivores certainly won’t be happy with the results.
The team looked at two long-running U.S. studies dating back to 1976 that involve roughly 170,000 nurses and other health professionals. Eating Well analyzed the study, which was broken down into four phases, each of which looked at how red meat (beef, pork, lamb, and hamburger) and processed red meat (bacon, hot dogs, sausages, salami, bologna, and other processed meat products) affects specific outcomes.

In the first phase, participants who averaged just 0.25 servings per day had a 13% higher risk of developing dementia. In the second phase, those who averaged just 0.25 servings of processed red meat per day had faster brain aging, reducing their overall cognitive abilities, referred to as global cognition. Specifically, for every serving of processed red meat people ate on average per day, their global cognition aged 1.61 years faster and verbal memory 1.69 years faster than those who abstained from eating the processed pig.
To clarify, the Alzheimer’s Association defines dementia as:
A general term for loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking abilities that are severe enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia.
Finally, in the third phase, researchers found that participants who ate an average of 0.25 servings or more of processed red meat per day had a 14% higher risk of subjective cognitive decline compared to those who ate fewer than 0.10 servings per day.
The American Psychological Association defines cognitive function as:
The performance of the mental processes of perception, learning, memory, understanding, awareness, reasoning, judgment, intuition, and language.

So, will we be leaving bacon egg and cheeses in the past? To that we say “fuhgeddaboudit!” Though we can mitigate our chances of developing dementia, BEC in hand and all–the study also found that replacing one serving per day of processed red meat can play out as follows:
Replacing with nuts and legumes:
- Lowers dementia risk by 19%
- Results in 1.37 fewer years of cognitive aging
- Results in a 21% lower risk of subjective cognitive decline
Replacing with a serving of fish:
- Lowers dementia risk by 28%
- Results in a 51% lower risk of subjective cognitive decline
Replacing with poultry (and other lean protein substitutions):
- Lowers dementia risk by 16%
- Results in 1.33 fewer years of cognitive aging
Eating Well notes that other health habits that can positively influence brain health include things like physical activity, getting enough quality sleep, staying hydrated, managing stress levels, learning new brain challenging skills, and spending time with loved ones. So if we eat a BEC and then go to the spa, they pretty much cancel each other out, right?!