Bad news for steak lovers.

The latest findings from two very large, well-known prospective cohort studies show that increasing your intake of red meat, even if it’s only by half a serving a day, significantly increases your risk of death.

And the increased mortality risk is independent of how much red meat you were eating to start with, what other lifestyle factors you make at the same time you increase your red meat intake or whether the meat is processed or unprocessed, although the association was stronger for processed meat, according to the research recently published in The BMJ.