There comes a time when advice on what to eat clashes to the point where confusion turns to fatigue. What foods are good for you and which increase the risk of disease? What diets actually work or – increasingly, it seems – what’s the next well-established nostrum about diet and nutrition about to be turned on its head?

Such appears to be the case with meat. We have been repeatedly told, even convinced, that we should eat less red meat or cured foods such as bacon because of concerns that these foods are linked to heart disease and cancer. Yet now even this is in question, after one of the largest evaluations ever of past scientific studies found that the link between eating pork and beef and cancer and heart disease is much less significant than previously thought. So here we go again – and the headlines, of course, crowed that steak is back on the menu.

I doubt those involved in the analysis wanted such an outcome, and government health organisations have not changed their advice since this academic paper appeared. But for meat eaters and farmers the news was received as a “gain”, a few inches of territory reclaimed. It ought to be a slap in the eye for those who have tried to push the “meat kills” message, but that is unlikely.