A 2025 analysis published on NutritionFacts, built on pooled cohort data from studies including the EPIC and NIH-AARP diet cohorts, applies the "microlife" method (a metric developed by Cambridge statistician David Spiegelhalter) to estimate that a serving of processed red meat, the size in a typical fast-food burger patty, is associated with a loss of roughly 20 to 30 minutes of expected lifespan. The number is not measured in any single person. It is a population average derived from relative-risk figures for colorectal cancer and cardiovascular disease in large observational cohorts, spread across the average remaining life expectancy of the group studied.

The method matters as much as the number. A microlife estimate does not track your DNA or your arteries. It multiplies a study's hazard ratio (the increased relative risk of dying in a given period) by the average years of life left in the population sampled, then converts the result to minutes. That is why the same tool spits out a similar 20-to-30-minute estimate for a cigarette. Both figures describe averaged population risk, not a countdown clock inside your body. A single burger does not "cost" you thirty minutes the way a subway fare costs you money. It shifts your odds, in a data set of thousands, by an amount small enough that no individual will ever feel it directly, and large enough that repeated over a population of millions, it shows up as a measurable number of colorectal cancer and heart disease deaths.