Eating red meat increases your risk of death from nine diseases, according to a new study.

Researchers tracked the diet and health of more than 536,000 people, ages 50-71, for an average of 16 years, The New York Times reported.

Compared with the one-fifth who ate the least red meat, the one-fifth who ate the most were 26 percent more likely to die from cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, infections, Alzheimer's disease, kidney disease and liver disease.

People who ate the most white meat were 25 percent less likely to die from various causes than those who ate the least white meat, according to the study in the journal BMJ.

"This is an observational study and we can't determine whether red meat is responsible for these associations. But we have a 16-year follow-up, and we had the numbers to look at different causes, and we can see that it's happening" said lead author Arash Etemadi, an epidemiologist at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, The Times reported.