If you didn't already know, eating too much red and processed meat is not great for your health.

Beef, lamb and pork were labelled carcinogenic - or having the potential to cause cancer if eaten in a processed form - by the World Health Organisation years ago.

To combat the health risks associated with red and processed meat, researchers in the UK and America have put forward a meat tax.

The tax, they claim, could prevent 220,000 deaths globally each year, and save over US$40 billion in healthcare costs.

What's a meat tax?

Taxing items that are bad for your health is not a new idea; the Australian Government already taxes cigarettes and alcohol, both of which are also carcinogenic.

In the study by the International Food Policy Research Institute in the US and the University of Oxford in the UK, researchers calculated the meat tax for around 150 countries.

Basically, researchers estimated how red and processed meat affect the risk of developing a chronic disease, then how much it costs to treat those diseases.

"We then calculated the health and economic burden associated with one additional portion of red and processed meat, and based on that, we estimated the health taxes per portion of red and processed meat that would account for those costs," Marco Springmann, a senior researcher for the study, wrote for The Conversation.

According to the Australian Dietary Guidelines, if you do eat red meat, you should only be eating 455 grams per week.

The latest statistics show we're exceeding that, eating an average of almost 560 grams per week.

The study suggests countries with high meat consumption would, obviously, be hit with a higher meat tax.

The tax on sausages in Germany and bacon in America would increase prices by 160 per cent, according to Marco.

"Whereas prices for processed meat in China would have to increase by 40 per cent, and those in Ethiopia by less than one per cent."

Why should I pay more for bacon though?

Taxing red meat doesn't mean you can't eat it, but consumers would have to pay more for it, to "contribute to paying for treating the chronic diseases that its consumption is assumed to cause".

The study estimates that in 2020, 2.4 million people will die from red and processed meat attributed deaths.

The healthcare costs for red meat-related illnesses will hit US$285 billion.

So part of the plan is for us to eat less red meat.

"If the health taxes were introduced, consumption of processed meat would decline by about two portions per week in high-income countries and by 16 per cent globally," Marco said.

The drop in meat consumption would in turn lead to a drop in global greenhouse gas emissions by over a hundred million tonnes.

And there'd be lower levels of obesity as people move towards "less harmful", healthier foods.

Governments would also make a lot of money from the taxes and would be able to cover 70 per cent the health costs associated with eating red meat; to fully cover the costs, the tax would have to increase to 200 per cent for processed meat in high-income countries.

"Our findings make it clear that the consumption of red and processed meat has a cost - not just to people's health and to the planet - but also to healthcare systems and the economy."