Longevity diets often focus on going plant-based, but a study in China has linked eating meat to a long lifespan, particularly among older people who are underweight
Longevity pioneers like Bryan Johnson are going to extreme lengths in the quest for immortality, but for those of us who hope to reach 100 with less commitment, dietary tweaks are typically the first port of call. Going plant-based is often recommended, but now a study in China has revealed that most centenarians there eat meat, which may be particularly helpful for those who are underweight.
Such issues could be especially problematic for older people, who tend to have weaker bones and recover poorly after surgery, says Kaiyue Wang at Fudan University in Shanghai. To better understand the link between diet and longevity, Wang and her colleagues gathered data from a centralised Chinese health database on people older than 65.
Pulling from the profiles, the researchers investigated the database’s 5203 participants, who were at least 80 years old in 1998 and were free of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. Of these, about 80 per cent said they were meat-eaters, while the others said they ate plant-based diets of mostly vegetables and grains, but also sometimes non-meat animal products.
The researchers observed that the meat eaters were more likely to reach 100 than their vegetarian, pescatarian and vegan counterparts. However, this was only statistically significant when they took body weight into account.
Of the vegetarians who had a body mass index below 18.5 (defined as being underweight) in 1998, 24 per cent reached 100, compared with nearly 30 per cent of the underweight meat eaters, with the odds seeming to rise further if they reported eating meat every day. The same trend wasn’t found for people of a heavier weight.
Does anyone honestly read this and believe that meat consumption will make them live from 80 to 100 years? It’s not that simple and you can break it into its constituent parts if we believe the relationship to be free from confounding.
Besides “helping people reach 100” is an incorrect title, it’s more like “from 65 or 80 years old”. Based on what was written in the article sounds like there might’ve been p-hacking as well. This has nothing to do with lifetime meat consumption, which the centenarians surely had lower than the fatty salty meat slop people are eating in the US.
To begin with, I’m sorry to be a grouch, but I’m very skeptical of centenarian data from most countries, unless there’s high data integrity confidence (like there is in Scandinavian countries). Whenever I see something about centenarians in China, I move on. I may be wrong in this case, or overly paranoid, but I’ve seen too many shenanigans when it comes to these kinds of studies. Pass. YMMV.
People have an idea of a result (claim it’s a hypothesis), then they create a study to find the result they want, and if it doesn’t work they adjust their method on the fly. Then they can publish and New Scientist can make an article and they receive attention.
It’s trivial to publish any result one wants with these types of studies. Any single parameter in the pipeline can be adjusted to this end.
What is it exactly about meat per se (and I am assuming they mean red meat, not chicken) that confers longer life? Is it simply that eating red meat supports muscle and bone? What “hacks” are there for attaining the benefits of meat for muscle and bone without actually eating meat? What about taking leucine?
This is of great interest to me as a low (18.6) BMI 76 year old female who doesn’t eat much meat, and doesn’t want to.
I find this very interesting and worth digging further into. It seems to imply that we may want to first starve lol (at least for some of us that are a bit in the chunky side), so we get very lean and then consume meat to live longer. Very interesting idea, one that shouldn’t be ignored IMO.
Good luck with that. We can fool ourselves/our brains but doubt we can fool our metabolic system. If you are in the camp that believes meat is good for you (I’m in that camp btw but in small quantities i.e. 6-8 OZ organic few times per week) then forget about hacking and jump right to the real deal/meat. no point in trying to reinvent the wheel when the one you already have is the best LOL. Taking leucine (as replacement for meat), I’d say is the worst thing you can do for longevity. So basically, you forgo about 100 known (and maybe some unknown) nutrients, minerals and micronutrients that meat has (and could be very beneficial for health and longevity) and replace it with one single nutrient that it is known (or at least believed) to negatively affect longevity. Not a good idea if you ask me.
I think they mean any animal flesh when they say meat. I often clarify this when discussing as many people equate meat with red meat but in science/medicine we would say red meat if we meant red meat. And, yes fish is meat.
We’d also usually spell it out for those that think pork is the other white meat. Now, I don’t think these oversimplified terms are helpful sometimes. Obviously Mcd’s burger is not venison. And all red meat US data is tainted by the way it is consumed - not unlike potatoes. Interestingly, I have seen more data on potatoes broken down by cooking method than beef separated by quality/method of prep. Probably because you can’t ever make beef favorable but you can make potatoes.
I ate commercial venison for the first time last week - it was 3% beef. Would be nice to know if this is a significant improvement over beef - it was ridiculously low in sat fat - 1g per serving. McD’s is 12g. 95% beef is 2.5g and that can be hard to find.
I think this study fits what a lot of us suspect. That meat is helpful for avoiding sarcopenia in the elderly - with resultant effects on longevity. It really maybe that meat is helpful in youth and elderly but harmful between 30-70. Unfortunately, meat consumption is a marker of so many other things including likely wealth in China. So maybe these meat eaters were just rich.
It is no wonder that advice is always about moderation because we just don’t know and may never know. Much easier to get medication data. A take home from this study that I bet we could get a majority to agree with is that underweight elderly could benefit from eating at least some meat. If someone doesn’t want to then maybe gain some weight? We know that being underweight is a negative predictor for mortality over 65 - which I think still holds when you remove “sick” people.
I tend to view studies from China with skepticism; however, I agree with this one. I have friends who are vegetarians, and they feel that they get all the nutrients they need from their diet. That may be true if they combine foods correctly, but I remain skeptical. For me, animal protein is included in my diet every day because it provides a guaranteed source of complete protein that the body can easily absorb. I also eat vegetables, but I don’t go to the trouble of carefully mixing and matching them to ensure adequate protein or other nutrients.
My friends may have concerns about the treatment of animals in the meat industry, or they may dislike the idea of consuming food from another living creature. I understand those viewpoints and have similar concerns, but I don’t let them stop me from eating meat to maintain good health.
Interesting responses. I’ve mostly gone off red meat primarily for idealogical reasons, though practically speaking I do recognize that the abstention of a single person isn’t going to move the needle. I just don’t want to consume it. Perhaps part of the aversion is attributable to my mother.
My mother could be the poster child for high meat consumption. She ate huge portions of very rare meat, mostly steak. She sometimes said she craved it. May well have been true as she was very petite and thin – still is, at 98, nearly 99, with a great appetite and no real physical ailments or pains. Who knows if the meat was a big contributor to her long survival.
But, she is in the final throes of Alzheimers. As a very anxious and depressed person, for years she consumed a great deal of elavil (amitriptilline), valium, librium, and who knows what else (or where she got it). She refused to stop though people tried to warn her. She always believed she knew best, no matter the topic. With respect to meat, and to her individual profile, she may have been right.
This prospective nested case-control study included 5203 participants aged 80+ y from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, a nationally representative cohort initiated in 1998. Participants were classified as omnivores and vegetarians, and further into vegetarian subgroups (pesco-vegetarians, ovo-lacto-vegetarians, and vegans) based on consumption of animal-derived foods. The primary outcome was living to 100 y old by the end of follow-up (2018). Multivariable unconditional logistic regression models were used to evaluate the association analysis.
Participants were 65-80+ in 1998. How many made it to 100+ in 2018?
Results
The study identified 1459 centenarians and matched them with 3744 noncentenarians (who had deceased before reaching 100 y). Relative to omnivores, vegetarians had a lower likelihood of becoming centenarians [odds ratio (OR): 0.81, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.69, 0.96], and similar patterns were observed for vegans (OR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.54, 0.98), but not for pesco-vegetarians (OR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.64, 1.09) and ovo-lacto-vegetarians (OR: 0.86, 95% CI: 0.67, 1.09). The significant association was seen in individuals with BMI <18.5 kg/m2 (OR: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.57, 0.91), but not for those with BMI ≥18.5 kg/m2 (OR: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.73, 1.17) (P-interaction = 0.08).
The pesco and ovo-lacto vegetarians seem to close the gap.
Of the vegetarians who had a body mass index below 18.5 (defined as being underweight) in 1998, 24 per cent reached 100, compared with nearly 30 per cent of the underweight meat eaters, with the odds seeming to rise further if they reported eating meat every day. The same trend wasn’t found for people of a heavier weight.
The article is behind the paywall. What do they mean by “meat eaters” ? What was the source of the meat - fish, birds or mammals ? How many grams of meat did they actually eat ? Why were they underweight ? Were they malnourished ? Did they have access to a wide palate of plant protein ?
Too many unknowns to draw a “we all should meat when we are very skinny in our old age” conclusion.
This study just reinforces my current omnivore but mainly pescatarian life style. It’s fine to eat some meat (high quality) but personally I will stick to fish, fermented dairy and eggs that will constitute about half of my daily protein intake and rest will come from plant sources.
Pretty sure it’s illegal to sell wild game in a store, so this would most likely be pasture raised and very likely from New Zealand. Good thing about it is that they are controlled for parasites. I’ve been looking for mineral blocks with ivermectin for our deer here. Once hunting seasons are over you can feed and I think it’s smart to control parasites.
Wild deer live on grass and leaves for their young lives, then fall comes and they have soybeans and corn to eat.
Like I posted on X, "As a researcher, I find it ironic that most Brazilian supercentenarians live in underserved rural or low-income areas with limited access to modern healthcare and medicine throughout their lives – it means they challenge diet wars and Blue Zone narratives(https://genomicpress.kglmeridian.com/view/journals/genpsych/2/1/article-p18.xml) (Ongoing study; de Castro et al. 2026)
If you know these areas, you know that people there simply eat what is available in their environments, with diets culturally rooted in a love of refined carbs, beans, cheap cereal oils, canned goods, sodas, refined juices, and cheap animal products (saturated fats). Very common method of cooking: as my father, who came from these areas, used to say, “Even chayote tastes great when fried.”
Im 78, can bike ride 20 miles and until recently started eating a little grass fed meat. Chicken and Bison and beef. Also take 20MG Compounded formula of Rapamycin plus 1000 MG of Metformin daily and finally Methylene Blue 5MG three times a week. Could it be going without red meat for a long time and only starting to eat a little could have helped me to stay healthy. Its like Rapamycin. Not recommended for younger folks, but once they are 60 or so, it benefits them. Also consider that younger meat eaters often don’t eat grass fed beef. Plus, many grill their beef which has been shown to have negative effects.