A study published a few weeks ago concluded that consuming any part of animals in the diet was correlated to a longer lifespan. The researchers' data included around 90% of the global population, one of its greatest strengths and weaknesses. It is a strength because it included almost everyone on the planet, homogenizing the results; typically, small groups sizes in studies can skew results. For example, Seventh-day Adventists are typically included in vegetarian studies, but this small group does not smoke or drink alcohol which confounds the results. Loma Linda has a large population of Seventh-day Adventists and is touted as one of the “Blue Zones” of long-lived people. I will talk more about them later on. The weakness of the paper is that it is a population-wide study, so the researchers can't say that more meat is the cause of longer lives, only that it is correlated. However, they accounted for several variables known to influence lifespan and found a correlation. I will get into their findings later. First, some background.

Meat and Animal-based Foods as Villains

Meat has long been associated with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. However, most studies are demographic studies or use food recall questionnaires. Both have limitations compared to clinical trials, and so, are lacking. For this reason, most governmental dietary guidelines include meat as a nutritious part of healthy eating, even with its undeserved bad reputation. Conversely, authorities have prompted the spread of vegetarianism and veganism, based on the assumption that non-meat diets provide more health benefits than diets that include meat.

A Typical Meat Study

A 2003 study conducted by Singh et al. showed that vegetarians did not benefit from their meat-free diet. However, Singh et al. have proposed that low meat consumption increases life expectancy in humans. 1 The study has a few typical flaws:

1. They only used cohorts from industrialized countries with good medical systems.

2. They only measured three levels of meat consumption: none, very low, and low, limiting the results to a narrow range of meat consumption. There might have been a measurable difference if they included moderate and high meat consumption.

3. Relying on meat nutrient replacements and available food products, well-planned vegetarian diets, including vegan diets, are nutritionally adequate and are appropriate for various individuals during all stages of life. Still, their nutritional composition adequately imitates and replaces those from meat. 2

A Few More Problems With Previous Studies Supporting Veganism and Vegetarianism

1. Many vegetarians do not follow meat-free diets from birth. Thus, their dietary limitations missed the period of critical growth and development – childhood and early adolescence.

2. The majority of self-identified vegetarians may still eat meat occasionally.

3. Many vegetarians include dairy products in their diets that contain animal proteins and minerals in proportions similar to meat.

The Study

The researchers used data from 175 countries that included major potential confounding factors, such as total calories consumed, wealth measured by the gross domestic product, urbanization, obesity, and education levels. Because they used so many countries, they grouped them for comparison. They also included the life expectancy from birth and from five years of age. Their results indicate that countries with a greater meat intake have a greater life expectancy and lower childhood mortality. In addition, they found that the relationship is independent of the effects of caloric intake, socioeconomic status, obesity, urbanization, and education. You can see their results in the graph below.

The dotted line above represents increasing life expectancy from birth, the solid line represents increasing life expectancy from age five, and the dashed line represents decreasing mortality of children under five as meat consumption increases. As you can see, animal-based products in the under-five population is very strongly correlated with survival.

Click the article below for the full-text version

The findings are similar to the PURE study from 2018. Professor Salim Yusuf, the senior author, said: "Thinking on what constitutes a high-quality diet for a global population needs to be reconsidered. For example, our results show that dairy products and meat are beneficial for heart health and longevity. This differs from current dietary advice." 3 You can read the study here.

The Blue Zones Versus Hong Kong

Dan Buettner’s book “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest” identified five regions of the world with the largest percentage of individuals 100 years of age or older, collectively called the Blue Zones. The people of these regions engage in similar lifestyle habits, such as consuming a plant-heavy diet and prioritizing tight-knit social networks. These sharing features are referred to as the Power Nine. 4 Hong Kong, however, does not fit into Buettner’s framework. The residents are not particularly active, the city is very crowded, and there is a large disparity in healthcare access. Despite Buettner’s theory, the residents have the longest life expectancy in the world, along with the highest Animal-Based diet in the world. 5 The research paper I discussed today supports the link between their meat consumption and their long lives.

The Role of meat In Our Diet

Meat has advantages over food of plant origin in containing complete protein with all essential amino acids is rich in vitamins, in particular vitamin B12 and all essential minerals. As a result, it has a significant role in maintaining health, development, and proper growth and has played an important evolutionary role in ancestral hominins for approximately 2.6 million years. I have written about the carnivore diet before, a diet of only animal products. According to these recent worldwide findings, you need not go that far. But, more animal products in your diet could increase your lifespan.