Near-daily meat tied to reaching 100 in underweight people over 80

A large Chinese study of people over 80 has linked eating meat almost every day to better odds of reaching 100, but only among people who were underweight. On October 29, 2026, the news outlet Streamline published a correction to its own report on the study, which is the reason for this article: the meat finding was not specific to women, as its earlier version had said, and the widely repeated “44% more likely” figure describes relative odds, not a person’s chance of living to 100¹.

The paper first appeared online in December 2025 and was printed in the February 2026 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition¹. It is an observational study, meaning researchers watched what happened rather than assigning diets, so it cannot show that meat causes longer life¹.

What changed today

Streamline’s earlier version said daily meat was tied to a 44% greater chance of reaching 100 among underweight women¹. The correction says the paper reports an odds ratio of 1.44 (a statistical comparison of the odds between two groups) for people who ate meat “almost every day” compared with those who ate it “rarely or never,” and that this applied to underweight participants of both sexes¹.

The confusion about women seems to come from a different part of the paper. When researchers compared vegetarians with people who ate everything, women who were vegetarian had lower odds of reaching 100 (odds ratio 0.71), while men showed no clear difference (1.06)¹. That analysis was about vegetarian versus mixed diets, not about how often people ate meat, and it does not show that the meat finding was specific to women¹.

What the study measured

The research team, led by Dr. Xiang Gao at Fudan University’s School of Public Health, used data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, a project running since 1998². Everyone was at least 80 when they joined. Their average age was 93.9, and 61.5% were women¹.

The design was a “nested case-control” study: from inside the larger survey, researchers compared 1,459 people who reached 100 with 3,744 who died before their 100th birthday¹. One Korean report gave the number who reached 100 as 1,495²; Streamline’s figure of 1,459 adds up with the 3,744 to the 5,203 total both outlets report¹². People were followed for a median of four years, and the outcome was simply whether they reached 100 by 2018, not how many healthy years they gained¹.

Meat eating was not measured in grams or servings. The survey only sorted people into three groups: “rarely or never,” “occasionally” and “almost every day”¹. The team also took into account factors such as body weight, smoking and physical activity².

The numbers, and what they mean

Among underweight participants, those who ate meat almost every day had 1.44 times the odds of reaching 100 compared with those who rarely or never did, after adjusting for other factors¹. The statistical range around that estimate ran from 1.08 to 1.92¹. For people at a body mass index (BMI, a weight-for-height measure) of 18.5 or more, the figure was 1.09, with a range of 0.82 to 1.46 that includes no difference at all¹.

On diet type, vegetarians overall had lower odds of reaching 100 than people who ate meat (odds ratio 0.81)¹. The Korean outlet KorMedi described this as a 19% lower probability, and reported a 29% lower figure for vegans². Streamline cautions that odds ratios are not absolute probabilities¹. Vegetarians who ate fish, or who ate eggs and dairy, could not be told apart statistically from meat eaters in the overall results¹.

Meat was not the strongest single food signal. KorMedi reported that the researchers found daily vegetable eating showed the greatest protective link of any single factor, with those eating vegetables daily having over 84% higher odds of reaching 100 than those who did not².

The researchers explained the meat finding in terms of nutrition needs, as translated by KorMedi:

“For super-elderly individuals, especially underweight seniors, the energy, protein, and micronutrient requirements are high, and a strict vegetarian diet may not provide sufficient nutrition.”

They added that excessively restricting meat could be harmful to survival in people over 80, given how common being underweight is at that age, and called for more research on diet guidance for the very old².

What it does not show

Because no one was assigned a diet, the study cannot establish cause and effect¹. Streamline lists several other limits¹:

• People reported how often they ate foods, and such reports can be inaccurate. Eating habits may also change over time.
• The survey did not record calorie intake, so the team used an estimate of energy use instead.
• Health conditions were self-reported, so some illnesses may have been missed.
• Appetite, illness, access to food and overall diet quality could shape both what very old people eat and how long they live.
• The results concern Chinese adults who had already reached 80, not younger people or populations with different diets and health systems.

The size of the difference between body-weight groups is also less clear than headlines suggested. Nutrition lecturer Chloe Casey of Bournemouth University, writing for The Conversation, said the lower odds among non-meat eaters were seen only in underweight participants³. Streamline notes that the statistical test for whether the BMI groups really differed (0.08 for vegetarian diet, 0.36 for meat frequency) did not establish a clear difference¹. The study also did not measure muscle strength, frailty or fractures¹.

How it fits the field

At first glance the result seems to clash with years of research tying vegetarian diets to lower risks of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and obesity³. Casey argued that most of that evidence comes from younger adults rather than frail older people⁴. With age, energy use drops, while muscle, bone and appetite often decline, raising the risk of malnutrition and frailty⁴.

In very old age, she wrote, the priority shifts toward keeping muscle, avoiding weight loss and making every mouthful count, so the findings may reflect the challenges of advanced age rather than a problem with plant-based diets themselves⁴. Being underweight in old age is already strongly linked to frailty and death, and the results fit the so-called “obesity paradox,” where slightly higher weight is often linked to better survival late in life³.

Existing guidance takes an individual approach. Streamline reports that the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism recommends routine screening for malnutrition in older adults and generally advises against unnecessary diet restrictions, while the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ 2025 position paper says well-planned vegetarian and vegan diets can be nutritionally adequate for adults¹. Neither says vegetarian diets suit everyone or that meat guarantees a longer life¹.

Who is behind it

The study comes from Xiang Gao’s team at Fudan University in Shanghai². None of the sources available to Biohack describe the study’s funding or any industry ties, so these could not be reported here. The outside commentary cited above comes from Casey’s piece, republished by Business Standard and Medbound Times from The Conversation³⁴.

What to watch next

The researchers said more work is needed to build diet guidance tailored to the physical condition of people over 80². Useful next steps would be studies that measure actual amounts of food and calories, track strength and frailty, and test whether the same pattern holds outside China. Until then, this result is a link seen in one group of very old people, not a measured effect of eating meat.