New Study: You’ll Live Longer Eating Fast Food than You Will Eating Meat and Fish

Ok for the record I don’t believe that. Yet that is one of the conclusions of a recent study into diets and aging.

Ever since Covid it seems like trust in the medical and scientific communities keeps declining. Sometimes these communities seem to be doing everything they can make that trust fall even faster.

The study in the well-respected journal Nature looked at about 105,000 people over 30 years to see who lived to over age 70 free of chronic diseases. Specifically they were interested in what people ate.

The first problem, in my humble, non-scientific opinion, is that it was an epidemiological study. That means they asked the participants what they ate with food questionnaires. There are a lot of issues with these types of studies such as participants not being able to accurately remember. Or maybe not being entirely truthful to hide poor eating habits.

The authors tried to correct for other lifestyle factors like amount of exercise, vitamins taken and socioeconomic status.

You can probably guess the results. Eat plants. Don’t eat meat.

Specifically they found these diets most effective for healthy aging:

1. Alternative Healthy Eating Index - a dietary ranking giving a higher score to people who ate more fruits and vegetables

2. The Reversed Empirical Dietary Index for Hyperinsulinemia - Higher intake of coffee, whole grains, and wine while limiting red meat, processed meat and sugary beverages

The least effective diet was the healthful plant-based diet index which interestingly was another form of plant-based diet. There were some other diets considered including the MIND diet and the Mediterranean DASH diet.

All of these diets are pretty much plant-based. The carnivore diet was nowhere in sight.

The study went on to rank foods by whether they are good or bad for healthy aging in 5 categories. There were a lot of foods they ranked.

Let me summarize the more outrageous claims with this abbreviated diagram of their full ranking. In case it’s not obvious:

dark green = good.

dark red = bad.

• They found processed seed oils very beneficial in all the categories regarding longevity

• Wine is also very beneficial

• Long-chain Omega 3 fatty acids are good for you, but fish has some problems. Even though fish are people’s main source of Omega-3.

• Fast and fried foods are positively associated with longevity. The authors explained this correlation with the idea that there are beneficial social aspects of going out to eat with others

• Soy is good for you

• Sweets and desserts are as good or better for you than fish, eggs, butter, poultry, salt and of course, red meat

• Liquor is better for you than red meat

These researchers are from Harvard and other ‘prestigious’ institutions. Either we’re living in Bizarro world or I have to stop believing the results I’m seeing every day in my assisted living residents.

Should I start ordering them fast food and alcohol instead?

What was most telling about this study was that only 9% (9,771) of the 105,000 people in the study made it to age 70 without any chronic disease. How sad is that?

There’s a problem with the food the world eats. But I don’t think it’s because they aren’t consuming enough seed oil. Maybe the problem stems from the experts we have doing studies.