Meat-eating appears to extend human life expectancy worldwide.

A global, multidisciplinary team of researchers has published a study that finds eating meat offers important benefits for overall human health and life expectancy.

University of Adelaide researcher in biomedicine, Dr Wenpeng You, says humans have evolved and thrived over millions of years because of their significant consumption of meat.

“We wanted to look more closely at research that has thrown a negative spotlight on meat consumption in the human diet,” Dr You says.

“Looking only at correlations of meat consumption with people’s health or life expectancy within a particular group, and or, a particular region or country, can lead to complex and misleading conclusions.

“Our team broadly analysed the correlations between meat eating and life expectancy, and child mortality, at global and regional levels, minimising the study bias, and making our conclusion more representative of the general health effects of meat eating.”

The study examined the overall health effects of total meat consumption in over 170 countries around the world.

The researchers found that the consumption of energy from carbohydrate crops (grains and tubers) does not lead to greater life expectancy, and that total meat consumption correlates to greater life expectancy, independent of the competing effects of total calories intake, economic affluence, urban advantages, and obesity.

“While detrimental effects of meat consumption on human health have been found in some studies in the past, the methods and findings in these studies are controversial and circumstantial,” Dr You says.

University of Adelaide Emeritus Professor Maciej Henneberg says humans have evolved to eat meat. 

“Meat of small and large animals provided optimal nutrition to our ancestors who developed genetic, physiological, and morphological adaptations to eating meat products and we have inherited those adaptations,” Professor Henneberg says.

But with the strong development of nutrition science and economic affluence, studies in some populations in developed countries have associated meat-free (vegetarian and vegan) diets with improved health.

“I think we need to understand that this may not contradict the beneficial effect of meat consumption,” says nutritionist on the study, Yanfei Ge.

“Studies looking into the diets of wealthy, highly educated communities, are looking at people who have the purchasing power and the knowledge to select plant-based diets that access the full nutrients normally contained in meat. 

“Essentially, they have replaced meat with all the same nutrition meat provides.”

“Our take home message from the paper is that meat-eating is beneficial to human health provided that it is consumed in moderation and that the meat industry is conducted in an ethical way,” says anthropologist at the University of Adelaide, and biologist at the Polish Academy of Science, Dr Arthur Saniotis. 

The full study is accessible here.