The many LGBTQIA+ vegetarians and vegans found with some amusement that the right wing paper, the Daily Mail was making the same misleading mistakes about vegetarian diets that it does over trans people. The Bristol based charity Viva! explored further and found that the Mail had once again been telling porkie pies. Once again, a sensational headline has taken a nuanced scientific study and spun it into a misleading dietary directive. The Daily Mail's latest claim, suggesting meat eaters are more likely to become centenarians, collapses under scrutiny of the actual research it cites.

The study in question followed just over 5,000 Chinese adults, all aged 80 or older, beginning in 1998. Its findings were specific and conditional. It suggested that for this very elderly cohort—and particularly for those who were underweight—a diet inclusive of both plant and animal foods might be associated with increased odds of reaching 100. Crucially, this observed effect vanished entirely among participants with a normal, healthy body weight. For them, being vegetarian did not reduce their likelihood of becoming a centenarian.

Far from being a victory for meat, the study's most compelling finding was about plants. Daily vegetable consumption showed the strongest link to exceptional longevity. Those who ate vegetables every day were a striking 84 per cent more likely to live to 100 compared to those who did not. This points to a diet rich in plants, not animal products, as the more significant common factor among the long-lived.

It appears the newspaper has cherry-picked a narrow, conditional finding related to underweight octogenarians and presented it as a universal truth. A more accurate, if less provocative, headline would have celebrated the proven power of daily vegetables. The episode serves as a stark reminder to look beyond the headline and examine the substance—and the limitations—of the science being reported.