Consumo de Carne Associado a Maior Expectativa de Vida

Total Meat Intake is Associated with Life Expectancy: A Cross-Sectional Data Analysis of 175 Contemporary Populations

ife expectancy at birth is the measure synthetically describing mortality in a population. It is estimated that 20–30% of human life expectancy is determined by genetic factors, and 70–80% is determined by environmental factors. Life expectancy at 5 years of age is similarly influenced by genetic factors, while it excludes neonatal, infant and early childhood mortality that depends heavily on environmental factors, especially hygiene and infection controls. These percentages, however, have not received a general scientific consensus. What is clearer is the genetic/environmental interplay that informs human health. Nutrition offers the means to improve health and well-being and acts as a significant predictive factor of healthy aging, so it appears as one of the major determinants of life expectancy.

Extensive studies regarding the role of conventional meat containing diets and vegetarian diet (excluding meat) in increasing our life expectancy have been controversial and circumstantial. Since the early Paleolithic period, meat consumption (understood as intake of parts of any animal bodies) has constituted a proportion of the hominin diet. It has been argued that consumption of meat, as a high-quality component of the hominin diet, allowed increases in body and brain sizes while at the same time permitting reduction of the size of the gastrointestinal tract producing typically human increased brain weight/body weight ratios.