Large vegan cohorts in China -- cohort studies
This is just a note that there have been some recent PubMed-indexed journal articles that reported adverse health effects - and in some cases beneficial ones - for large groups (thousands) of vegans in China.
In my opinion, these "vegans" were not actually vegans - or to put it another way "vegans by choice". And I doubt that any population groups (some individuals maybe yes) with severe financial restrictions would never eat any animal products at all - unless it is a situation of starvation.
These cohort studies did to intend to assess vegans or vegan status and did not assess dietary intake in detail (simplified explanation).
For many months, an article of ours has been (and still is) under peer review.
Since then at least two new papers have been published including these same cohort studies from China.
This one:
- Yaqi Li, Kaiyue Wang, Yuebin Lv, Guliyeerke Jigeer, Yilun Huang, Xiuhua Shen, Xiaoming Shi, Xiang Gao: Vegetarian diet and likelihood of becoming centenarians in Chinese adults aged 80 y or older: a nested case-control study. Am J Clin Nutr . 2026 Feb;123(2):101136. doi: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.101136. Epub 2025 Dec 12., https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41391640/
... and this one:
- Zhuo Song, Zijie He, Xuan Wang, Chaofang Lei, Mingli Ding, Zhijia Sun, Jigang Cao, Gang Ren, Yupeng Di: A gradient risk of cognitive impairment with vegetarian diets in older adults: highest for vegan and potential benefit for pescatarian. Food Res Int . 2026 Apr 1:229:118455, doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2026.118455. Epub 2026 Jan 23., https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41763779/
