Revisiting the associations between cooking oils and survival among older people in China: A nationwide, community-based, prospective cohort study

by Kexin Wang, Chao Ban, Liming Zhao, Haiyan Ruan, Ziqiong Wang, Yi Zheng, Sen He

The study aimed to investigate the associations between cooking oils and survival outcomes in a nationwide, community-based, prospective cohort study of older adults in China.

A total of 5372 older participants (median age: 85.0, inter-quartile range [IQR] age: 77.0–93.0; male: 46.1%) from the 2014 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) in 2014 were included, with follow-up until 2018. The exposure was cooking oils, including vegetable oils and lard, and outcomes were overall survival (OS) and disease-specific survival (i.e., cardiovascular disease [CVD]-specific survival and non-CVD-specific survival). Accelerated failure time (AFT) models were used to analyze the associations between cooking oils and study outcomes.

During a median follow-up of 3.5 years (IQR: 2.4–4.2 years), 2064 (38.4%) deaths were recorded, including 433 CVD deaths, 1229 non-CVD deaths, and 402 deaths with unknown causes. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed cooking with lard was associated a higher CVD-specific survival probability than vegetable oils (93.9% vs. 88.2%, log-rank p  Conclusions

Cooking with lard was associated with significantly longer CVD- specific survival compared to vegetable oils among older adults in China.