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

TL;DR

This study found that using lard for cooking is linked to better survival from cardiovascular disease compared to vegetable oils in older Chinese adults.

Contribution

The study provides new evidence on the differential survival outcomes associated with cooking oil types in older Chinese populations.

Findings

Cooking with lard was associated with higher cardiovascular disease-specific survival compared to vegetable oils.

No significant differences in overall survival or non-CVD-specific survival were found between lard and vegetable oils.

Multivariate models confirmed lard's significant association with longer CVD-specific survival.

Abstract

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 < 0.001); however, there were no significant differences in OS and non-CVD-specific survival between the two groups (log-rank p = 0.076 and 0.210, respectively). Furthermore, multivariate AFT models indicated cooking with lard was significantly associated with a longer CVD-specific survival compared to vegetable oils (time ratio [TR]=1.44, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.08–1.91), and was not associated with OS and non-CVD-specific survival, with adjusted TRs of 1.06 (95% CI: 0.95–1.18) for OS and 1.08 (95% CI: 0.93–1.26) for non-CVD-specific survival, respectively.

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

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