Health

Veggies help you reach old age, meat might help you reach OLD age

A 20-year Chinese study flips a common longevity assumption on its head.

For years, the longevity script has been simple. Eat your vegetables, skip the meat, live longer. And for most of life, that advice holds up beautifully. But what if the rules quietly change once you hit your 80s?

In this story by Erik Barnes, researchers followed the diets of more than 5,200 Chinese adults, all of them already in their 80s when the study began. When the dust settled, something unexpected showed up among the people who made it to 100. More of them ate meat.

This is not an anti-vegetable rant. (If my son is reading this, yes you have to eat your veggies!) Plant-based diets are still linked to lower risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and more. The surprise comes late in life, when appetite shrinks, muscle fades, and getting enough protein and nutrients becomes a real challenge.

The takeaway is not “ditch the tofu.” It’s that getting old and getting OLD may require different strategies. Which means that once you hit 80, as the orc famously said, meat might be back on the menu!

Friday’s Results

Getting really into a hobby can do wonders for your mental health (if not your wallet).

What relationship do hobbies have with GOOD readers? Well over half of you have a beloved pastime that you wish you had more time for. Same, fam. Same!

• Who has time for hobbies? (11.6%)

• I have one I love and wish I did it more. (56.5%)

• Mine is a second, expensive job. I’m obsessed. (20.3%)

• I collect hobbies. New one every week. (11.6%)

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Culture

Marriage experts agree on one thing. It’s not passion, romance, or sex.

Behold the obvious marriage advice that somehow never makes it into love songs or wedding vows.

If you’re really going to live to 100 (thanks to that late-life meat diet!), there’s one small logistical issue worth addressing. You’re going to spend a lot of time with the same person.

Which makes it strange that so much marriage advice still centers on passion, chemistry, and keeping the spark alive, instead of the far more basic question. Do you actually like this person?

In this story by Elyssa Goodman, Harvard professor Arthur Brooks says the real goal of marriage is not passion. It’s friendship. Not a hot take so much as a quietly radical one, considering how rarely liking your partner shows up in movies, songs, or wedding toasts.

Relationship researcher John Gottman and couples married for decades back it up with the least sexy but most durable advice imaginable. Marry someone you enjoy. Someone you respect. Someone you still want to sit next to when life has calmed and you’re sharing a meaty meal in your late 90s.

Culture

America’s happiness just tanked, and a therapist says these 10 everyday habits might be why

A viral mental health creator shares the small changes that actually help restore happiness.

America is feeling worse than it has in years. If happiness was an Olympic sport, we’d be nowhere near the podium, having just fallen to 24th place in the World Happiness Report, its lowest ranking in over a decade. Naturally, everyone is asking what’s actually making us so miserable.

In this story by Mark Wales, a licensed therapist named Jeffrey Meltzer argues the problem might not be some massive existential failure. It might be your morning routine. And your phone. And the news. And the way you keep saying yes when your soul is screaming no.

Meltzer has gone viral for naming 10 everyday habits that quietly sabotage mental health, from waking up and immediately scrolling, to staying indoors all day, to ignoring your feelings and hoping they disappear on their own.

What makes this hit is how small the fixes are. Five minutes outside. Waiting 30 minutes before opening an app. Budgeting joy instead of impulse buying it. It’s not about becoming a new person. It’s about interrupting the autopilot that’s dragging us down.

It was February 9, 1964. George Harrison was sick. The other boys were nervous. CBS Studio 50 had just 728 seats, but ticket requests poured in at nearly 70 to 1. More than 49,000 people asked to be there and were turned away.

At 8:12 PM, the Beatles walked onstage on The Ed Sullivan Show and were beamed into living rooms across the country.

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” was already No. 1, but familiarity stopped there. Of the four, only George Harrison had ever been to the United States, during a quiet September 1963 visit to see his sister in Benton, Illinois. For the Beatles, America was an idea more than a place. For Americans, the Beatles were the same. Voices on the radio, faces in grainy photos, haircuts that felt vaguely foreign. Everything about them existed at a remove, as legend, as rumor. Then suddenly, they were meeting each other all at once.

It’s hard to convey how singular that moment was. There were only a few channels, no second screens, no clips to catch later. Roughly 73 million people tuned in at the same time, watching the same thing, reacting together. Imagine a breakout European TikTok star debuting during the Super Bowl halftime show and instantly becoming unavoidable, only without the internet to diffuse the shock. Within days, their first album hit the top of the charts. Within weeks, American culture had shifted on its axis. The rest is musical history. Did fans like the performance? Yeah Yeah Yeah.

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