When a dream team of longevity researchers, including Luigi Fontana and Valter Longo, followed a nationally representative sample of thousands of Americans over age fifty for an average of eighteen years, they found that those under sixty-five with high protein intakes had a 75 percent increase in overall mortality and a fourfold increase in the risk of dying from cancer. When the protein sources were split up into plant versus animal, however, the overall mortality risk was found to be limited to the consumption of animal protein.
