Behind the classic advertising jingle "Have you drunk yours today?" there may actually be a longevity code. A Japanese study found that drinking this amount per week significantly reduced the risk of death by 35%, with lifespan extended by an average of 9.8 months.
Food Safety Expert Cites Study: Drinking This Amount of Yakult Per Week Reduces Death Risk by 35%
Food safety expert Wei En recently posted on his Facebook page, citing a study published online on August 18, 2026, in The Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging. The Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology and a well-known beverage company studied 1,280 elderly people aged 65 and above in Nakanojo Town, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, including 519 men and 761 women, with an average age of 73.5. They tracked the correlation between their consumption of fermented dairy products containing the Shirota strain of lactic acid bacteria and lifespan.
Can Drinking Yakult Regularly Help You Live Longer?
The study began tracking in 2014 and continued until the end of 2025, with an average follow-up period of 9.3 years. The team investigated each participant's daily dietary habits and divided them into two groups based on the frequency of consuming fermented dairy products:
After data analysis, the study results found:
Among male participants, there were 118 people who drank 3 or more days per week. Compared with the control group of 401 people who drank less than 3 days per week, the death risk ratio of the frequent drinking group was only 0.648 (i.e., reduced by about 35%), and the average survival time was extended by about 9.8 months.
Among female participants, although the mortality rate was also lower in the high-intake group, it did not reach statistical significance. In other words, a clear longevity association has not yet been seen in elderly women.
Expert Breaks Down the Mechanism Behind Yakult's Potential Longevity Effect
Regarding the breakthrough results in elderly men, study leader Hiroshi Makino, Director of the research section, proposed an explanatory direction, suggesting that it may work through a synergistic effect of multiple health actions, such as immune regulation, infection defense, and improvement of the intestinal environment. However, Director Hiroshi Makino also specifically explained that this survey is an epidemiological study observing the association between daily intake habits and all-cause mortality, and does not directly prove that a necessary causal relationship exists between the two. This means that drinking this type of dairy product is not equivalent to being able to extend lifespan; it only shows that in this long-term tracked male group, those who drank it regularly did indeed have a significantly lower death risk, and the mechanistic explanation is still speculative at present.
Source: Food safety expert Wei En
