What You Eat May Determine How Long You Stay in Love: Meat Eaters Outlast Vegans in Relationships by 40%, Five-Year Study Finds

Hanker Dating’s analysis of 120,000+ member relationships reveals diet as the single strongest predictor of relationship longevity in its dataset

London — Hanker Dating, the elite invite-only matchmaking platform connecting successful men with ambitious women, today published findings from a five-year internal study of member relationship outcomes. The headline result: members who identified as meat eaters stayed in relationships significantly longer than those who identified as vegan or vegetarian — a difference of 40% at the median, and one that held up under rigorous demographic controls.

The Finding

Members who identified as meat eaters had a median return time to the platform of 26.3 months, compared to 18.7 months for vegan and vegetarian members — a gap of 7.6 months. At the upper end of the distribution, the difference widened further: the top quartile of meat eaters stayed off the platform for an average of 41 months, versus 28 months for the equivalent vegan and vegetarian cohort.

The finding was statistically significant at p < 0.001 and remained so after controlling for country, gender, age bracket, and income level. Robustness checks — including analyses that excluded short-term returns of under 90 days and members with only one recorded relationship cycle — produced consistent results. Of all the variables Hanker analyzed over the five-year study period, dietary preference produced the largest effect size.

“We were not looking for this,” said a spokesperson for Hanker Dating. “We were running a broad analysis of our member data and this signal stood out immediately. We checked it multiple ways. It kept showing up.”

Methodology

Hanker Dating’s study is based on a proprietary proxy metric: because over 80% of the platform’s members are repeat customers, the length of time a member takes to return to the platform following a match serves as an indicator of relationship duration and, by extension, relationship satisfaction. The company acknowledges this measure is imperfect and that the dataset reflects a self-selected, elite user base. The study has not been peer-reviewed.

“Our definition of ‘relationship happiness’ is not scientific,” the spokesperson noted. “But when a difference is this large, across this many data points, over this many years, we think it deserves to be published.”

Additional Findings

The diet study is one of four findings published by Hanker Dating in the same research release. The company also found that Android device users returned to the platform later than iOS users — an 18% gap significant at p < 0.01 — and that members who self-reported lower income levels tended to have longer relationship timelines than those at the higher end of the income scale, a 45% gap significant at p < 0.001. A parallel finding on education showed that members with lower educational qualifications also had longer median relationship durations than those with advanced degrees, again significant at p < 0.001.

Full Study

Read full study at https://hanker.dating/study.

About Hanker Dating

Hanker Dating is a private, invite-only matchmaking platform connecting established, successful men with ambitious, high-value women. With a curated and verified global member base spanning 500+ cities and over five years of relationship outcome data, Hanker offers a matchmaking experience built on discretion, quality, and results.

Learn more at hanker.dating

This study is based on internal platform analytics from 2021–2026. It has not been peer-reviewed and is not intended as scientific research. Correlation is not causation. All findings should be interpreted with appropriate caution.