Study: Vegetarians Have Advantage in Longevity.

[Guest guest]

[i personally feel its very hard to get an accurate picture of how much longer

of a life Span one can attain from a vegetarian diet, do to the simple fact that

there are so many different types of vegetarian diets being practiced today.

Vegetarians can range from 100% raw food vegans, all the way to vegetarian fast

food junkies. My guess is you can get a lot more than 2 extra years of life, if

you follow a thoroughly researched type of vegetarian diet vs the study be

damned, approach. It is nice to see though that the larger studies done so far

on vegetarians, do show them living slightly longer than non-vegetarians, which

bodes well for the diet, of course. Not to mention, the planet in general, as

humans following a vegetarian diet do leave a much lighter footprint on the

environment. Rick.]

 

 

Longevity

 

Source > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism

 

A 1999 metastudy[65] compared six major studies from western countries. The

study found that the mortality ratio was the lowest in fish eaters (0.82)

followed by vegetarians (0.84) and occasional meat eaters (0.84) and which was

then followed by regular meat eaters (1.0) and vegan (1.0) [8]. In " Mortality in

British vegetarians " ,[66] it was concluded that " British vegetarians have low

mortality compared with the general population. Their death rates are similar to

those of comparable non-vegetarians, suggesting that much of this benefit may be

attributed to non-dietary lifestyle factors such as a low prevalence of smoking

and a generally high socio-economic status, or to aspects of the diet other than

the avoidance of meat and fish. "

 

Among these meta studies, the Adventist Health Study is an ongoing study of

life expectancy in Seventh-day Adventists following different behaviour

patterns. The researchers found that a combination of different lifestyle

choices could influence life expectancy by as much as 10 years. Among the

lifestyle choices investigated, a vegetarian diet was estimated to confer an

extra 1-1/2 to 2 years of life. The researchers concluded that " the life

expectancies of California Adventist men and women are higher than those of any

other well-described natural population " at 78.5 years for men and 82.3 years

for women. The life expectancy of California Adventists surviving to age 30 was

83.3 years for men and 85.7 years for women.[67]

 

However, this study of Adventist health study is again incorporated into meta

studies titled " Does low meat consumption increase life expectancy in humans? "

published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which again made the

similar conclusion that occasional/low meat eating and other life style choices

significantly increase the life expectancy.[68] The study also concluded that

" Some of the variation in the survival advantage in vegetarians may have been

due to marked differences between studies in adjustment for confounders, the

definition of vegetarian, measurement error, age distribution, the healthy

volunteer effect, and intake of specific plant foods by the vegetarians. " It

further states that " This raises the possibility that a low-meat, high

plant-food dietary pattern may be the true causal protective factor rather than

simply elimination of meat from the diet. " In a recent review of studies

relating low-meat diet patterns to all-cause mortality, Singh

noted that " 5 out of 5 studies indicated that adults who followed a low meat,

high plant-food diet pattern experienced significant or marginally significant

decreases in mortality risk relative to other patterns of intake. "

 

 

 

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