13 September 2017Science, Seventh-day Adventist Studies, Wise Nutrition Coaching

Do vegetarians live longer?

On 2^nd February 2017, Melody Ding, a senior researcher from the University of Sydney published an article in The Conversation titled “Do vegetarians live longer? Probably, but not because they’re vegetarian”. Her preferences were revealed early in the article when she writes, “vegetarianism and its more austere cousin, veganism, are becoming increasingly popular”. ¹

A person calling a vegan diet austere does not know how to cook.

Ding also states that there are several studies relating to diet and longevity but the results are mixed. She quotes one study (Orlich, M. J. et al., 2013) that followed more than 95,000 men and women in the United States from 2002 to 2009, found vegetarians had a 12% lower risk of death from all causes than non-vegetarians. ²

The Orlich study used data from Adventist Health Studies. These studies classifies the diet into five categories.

Category	%	BMI
Vegan No red meat, fish, poultry, dairy, eggs	4.2	23.6
Lacto-ovo vegetarians Vegan with eggs and milk	31.6	25.7
Pesco-vegetarians Vegan with fish, milk and eggs	11.4	26.3
Semi-vegetarians Red meat, poultry less than once a week plus fish, milk, and eggs	6.1	27.3
Non-vegetarians Red meat, poultry more than once a week plus fish, milk, and eggs	46.8	28.8

However, Ding groups the vegan, lacto-ovo-vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians into one vegetarian group.

It is important to note that non-vegetarian Seventh-day Adventists are much healthier that the average American so Ding’s statement that “vegetarians had a 12% lower risk of death from all causes than non-vegetarians” needs to be interpreted as “vegan, lacto-ovo-vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians have a 12% lower risk of death from all causes than omnivore Seventh-day Adventists who are much healthier than the average American”.

It is being dishonest to state that, “Vegetarians had a 12% lower risk of death from all causes than non-vegetarian.” without giving a true indication of what the comparison group is.

The AHS-1 study showed that the average 30-year-old white vegan Californian Adventist male lives 9.5 years longer than the average 30-year-old white omnivore Californian Adventist male and with females living 6.1 years longer. ³

Note that Californians are much healthier than the average American, being in the top five states for longevity. Also Hispanics and Asians have a longer life expectancy than white Americans who have longer life expectancy than black or native Americans.

The paper that The Conversation article refers to is a 2015 paper from the University of Sydney that uses data from the 45 and Up study. The paper identifies several limitations of the study such as: ⁴

Self-reporting of the data
Sampling methodology
The six risk factors measured (poor diet, high alcohol intake, physical inactivity, prolonged sitting, long sleep duration, short sleep duration) were only given a positive or negative response. That is, the measured behaviour was risky or it was not.

Of far greater concern is the measurement of what constitutes a risky behaviour when it comes to diet. Given that 83% of the participants were considered to have a healthy dietary behaviour, it is difficult to understand why 37% of the participants were considered to be overweight and 20% obese.

Given that only less than 10% of middle-age women and approximately 5% of middle-age men are considered to be low risk for heart disease, it appears somewhat optimistic for the paper to conclude that 31.2% of the study participants have no risk factors—especially given (once again) that 57% of the participants were overweight or obese. ⁵

The Conversation article states,

In most previous studies, vegetarians did have lower risk of early death from all causes in unadjusted analysis. However, after controlling for other lifestyle factors, such as the ones listed above, the risk reduction often decreased significantly (or even completely vanished).

The lifestyle factors that were removed from the analysis included overweight & obesity and physical activity. These factors are not independent of diet. Seventh-day Adventists studies (and many others) have shown that the more vegetarian the diet, the lower the BMI and the more physical activity people (and rats) are inclined to undertake.

Vegan Seventh-day Adventists of California are the healthiest group of people on the planet, out-performing even the Japanese or the Okinawan people.

The conclusion of The Conversation article is:

Put more simply, when we crunched the data we found vegetarians did not have a lower risk of early death compared with their meat-eating counterparts.

This is reminiscent of Jacob Yerushalmy’s disagreement with researchers who claimed that women who smoked had lower birth-weight infants. He suggested that smoking was not the cause of the lower birth weight but a result of “mode of life” differences between the smoking population and non-smoking population. ⁶

Headlines such as “Do vegetarians live longer? Probably, but not because they’re vegetarian” make the news because people wish to have reasons to continue their current unhealthy dietary habits – not because they contribute to the health of our nation.

A 2007 study ⁷ shows the results of a vegan diet on a sedentary group of subjects that demonstrates the impact a vegan diet on blood pressure.

The athletes and the sedentary vegans were matched on their BMI.

Long-distance athletes who ran an average of 48 miles (77 km) per week for 21 years. The average blood pressure was 122/72. (BMI 21.1 ± 1.6 kg / (m • m))
Sedentary omnivores had an average blood pressure of 132/79 (BMI 26.5 ± 2.7 kg / (m • m))
Sedentary vegans averaged 104/62. (BMI 21.3 ± 3.1 kg / (m • m))

The slim athletes who run an average of nearly 2 marathons a week had a blood pressure a significant 17% higher than sedentary vegans.

The authors’ conclusions are:

Long-term consumption of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet or regular endurance exercise training is associated with low cardiometabolic risk. Moreover, our data suggest that specific components of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet provide additional beneficial effects on blood pressure.

Most people are aware that trans-fats are really bad for you and that trans-fats are found in margarine.

However, “trans-fatty acids are found in all animal fats, from meat to butter”.

According to the 1357 page Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids (Macronutrients) report produced by the National Academy of Sciences, ⁸

Trans fatty acids are not essential and provide no known benefit to human health. Therefore, no AI [Adequate Intake] or RDA [Recommended Dietary Allowance] is set. As with saturated fatty acids, there is a positive linear trend between trans fatty acid intake and LDL cholesterol concentration, and therefore increased risk of CHD [coronary heart disease]. A UL [Upper Limit] is not set for trans fatty acids because any incremental increase in trans fatty acid intake increases CHD risk.

According to Eric Rimm, the renowned Harvard nutritional epidemiologist and co-author of this report, ⁹

Having a little bit is probably OK. But avoiding it if at all possible is ideal.

[We] have decided not to set limits for trans-fats because it would be too hard for people to meet them.

If a limit for all trans-fats were to be set it should be zero. We can’t tell people to stop eating all meat and all dairy products. Well, we could tell people to become vegetarians. If we were truly basing this only on science, we would, but it is a bit extreme.

Do Vegetarians Live Longer
The French Paradox – The Myths

Last updated on Monday 18 November 2024 at 18:25 by administrators

Print PDF eBook

Footnotes

Ding, M. (2017) Do vegetarians life longer? The Conversation. [online]. Available from: http://theconversation.com/do-vegetarians-live-longer-probably-but-not-because-theyre-vegetarian-72191.
Orlich, M. J. et al. (2013) Vegetarian Dietary Patterns and Mortality in Adventist Health Study 2. JAMA Internal Medicine. 173 (13), 1230.
Fraser, G. E. & Shavlik, D. J. (2001) Ten Years of Life – Is It a Matter of Choice? Archives of Internal Medicine. 161 (13), 1645–1652.
Ding, M. et al. (2015) Traditional and Emerging Lifestyle Risk Behaviors and All-Cause Mortality in Middle Aged and Older Adults: Evidence from a Large Population-Based Australian Cohort. PLOS Medicine. 12 (12), 1–21.
Stamler, J. et al. (2005) ‘Current status: six established major risk factors—and low risk’, in M. Marmot & P. Elliot (eds.) Coronary Heart Disease Epidemiology: From aetiology to public health. Second Edition Oxford University Press. pp. 32–70.
Parascandola, M. (2014) Birthweight and mortality: Jacob Yerushalmy on self-selection and the pitfalls of causal inference. International Journal of Epidemiology. [Online] 43 (5), 1373–1377.
Fontana, L., Meyer, T. E., Klein, S., & Holloszy, J. O. (2007). Long-term low-calorie low-protein vegan diet and endurance exercise are associated with low cardiometabolic risk. Rejuvenation Research, 10(2).
National Academy of Sciences. (2005). Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids (Macronutrients) (p423 ).
Fox, M. (2002) Trans-fat increase cholesterol levels. Jawawa – Indonesian & Financial News. 17 July. [online]. Available from: http://jawawa.id/index.php/newsitem/trans-fat-increase-cholesterol-levels-1447893297 (Accessed 30 March 2017).

Tags: whole-food plant-based diet wise nutrition coaching

Do vegetarians live longer?

Related articles

Footnotes

administrators

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Featured Posts

Kidney Disease and Diet

PCSK9 Gene – Reduces Cholesterol and Heart Disease Mortality

Diet and Cancer – Frederick Hoffman