Canada-Man
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People go vegetarian for lots of reasons, says the University of Alberta’s Timothy Caulfield: Animal welfare. Personal branding. The “health halo.”
It just won’t prolong their life, suggests a large new study.
Researchers who tracked nearly a quarter million adults aged 45 and older in New South Wales found no significant differences in all-cause mortality, meaning the likelihood of dying, of any death, between those who followed a complete, semi- (meat once a week or less) or pesco- (fish permitted) vegetarian diet, and regular meat eaters.
Caulfield, a Canada Research Chair in health law and policy and expert in celebrity health trends, said the study (in which he played no role) fits with an emerging body of evidence that vegetarian diets don’t reduce the risk of premature death.
Caulfield stressed he doesn’t mean that in any kind of pejorative sense. “We all do those things.” And he sympathizes with the animal and environmental justifications. However, “the key message here is that there is no magic to the diet,” which may explain why omnivores sometimes view vegetarians and vegans as a tad morally righteous.
A 2015 paper, titled “It ain’t easy eating greens,” Calgary University and Brock University researchers found meat eaters evaluated vegetarians and vegans (plant-based products only) “equivalently or more negatively than several common prejudice target groups,” and more negatively than several nutritional “outgroups” (gluten intolerants, for example). “Strikingly, only drug addicts were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians and vegans,” the authors note.
According to co-author Gordon Hodson, a professor in Brock’s department of psychology, their research not only shows prejudice against those who abstain from consuming animal flesh, “we show that vegetarians FEEL negative social pressure from meat eaters,” he said in an email. He also doesn’t believe vegetarianism is a cultural norm in the West. “The numbers are still small, and many restaurants do not cater at all to those wanting plant-based foods.”
The Australian study is based on data from the “45 and Up Study,” described as the largest study of healthy aging in the Southern Hemisphere. The analysis is based on 243,096 men and women (mean age 62). After an average of six years of follow-up, the researchers counted up the number of deaths.
Out of 16,836 deaths in total (6.9 per cent of total), there were 80 deaths in vegetarians (5.3 per cent) and 16,756 deaths (6.9 per cent) in others (which includes pesco-vegetarians and semi-vegetarians.)
After adjusting for other factors, such as age, smoking, alcohol consumption, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke the researchers found no evidence that any of the variations of vegetarian diets had a protective effect on early death.
For the study’s purposes, complete vegetarian was defined as people who never eat red meat, any meat, fish, poultry, seafood, pork or ham. Vegans were included as vegetarians; the researchers didn’t tease out vegans, or lacto-ovo vegetarians, separately. They also didn’t look at differences in the food content of the vegetarian diets, beyond the absence of meat, or how long people had been vegetarian.
It just won’t prolong their life, suggests a large new study.
Researchers who tracked nearly a quarter million adults aged 45 and older in New South Wales found no significant differences in all-cause mortality, meaning the likelihood of dying, of any death, between those who followed a complete, semi- (meat once a week or less) or pesco- (fish permitted) vegetarian diet, and regular meat eaters.
Caulfield, a Canada Research Chair in health law and policy and expert in celebrity health trends, said the study (in which he played no role) fits with an emerging body of evidence that vegetarian diets don’t reduce the risk of premature death.
Caulfield stressed he doesn’t mean that in any kind of pejorative sense. “We all do those things.” And he sympathizes with the animal and environmental justifications. However, “the key message here is that there is no magic to the diet,” which may explain why omnivores sometimes view vegetarians and vegans as a tad morally righteous.
A 2015 paper, titled “It ain’t easy eating greens,” Calgary University and Brock University researchers found meat eaters evaluated vegetarians and vegans (plant-based products only) “equivalently or more negatively than several common prejudice target groups,” and more negatively than several nutritional “outgroups” (gluten intolerants, for example). “Strikingly, only drug addicts were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians and vegans,” the authors note.
According to co-author Gordon Hodson, a professor in Brock’s department of psychology, their research not only shows prejudice against those who abstain from consuming animal flesh, “we show that vegetarians FEEL negative social pressure from meat eaters,” he said in an email. He also doesn’t believe vegetarianism is a cultural norm in the West. “The numbers are still small, and many restaurants do not cater at all to those wanting plant-based foods.”
The Australian study is based on data from the “45 and Up Study,” described as the largest study of healthy aging in the Southern Hemisphere. The analysis is based on 243,096 men and women (mean age 62). After an average of six years of follow-up, the researchers counted up the number of deaths.
Out of 16,836 deaths in total (6.9 per cent of total), there were 80 deaths in vegetarians (5.3 per cent) and 16,756 deaths (6.9 per cent) in others (which includes pesco-vegetarians and semi-vegetarians.)
After adjusting for other factors, such as age, smoking, alcohol consumption, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke the researchers found no evidence that any of the variations of vegetarian diets had a protective effect on early death.
For the study’s purposes, complete vegetarian was defined as people who never eat red meat, any meat, fish, poultry, seafood, pork or ham. Vegans were included as vegetarians; the researchers didn’t tease out vegans, or lacto-ovo vegetarians, separately. They also didn’t look at differences in the food content of the vegetarian diets, beyond the absence of meat, or how long people had been vegetarian.
