{"id":281848,"date":"2016-10-03T13:16:27","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T17:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=281848"},"modified":"2020-11-01T13:20:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T18:20:43","slug":"do-vegetarians-live-longer-dont-count-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/do-vegetarians-live-longer-dont-count-on-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Do vegetarians live longer? Don\u2019t count on it!"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
Yes! Okinawa has one of the highest percentages of centenarians in the world and they eat a lot of pork!<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

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Comedian Myq Kaplan thinks his vegan diet will help him live long and well. \u00a0Although very little science supports that thought, Kaplan\u00a0has\u00a0identified a valid reason why it might just work. As he quipped on\u00a0Conan, \u201cI read a statistic that says vegetarians live an average of seven years longer. \u00a0Vegans up to 15 years longer because we are not invited anywhere fun or dangerous. We sit at home alone crying and drinking, being careful not to cry into the drink because tears are the product of animal suffering.<\/p>\n

Few vegans have Kaplan\u2019s naughty sense of humor, but many declare they\u2019ll live seven, nine or even fifteen more years and share tales of spry centenarians thriving on plant-based diet \u00a0In reality, the Hunza and Vilcabambans consume some meat and raw dairy, and the Okinawans eat far more pork than soy. What\u2019s more, there\u2019s no anthropological evidence of healthy, happy fruitarians sunning in gardens of eden prior to the hunter gatherer eras. \u00a0 Indeed, leading anthropologists present convincing evidence that meat helped us evolve from big bellied, tiny-brained primates to big-brained humans able to leave all-day \u201cgrazing\u201d behind and spend the time developing civilization.\u00a0 In other words, eating animal products made us human.<\/p>\n

The latest study to debunk the vegan longevity myth comes out of Graz, Austria. Using data from the Austrian Health Interview Series, researchers from the Institute for Social Medicine and Epidemiology compared omnivores with vegans, ovo-lacto vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians (near vegetarians who consumed some fish, eggs and\/or milk) of similar sex, age and socio-economic status. \u00a0They found the vegetarians suffered from more chronic conditions including allergies, asthma, anxiety, depression, diabetes, migraines, osteoporosis, heart disease and cancer. \u00a0 They had more doctors visits, a higher need for health care, dimmer assessments of their own health, and poorer social relationships.\u00a0 \u00a0 While the researchers did not report they were home crying because they \u201cweren\u2019t invited anywhere fun or dangerous,\u201d they found vegetarian drinking was less likely to involve alcohol.<\/p>\n

The Austrian Health Interview Survey was carried out over the course of a year from March 2006 to February 2007 and involved face-to-face interviews with 15,474 individuals aged 15 years and older. \u00a0Just 2.2% percent of the interviewees fell into the \u201cvegetarian\u201d category, which was broken down into vegans (0.2%), ovo-lacto vegetarians (0.8%) and semi vegetarians who ate fish and\/or eggs and milk (1.2%). \u00a0The breakdown among the meat eaters was: \u00a048.5 percent on a \u201cnormal\u201d mixed diet; 23.6% eating moderate amounts of meat with plenty of fruit and veggies (in what many analysts have described as a \u201cMediterranean Diet\u201d); and \u00a025.7 percent called \u201cbig meat eaters\u201d or carnivores.<\/p>\n

Because the vegan, vegetarian and semi vegetarian diet groups included a total of only 343 people, the researchers chose to analyze them as one \u201cvegetarian\u201d group. \u00a0For study purposes, each of the vegetarians was matched with a meat eater of similar age, sex and social background. The results came out in February, and given that most people believe vegetarians are healthier than the rest of us, the unexpected news made headlines.<\/p>\n

As a long-time skeptic of vegetarian health promises, I admit I\u2019m glad to finally be seeing a few headlines warning about the dangers of such diets. \u00a0But it\u2019s nonetheless important to point out the obvious limitations to this study. \u00a0 Some basic questions we need to ask are:<\/p>\n

Did the diet cause or contribute to the health problems or did the health problems lead the subjects to adopt vegetarian diets? \u00a0Probably both, with health problems leading people to become \u201chealth conscious\u201d and adopt vegan or vegetarian diets in the belief that they are healthier. \u00a0Such diets can result in improvements, especially among people who have moved away from omnivorous diets based on processed, packaged and fast foods, but over time the deficiencies of vegan and\/or vegetarian diets\u00a0 add up.<\/p>\n

Were people with a history of stress and mental health issues more likely to adopt vegetarian diets or did the vegetarian diets contribute to their stress? \u00a0Once again it goes both ways, with especially strong links between veganism, anorexia and other eating disorders.<\/p>\n

Were \u00a0the extra doctor visits the result of chronic conditions that preceded the diet? Or did the special diets contribute to or even cause those conditions? \u00a0 Again, not either\/or but both.<\/p>\n

What were the people actually eating? \u00a0Real food, whole food, organic? \u00a0Processed, packaged and fast foods? \u00a0 \u00a0There are junk food versions of both omnivorous and vegetarian diets after all. \u00a0And given that the survey was \u201cself reported,\u201d how truthfully did people respond?<\/p>\n

How relevant are the results of \u00a0a dietary study conducted in Austria to people in the U.S. and other countries? \u00a0 Having traveled extensively in Austria \u2014 including time in Graz as well as the usual Vienna and Salzburg\u2014\u00a0 I can report that the standard food choices there are significantly healthier than in the USA. \u00a0But that\u2019s purely my subjective, anecdotal opinion!<\/p>\n

THE TAKEAWAY?<\/p>\n

As epidemiologist and lead researcher Nathalie Burkert readily conceded, we cannot conclude cause and effect from this study and more studies are urgently needed. \u00a0More interestingly, the University of Graz press release states, \u201cIt\u2019s more about an ideological message that suggests false promises.\u201d \u00a0Or as I would say far more bluntly to my vegetarian friends, \u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t be so certain your plant-based diet is going to work for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/drkaayladaniel.com\/do-vegetarians-live-longer-dont-count-on-it\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: Yes! Okinawa has one of the highest percentages of centenarians in the world and they eat a lot of pork!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":281850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}