Who Ever Eats the Most Vegetables Dies Last
I believe that I am healthier today than I was last year, and even more so than when I was a meat-eater. My basis for stating this is personal experience as I can tell you that I am on fewer medications; have healthier test results in cholesterol, blood work, and blood pressure; weigh less; and feel better in general.
But that’s just me. There could have been other factors (I have removed alcohol from my diet in the past year), and certainly there are unhealthy veg*n diets just as there are healthy non-veg ones.
However, today I ran across a study that is seemingly the only one of its kind: the Adventist Health Study on the general health and mortality of vegetarians, as compared to omnivores, in the United States. Many members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church are vegetarian and thus results from this study were able to provide health information that is of interest to veg*ns.
From 1976 to 1988, data was collected from 34,192 participants who were all church members. Of these, 29 percent were vegetarian, and an additional 7-10 percent of the vegetarians were vegan.
Results detailed that vegetarians had lower body mass index (veggie participants averaged a healthy BMI, while non-veggie eaters ranked overweight) and lived longer on average. When compared to their non-vegetarian peers, the vegetarian percentage had half as much high blood pressure, diabetes, and colon cancer, and two-thirds the rheumatoid arthritis and prostate cancer.
Other than eating a vegetarian diet, the study suggested that life expectancy could be increased by eating nuts regularly, not smoking, maintaining a healthy body weight, staying physically active - probably not anything you haven’t heard before.
You can read more about this study, its results, and veg*n nutrition at Vegan Health.
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Awesome study!
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
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