Cut your heart risk by 32%

[Gob]

Ditching meat and fish in favour of a vegetarian diet can have a dramatic effect on the health of your heart, research suggests.

A study of 44,500 people in England and Scotland showed vegetarians were 32% less likely to die or need hospital treatment as a result of heart disease.

Differences in cholesterol levels, blood pressure and body weight are thought to be behind the health boost.

Heart disease is a major blight in Western countries. It kills 94,000 people in the UK each year - more than any other disease, and 2.6 million people live with the condition.

The heart's own blood supply becomes blocked up by fatty deposits in the arteries that nourish the heart muscle. It can cause angina or even lead to a heart attack if the blood vessels become completely blocked.

Scientists at the University of Oxford analysed data from 15,100 vegetarians and 29,400 people who ate meat and fish.

Over the course of 11 years, 169 people in the study died from heart disease and 1,066 needed hospital treatment - and they were more likely to have been meat and fish eaters than vegetarians.

Dr Francesca Crowe said: "The main message is that diet is an important determinant of heart health, I'm not advocating that everyone eats a vegetarian diet.

"The diets are quite different. Vegetarians probably have a lower intake of saturated fat so it makes senses there is a lower risk of heart disease."

The results showed the vegetarians had lower blood pressure, lower levels of "bad" cholesterol and were more likely to have a healthy weight.

Tracy Parker, from the British Heart Foundation, said: "This research reminds us that we should try to eat a balanced and varied diet - whether this includes meat or not.

"But remember, choosing the veggie option on the menu is not a shortcut to a healthy heart. After all, there are still plenty of foods suitable for vegetarians that are high in saturated fat and salt.

"If you're thinking of switching to a vegetarian diet, make sure you plan your meals carefully so that you replace any lost vitamins and minerals, such as iron, that you would normally get from meat."

[Andrew D]

Did they do a study on the heart-health of vegetarians who are addicted to cheese?

[Gob]

I'm a one man study in that!!

Haven't had cheese for three weeks now

[dales]

At least you're not balled up anymore.

[Guinevere]

I'm a one man study in that!!

Haven't had cheese for three weeks now

Life without cheese???

[Gob]

Tell me about it, living hell....

[Joe Guy]

Tillimook me about it. It must be difficult.

Going without cheese would make me feel bleu.

Praise cheeses!!

[oldr_n_wsr]

I'm a one man study in that!!

Haven't had cheese for three weeks now

NO meat, no cheese. Cardboard it is.

[dgs49]

Unless they controlled for other lifestyle factors, the results are meaningless. Correlation does not equal causation.

While have not seen any studies on this specific subject, I believe there is sufficient observational evidence to conclude that it is necessary to have animal protein (not soy or beans) during the major growth years in order to achieve the optimal adult height and weight.

There are several ethnic groups in the U.S. whose average height has increased dramatically in the first generation after coming to this country, and the only difference is a change from a low-protein diet (rice, pasta, vegetables, with minimal meat and fish) to one that is much more packed with animal protein.

Raising a kid as a vegan is tantamount to child abuse.

[TPFKA@W]

I know a few Hindus all of whom are veggitarians and who have never had meat and they tell me they still manage to have sky high numbers for bad cholesterol amongst them and theirs. There is more to it than meat.

[TPFKA@W]

Raising a kid as a vegan is tantamount to child abuse.

I feel the same about raising kids Catholic.

[Lord Jim]

Well, I guess we can all be grateful that our ancestors weren't veg-heads (or we'd still be living in trees):

Fragments of a 1.5-million-year-old skull from a child recently found in Tanzania suggest early hominids weren't just occasional carnivores but regular meat eaters, researchers say.

The finding helps build the case that meat-eating helped the human lineage evolve large brains, scientists added.

"I know this will sound awful to vegetarians, but meat made us human," said researcher Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, an archaeologist at Complutense University in Madrid.

Past research suggested prehuman hominids such as australopithecines may have eaten some meat. However, it is the regular consumption of meat that often is thought to have triggered major changes in the human lineage, the genus Homo, with this high-energy food supporting large human brains.

Given its importance to human evolution, scientists want to learn when eating flesh became a regular activity. Stone tools dating back about 2.6 million years to Gona in Ethiopia are often considered the earliest signs of the human lineage butchering meat, and contentious evidence suggests butchery may have existed at least 3.4 million years ago. "Despite this ample evidence, some archaeologists still argue that meat was eaten sporadically and played a minor role in the diet of those hominins," Domínguez-Rodrigo said. (Hominins include humans and their relatives after they split from the chimpanzee lineage.)

Now shards of a child's skull found in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania suggest the infant suffered from a form of malnutrition seen in meat-poor diets. This hints that meat-eating was normally a regular part of the human diet at the time. [10 Things That Make Humans Special]

The skull fragment is thought to belong to a child somewhat younger than 2. It remains unclear what hominin it belonged to — likely candidates include extinct human species such as Homo habilis or Homo erectus, or perhaps the "Nutcracker Man" Paranthropus boisei.

The kind of bone lesions the researchers saw in this fossil are known as porotic hyperostosis, which typically results from a lack of vitamins B9 and B12 in the diet. This kind of nutritional deficiency is most common at weaning, when children switch to solid foods. The researchers suggested this particular infant died because of lack of meat, which is rich in B-vitamins. Alternatively, if the child still depended on the mother for milk, it may have been the mother who lacked meat.

These findings suggest that "human brain development could not have existed without a diet based on regular consumption of meat," Domínguez-Rodrigo said. "Regular consumption of meat at that time implied that humans were hunters by then. Scavenging only rarely provides access to meat and is only feasible in African savannas on a seasonal basis."

http://www.livescience.com/23671-eating ... human.html

[Sue U]

While have not seen any studies on this specific subject, I believe there is sufficient observational evidence to conclude that it is necessary to have animal protein (not soy or beans) during the major growth years in order to achieve the optimal adult height and weight.

If you had taken the twelve seconds to work the google, you would have seen that the scientific studies on this specific subject show that there is virtually no difference in growth between children on a vegetarian diet and a matched control group of omnivores. Additional research has shown that a vegetarian diet that includes milk is more than adequate to achieve height and weight gains identical to non-vegetarian children.

[Lord Jim]

I feel the same about raising kids Catholic.

[Crackpot]

There is a difference between Veg an Vegan

going full on vegan is dangerous to proper childhood development. don't you remember the story afew years back about those geniuses that were so enlightened in their no aniimal product ways that they denied the child it's mothers milk? (and it's subsequent death of malnouorishment)

[rubato]

delete

[rubato]

While have not seen any studies on this specific subject, I believe there is sufficient observational evidence to conclude that it is necessary to have animal protein (not soy or beans) during the major growth years in order to achieve the optimal adult height and weight.

If you had taken the twelve seconds to work the google, you would have seen that the scientific studies on this specific subject show that there is virtually no difference in growth between children on a vegetarian diet and a matched control group of omnivores. Additional research has shown that a vegetarian diet that includes milk is more than adequate to achieve height and weight gains identical to non-vegetarian children.

True. Many in my family are vegetarians from birth and they are of normal height and weight. They also frequently live into the late 90s and more. My last great-auntie is 100 (101 in April). My paternal grandmother was two weeks shy of 103. My uncle Alfred (great uncle) was 103. My maternal grandfather was 98 (although not a vegetarian while he lived in Africa due to the difficulty of maintaining a vegetarian diet with a limited food source).

Studies done at UCLA in the early 1970s comparing Mormons (who don't drink or smoke) with Seventh-Day-Adventists (who also do not drink or smoke and at that time about 60% were vegetarians) showed a rate of bowel cancer which was 1/2 that of Mormons.

The data shows that there is no question that a vegetarian (or mostly so) diet is much healthier than a carnivore's diet.

yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

The last line of dgs's post referred to "raising a kid as a vegan" and like CP said, there is a big difference between vegetarian and vegan. A vegan diet specifically excludes all animal products--even even eggs and dairy products. It seems to me that this would definitely be dangerous to childhood development. (Are there any studies that specifically relate to veganism rather than vegetarianism?)

[Gob]

Most I have come across highlight the need for B 12 supplimentation, but they also say that with carefull planning the diet is "adequate."

[dgs49]

I don't doubt that a vegetarian diet for an adult is probably a good idea, but as I said, denying kids animal protein is a bad, bad, bad idea.

Two anthropology-related points. The major advances in culture, language, and arts did not occur until our ancestors started eating meat. One can survive on a single meal a day if it contains meat, but grain and plant eaters must spend most of their time seeking and preparing food. Meat = more free time to do other stuff.

Dr. Barry Sears, in his fitness books cites studies showing that in primitive societies that shifted from omnivorous diets to mainly grains and fruit (e.g., ancient Greece), there is strong evidence that adult height was severely retarded after the change.

The Atkins diet, which promotes eating massive quantities of red meat, fat, and cheese, usually results in a reduction in cholesterol levels. This is one of the reasons Atkins was so reviled in the medical community - he was right and everyone else was (and remains) wrong.