Meateater Less ill than vegetarians?

Study: meat eaters less often ill than vegetarians

02/27/2014

According to a recent Austrian study, meat eaters are less likely to get cancer, a heart attack or allergies than vegetarians. However, the researchers could not say whether this is actually related to meat abstinence. Other international studies came to completely different conclusions.

Unclear whether meat renunciation has something to do with it
According to a recent Austrian study, vegetarians are more likely to get cancer and more often a heart attack than meat eaters. This would have resulted from the evaluations of researchers at the Medical University of Graz, which are now in the journal „PLOS ONE“ were published. In addition, vegetarians would have a lower quality of life and need more therapies. As the graduate ecotrophologist Uwe Knop explained, however, food studies are always only speculative. He means: „All this does not mean, however, that meat abstinence has anything to do with it.“ The nutritionist therefore warns against rigorous food recommendations based on such findings: „Nutrition studies always show only connections, but no justifications.“

Question of cause and effect remains open
The Graz study leaves open the question of cause and effect. „Whether the poorer health of vegetarians is caused by their diet or whether they were vegetarians because of their poor health, that can not be answered“, so the scientists. „Although we can not establish a causal relationship, but describe reliable findings.“ The study looked at 1,320 individuals who divided the researchers into four groups of equal size, comparable in sex, age, smoking habits, fitness and socioeconomic status. In all groups, the body mass index (BMI) was also in the normal range (22.9-24.9). It was divided into vegetarians, meat eaters who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, little meat eaters and many-meat eaters. The study is based on data from the „Austrian Health Interview Survey (AT-HIS)“, a sample of the adult Austrian population, part of the EU-wide survey „European Health Interview Survey“ is.

18 chronic diseases examined in comparison
The Austrian researchers examined a total of 18 chronic diseases. Vegetarians were affected more frequently compared to the majority of meat eaters of 14 of the 18 diseases. These included asthma, diabetes, migraine and osteoporosis. In addition, vegetarians had almost twice as many allergies as many-meat-eaters (30.6 percent to 16.7 percent) and had more cancers (4.8 percent to 1.8 percent). In addition, the researchers recorded more heart attacks than meat lovers (1.5 percent to 0.6 percent). According to the study, vegetarians would also suffer from anxiety disorders or depression twice as often as many-meat eaters (9.4 percent to 4.5 percent). These results also confirmed a study by scientists from the University of Hildesheim in 2012, which showed that vegetarians are significantly more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, psychosomatic complaints and eating disorders.

Nutritionist speaks of lobbyists
The Austrian study has also shown that vegetarians are more affected by illness, go to the doctor more often and need more medical treatment than meat eaters. Vegetarians also have a lower quality of life. In their case, the values ​​in the examined categories of physical and psychological health, social relationships and environmental quality of life were lower. But even in this case, the scientists described no causal relationship. Nutritionist Knop speaks nonetheless of so-called vegetarian-lobbyists and criticizes thereby the German vegetarian federation VEBU, which writes in a press release: „Vegetarian diets have the potential to prevent most of these civilization diseases. In addition, they can be used successfully in their treatment.“

International studies come to completely different results
Different other international studies come to completely different conclusions about the health sense of vegetarian nutrition. For example, results from Loma Linda University scientists in California were published in the medical journal JAMA last year, stating: „Vegetarian diets are associated with a lower death rate.“ Among the roughly 70,000 participants, the vegetarians had 12 percent fewer deaths and 19 percent fewer heart diseases, such as heart attacks. Also, some chronic diseases were less common in the vegetarian test groups, including kidney failure and diabetes.

Knowledge about vegetarian nutrition is far from complete
„The professional interest in vegetarian nutrition has reached unanticipated levels, but the knowledge of vegetarian diets and their impact on human life is far from complete“, explained Dr. Joan Sabate from Loma Linda University early last year. British researchers from the University of Oxford published a post in January 2013 „American Journal of Clinical Nutrition“, by presenting interesting study results as well. They came to the conclusion that vegetarians are much less likely to suffer from heart disease than non-vegetarians. The study was based on data from around 45,000 patients. (Sb)