Do vegiatrians live longer?

Question

I heard it on a tv show, which im not sure is that reliable, and I am a vegitarian, so i would like to know. It would be cool if it were true!

Answer 1

Quote from Wikipedia which matches what I have read elsewhere:

"A 1999 metastudy compared six major studies from western countries. The study found that the mortality ratio was the lowest in fish eaters (0.82) followed by vegetarians (0.84) and occasional meat eaters (0.84) and which was then followed by regular meat eaters (1.0) and vegan (1.0) [9]. In 'Mortality in British vegetarians', it was concluded that "British vegetarians have low mortality compared with the general population. "

Based on what I have read it is slightly longer but only one of many factors that determine longevity including other lifestyle choices and heredity.

Answer 2

I think there are many factors that determine a persons lfe span. Eating meat doesn't mean a longer or shorter life necesarrily, eating healthy and maintaining a healthy lifestyle (exercise, habits i.e. alcohol, smoking, drugs. etc) all tie into how long a person can expect to live. Genetics are also a factor....it's just not that black and white people.

PS. Lack of protein is not a big cause of death last time I checked.....however to set the record straight a non meat eating person CAN get plenty of protein if they eat the "right" foods...

Answer 3

i'm a vegitarian too. but i dont know if we live longer. people say we dont get enough protien. and i do with tons of nuts. like peanuts and almonds and pecans and alot of other kinds. thats what gives me my protien and those meat people can back off and mind there own business saying we dont get enough protien. and personaly i think we have a healthier life style than them most of the times. so i do think we may live longer but never know.

Answer 4

Yes, I have read that vegetarian live around 6 years longer than meat eaters.

Answer 5

ya i think we do like 4-6 more years or something but people keep saying no cause you dont get enough protein but you dont have all the drugs that they feed the animals in your system so ya i think we do but im not sure

Answer 6

On average vegetarians do live longer, however, this does not necessarily mean a vegetarian diet makes you live longer, as there are other considerations.

"Statistical surveys do generally suggest that vegetarians, on average, live longer, healthier lives. But we should bear in mind that research has yet to isolate the presence or absence of meat in the diet as the only variable under investigation. There are always extraneous factors which can explain equally well any health differences found between vegetarians and meat eaters. For example, many vegetarians choose their diet for health reasons simply because it is accepted on many fronts that vegetarianism is healthier, rightly or wrongly. But people willing to cut out meat for health reasons are likely to be making other lifestyle decisions for health reasons. Perhaps to smoke less, drink less or exercise more frequently. Alternately stated: people unwilling to make sacrifices for the good of their health will be more likely to eat meat than those who will make those sacrifices. Thus the healthy vegetarian diet becomes self-fulfilling prophecy."

Vegetarians are, as suggested above, much less likely to smoke, binge drink, eat junk food and are generally much more health conscious that the average meat eater, meat eating being the group that contains almost all the unhealthiest of society: the poor, the uneducated and the smokers who frankly aren't likely to give two figs about veganism.

"A well-designed piece of research by using matched samples may, in theory, control for extraneous variables. But it would be virtually impossible, in the case of a large sample population studied over a lifetime, to determine whether differences found were genuine measurements of the meat/non-meat factor, or an effect of vegetarians opting for meals with higher nutritional value, irrespective of meat content.

Moreover, irrespective of parental diet, very few western vegetarians give up meat until their late teens or early adulthood. Some will make the switch later in life. For as long as the general trend in society is away from meat and towards vegetarianism, the average effect of people crossing the meat/non-meat barrier will be to reinforce this skew in the distribution, and create the illusion of a longer average life-span in vegetarians."

There are other variables as well that can skew results if not properly controlled for.

- Vegetarians are mostly women. Women have a longer average lifespan than men so on average the life span of vegetarians will be longer than that of meat eaters.

- Vegetarians are, on average, much younger than the average meat eater, because it tends to be young people who convert. Thus, as young people are at less risk from virtually all diseases and death than their older counterparts, their rates of diseases and death will be lower than the meat eating majority of the population. Death rate and longevity are, obviously, closely interlinked and some studies have used death rate as their marker for longevity.

As such, few studies on this subject can truthfully say they've at least tried there best to eliminate all other variables. The studies Peta show don't even try. When studies do try to control for these things they generally show little difference in longevity, if any.

I have seen seen severat studies which took people of a similar background and lifestyle. Again it is almost impossible to isolate meat as the only variable, but nonetheless they showed almost no difference in longevity. I have also seen studies which showed vegetarians live longer than have shown vegans live less long, which made me laugh.

So, in summary, if you are a vegetarian you are statistically likely to live longer than average. However, you aren't more likely to live longer than people with an otherwise similar lifestyle to you. So to directly answer the question, no is the only sensible answer, as to say yes is very misleading.

Answer 7

it matters you see that meats have lots of fats but you need to have protein and if you get that through nuts then you can get what you need and miss out on all the cholesterol and fats, but the thing is not all vegetarians can keep their protein servings right by eating the correct amount of nuts, so if you can keep that up then yes vegetarians do live longer

Answer 8

not necessarily. there are differnet kind of diets you can go on. you may not be a vegeterian but you eat lean chicken and fish and turkey ground meat. vegeterians get their source of protien other ways through carbs and nuts and so on. it all depends on what you eat and how you prepare it. and also exercise and daily activities have alot to do with it.

Answer 9

I dont think so that vegeterians live longer.
For non-vegs it is important to go slow on red meats with
lots of fats.
Otherwise, non-veg food is also beneficial for your system
specially, fish, chicken. As for chicken it is better to eat it without its skin as the skin contains lot of fat and oil.
Just think about how many religions teach us to be vegetarians! If the answer is "not many" then non-veg should not be considered as bad. If the answer is "many" then vegetarian is better.
Another point, think about the total population on this planet.
The major majority is non-veg of veg. If the answer is "majority non-veg", then majority is always right. If the answer is the opposite, then you know vice-versa.

Answer 10

Well if you think about it, the consumption of meat and dairy/eggs has been linked to all the major cancers, heart disease ... and tons of other health problems...
So you would have less risk of dying from those things...