On Balance, Vegetarians Exhibit Better Biomarkers than Non-Vegetarians

There is a fair amount of epidemiological data to suggest that vegetarians have, on balance, better long-term health prospects than people who consume meat. The usual caveats apply, in that vegetarianism in many wealthier study populations is correlated with a range of other potentially relevant line items, such as education, wealth, and better lifestyle choices. Further, the average vegetarian may well be mildly calorie restricted in comparison to the average meat eater, and that may be enough in and of itself to explain health effects. Other suggested contributing factors include dietary advanced glycation end-products, but as is usual in these matters the research community has yet to provide firm, line by line data on the relative importance of each of the underlying mechanisms in humans. Vegetarians appear to have a healthier biomarker profile than meat-eaters, and this applies to adults of any age and weight, and is also unaffected by smoking and alcohol consumption, according to a new study. To understand whether dietary choice can make a difference to the levels of disease markers in blood and urine, researchers performed a cross-sectional study analysing data from 177,723 healthy participants (aged 37-73 years) in the UK Biobank study, who reported no major changes in diet over the last five years. Participants were categorised as either vegetarian (do not eat red meat, poultry or fish; 4,111 participants) or meat-eaters (166,516 participants) accordi...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs