Re: Vegetarians have lower CHD risk than omnivores


RBR wrote:
> In India, the predominantly vegetarian South Indians seem to die off
> quicker than their meat-eating neighbours to the North. Vegetarianism
> does not equal longevity.
>
> RBR


COMMENT

But the Indian vegetarians eat a particuraly limited and crappy sort of
diet, which is based around butter and milk and grain, and is lower in
fruits and vegetables than vegetarian diets in richer countries.

If you look at the Seventh-Day Adventists in the US you will find
modest increases in life expectancy, and substantial decreases in
disease incidences (SDAs are not all pure vegans, but they eat
substantially less meat than the rest of the country--- the local
health food store in Loma Linda has one of the better vegetarian and
meat-replacement sections I've ever seen).

How, you ask, does the one thing (modest lifespan increase) square with
the other (substantial disease decrease)? Well, for the same reason we
see it in the statin trials. Much of it stems from the normal
non-linear increase in mortality risk with age, no matter what you eat.
The Reaper's aim gets better EXPONENTIALLY as years go by, so decreases
in age-adjusted disease incidence get rapidly eaten up by normal aging.
>>From age 40 to 80, your chance of dying roughly doubles every 6 to 7
years, which means that if your incidence of all disease is cut in half
for any given age, you still gain only 6 to 7 years in lifespan.

The SDAs typically have cuts of 30% in things like heart disease and
cancer, and this translates into increases in lifespan of only a few
years. Nothing to sneer at, but not immortality or freedom from disease
either. There's lots of evidence that American amounts of American
meats are bad for you. But let's not go overboard. The extra loses us a
few years of life, probably, and not much more.

SBH

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