[I personally feel its very hard to get an accurate picture of how much longer
of a life Span one can attain from a vegetarian diet, do to the simple fact
that there are so many different types of vegetarian diets being practiced
today. Vegetarians can range from 100% raw food vegans, all the way to
vegetarian fast food junkies. My guess is you can get a lot more than 2 extra
years of life, if you follow a thoroughly researched type of vegetarian diet vs
the study be damned, approach. It is nice to see though that the larger studies
done so far on vegetarians, do show them living slightly longer than
non-vegetarians, which bodes well for the diet, of course. Not to mention, the
planet in general, as humans following a vegetarian diet do leave a much
lighter footprint on the environment. Rick.]
Longevity
Source > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism
A 1999 metastudy[65] 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) [8]. In "Mortality
in British vegetarians",[66] it was concluded that "British vegetarians have
low mortality compared with the general population. Their death rates are
similar to those of comparable non-vegetarians, suggesting that much of this
benefit may be attributed to non-dietary lifestyle factors such as a low
prevalence of smoking and a generally high socio-economic status, or to aspects
of the diet other than the avoidance of meat and fish."
Among these meta studies, the Adventist Health Study is an ongoing study of
life expectancy in Seventh-day Adventists following different behaviour
patterns. The researchers found that a combination of different lifestyle
choices could influence life expectancy by as much as 10 years. Among the
lifestyle choices investigated, a vegetarian diet was estimated to confer an
extra 1-1/2 to 2 years of life. The researchers concluded that "the life
expectancies of California Adventist men and women are higher than those of any
other well-described natural population" at 78.5 years for men and 82.3 years
for women. The life expectancy of California Adventists surviving to age 30 was
83.3 years for men and 85.7 years for women.[67]
However, this study of Adventist health study is again incorporated into meta
studies titled "Does low meat consumption increase life expectancy in humans?"
published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which again made the
similar conclusion that occasional/low meat eating and other life style choices
significantly increase the life expectancy.[68] The study also concluded that
"Some of the variation in the survival advantage in vegetarians may have been
due to marked differences between studies in adjustment for confounders, the
definition of vegetarian, measurement error, age distribution, the healthy
volunteer effect, and intake of specific plant foods by the vegetarians." It
further states that "This raises the possibility that a low-meat, high
plant-food dietary pattern may be the true causal protective factor rather than
simply elimination of meat from the diet." In a recent review of studies
relating low-meat diet patterns to all-cause mortality, Singh
noted that "5 out of 5 studies indicated that adults who followed a low meat,
high plant-food diet pattern experienced significant or marginally significant
decreases in mortality risk relative to other patterns of intake."
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