A study found that various vegetarian diets can lower the risk of death and related conditions, with pesco-vegetarian diets (including fish) offering the most protection, especially for the very older people.
Loma Linda University Health researchers noted that vegetarians have a lower risk of death overall, particularly in males and middle-aged people. However, older vegetarians had a slightly higher risk of neurological conditions, but the pesco-vegetarian diet still provided some benefits.
Gary Fraser, a professor at Loma Linda University, said, “A vegetarian diet may help lower the risk of death through middle age.” However, this benefit seems to fade in people’s 80s for strict vegetarians. He noted that older vegetarians had a slightly higher risk of neurological issues, which is something worth paying attention to if we want the benefits of vegetarianism to last into old age.
The study, published on August 2 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, compared cause-specific and all-cause deaths between vegetarians and nonvegetarians using data from the Adventist Health Study-2.
This study included nearly 96,000 Seventh-day Adventists from the U.S. and Canada, with data collected from 2002 to 2007 and follow-up through 2015. Researchers analyzed data from over 88,000 people and about 12,500 deaths, categorizing diets into five types: nonvegetarian, semi-vegetarian, pesco-vegetarian, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, and vegan.
Fraser said his team found that Adventist vegetarians had about a 12% lower risk of death compared to non-vegetarians. Pesco-vegetarians had an 18% lower risk, while lacto-ovo-vegetarians had a 15% lower risk.
Vegans had a less than 3% lower overall risk, but male vegans did much better than non-vegetarians, unlike females. Fraser noted that this shows strong evidence that American vegetarians are more protected from early death than non-vegetarians.
The study concludes that pesco-vegetarian diets, which include fish, are the best for reducing the risk of death in older adults.
Journal reference:
- Grace P Abris, David J Shavlik et al., Cause-specific and all-cause mortalities in vegetarian compared with those in nonvegetarian participants from the Adventist Health Study-2 cohort. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.07.028.
