A glass of wine every day and a positive attitude may add years to your life and give life to your years, but the real secret to longevity may very well be eating one less burger every week or swapping your sirloin for a salmon dinner, according to a massive new investigation published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine.
For nearly six years, a team from Loma Linda University in California tracked the diet habits and health outcomes of more than 70,000 people, roughly half of whom were vegetarians. After controlling for significant health variables like age, race, exercise habits, and alcohol consumption, the study team found eating a vegetarian diet was associated with a 12 percent drop in all-cause mortality. When breaking up the data into different types of vegetarian diets, the research shows people following a pesco-vegetarian plan—defined as vegetarians who also ate fish—enjoyed the lowest mortality rates compared to meat eaters. That said, vegan diets and those vegetarians who consume dairy products also significantly benefited, the research indicates.
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"There are several possible explanations for these results," explains study co-author Michael Orlich, MD, director of the preventative medicine residency program at Loma Linda University. He points to three past studies that have linked red and processed meat consumption to higher mortality rates. "Cutting out meat could be the cause," Orlich says. It's also possible that eating more plant foods like fruits and vegetables provides the death-defying benefits, he adds.
Orlich's team also broke down the study deaths by cause, which revealed vegetarian diets are especially protective against heart disease, renal or kidney failure, and deadly endocrine-related ailments like diabetes mellitus. However, Orlich said there was no significant correlation between vegetarianism and cancer mortality. He also stressed that "semi-vegetarian" dieters—defined as people who eat meat less than once a week but more than once a month—did not experience the significant health benefits enjoyed by more-disciplined veg heads.
Put simply, vegetarian diets appear to offer life-protecting benefits. But Orlich says his research is just a jumping off point for further study. It’s still not clear how vegetarian diets may lower your risk of death, or whether one type of vegetarian meal plan is healthier for you than another.