This week’s issue of Time Magazine brings more documentation that vegetarians live longer than their meat-chomping friends. A six-year study of 70,000 Seventh-Day Adventists, published in the current issue of American Medical Association’s prestigious Journal of Internal Medicine, found that vegetarians and vegans have a 12 percent lower risk of death.
This is but the latest evidence linking meat consumption to killer diseases that kill 1.3 million Americans annually. It comes only two months after a discovery at the Cleveland Clinic that carnitine, contained in all meat products, is a major factor in heart failure. Similarly, an Oxford University study of nearly 45,000 adults in last January’s American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that vegetarians were 32 percent less likely to suffer from heart disease than people who ate meat and fish. A Harvard University study of 37,698 men and 83,644 women, in last year’s Archives of Internal Medicine, concluded that meat consumption raises the risk of total, heart, and cancer mortality.
Indeed, each of us can find their own fountain of youth by adopting a meat and dairy-free diet. An Internet search on “vegan recipes” or “live vegan” provides ample resources.
Nigel Hesterheim
New Haven