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Hey Charlie,

I agree that it's no easy matter to separate causes from correlations in
dietary studies.  While a vegetarian diet is frequently correlated with
longevity, there are many possible explanations.  The evidence is pretty
strong that eating red meats (especially processed meats) is associated
with disease and mortality, and that plentiful fruits and vegetables in the
diet are associated with health and longevity.  But I don't know of any
good evidence that, for example, eating fish in moderation with vegetables
is either more or less healthy than a pure vegetarian diet.  There are just
so many variables.

But I'm quite surprised if you find the evidence compelling that religious
vegetarians fare better than non-religious vegetarians.  This introduces
even more variables and chaos, with even less data, and no theoretical
framework to support it.

Of course, most vegetarians aren't doing it just for their personal health,
though that's often a contributing factor.  The major new impetus for
vegetarianism is climate change, and some call this movement
'climatarianism'.  Livestock production is thought responsible for about
25-50% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and many climate
activists now see a major shift toward plant-based diets as the most
practical way to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases.  (This got a lot of
attention recently  when Bill Gates announced he became a vegetarian, for
reasons of both personal and planetary health:
http://www.examiner.com/article/vegetarian-bill-gates-livestock-produces-51-of-world-s-greenhouse-gases).

So based on available evidence, removing at least the mammals from your
diet seems very likely to be healthy for you, and others.

-Richard


On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:32 PM, Charles Carlson
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> One would think that figuring out the benefits of eating vegetables would
> be easier than figuring out the benefits of eating oat bran, or visiting
> museums, but it turns out they're all pretty complex questions with lots of
> supporters in each camp and conflicting data a every bend, which is of
> course the fault of our human psyche to make things more understandable
> than they chaotically are.  On a humanly trivial note, I think we've
> discovered that most vegetarians in the  developed world economy's fare
> better if vegetarianism is associated with religion for god knows what
> reason.  Here's a cool report on the latest study.
>
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/06/04/188647377/can-going-vegetarian-help-you-live-longer-maybe
>
>      *The opinions and thoughts expressed here are my own and should in
> no way be construed or attributed to the Exploratorium or related
> organization, and do not represent an institutional position.  *
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> Charles Carlson
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>    http://blogs.exploratorium.edu/whyintercept/
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>

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