[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
There have been a few studies on life expectancy differences between groups that have drawn badly wrong conclusions because they confused conditional and unconditional life expectancies. If there is any data backing up this claim, it needs to be scrutinized for similar errors.
[/QUOTE]
That’s why I look at those studies with a healthy dose of :dubious: , particularly if the study is being quoted in an article or other media outlet because such details are often overlooked or misrepresented (if the medium is biased).
I’m not so sure. How many carnivores are just one sanctimonious vegetarian away from perpetrating a hate crime? I know I am. The next assholier-than-thou salad-eater that gets in my face about my Double Bacon Cheeseburger with extra Bacon is going to get turned into mulch. So much for increased life expectancy. 
[QUOTE=silenus]
The next assholier-than-thou salad-eater that gets in my face about my Double Bacon Cheeseburger with extra Bacon is going to get turned into mulch.
[/QUOTE]
That sounds like quite a waste of some premium, grass-fed long pig to me, pardner.
[QUOTE=silenus]
I’m not so sure. How many carnivores are just one sanctimonious vegetarian away from perpetrating a hate crime? I know I am. The next assholier-than-thou salad-eater that gets in my face about my Double Bacon Cheeseburger with extra Bacon is going to get turned into mulch. So much for increased life expectancy. 
[/QUOTE]
Non-proselytizing vegetarians like me, who even buy and cook meat for others, might be forgiven for harboring similar murderous thoughts against omnivores who get sanctimonious about the “evil vegetarians.”
[QUOTE=guizot]
One risk is that pesticides accumulate in the fat of animals and dairy products.
[/QUOTE]
And is right there *on *the veggies. :rolleyes:
I know of no studies that conclusively show Vegetarians live significantly longer- compared to anyone else who watches what they eat.. There are a good number of studies that show that dudes with a controled/monitored diet have lower rates of several nasty things than dudes who eat anything, and too much of that. Vegetarianism is a controled/monitored diet, and I have no doubt it is healthier than " a Double-bacon-cheeseburger, extra-large fries and a super-big HFCS soda every day" diet is. However, adding a moderate amount of meat (say a 4oz portion per day) seems to be better than no meat at all. In other words, AFAIK, all the studies compare Vegetarianism with the general populace. My educated guess is that if you watch what you eat, including meat in your diet would not reduce the lifespan of an average dude.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
And is right there *on *the veggies. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
Of course it’s on the vegetables, and anything else that gets pesticide. But vegetables don’t have fat, so they don’t store as much pesticide. A cow that eats corn that’s been treated with pesticide is consuming it over years. (And typically in the U.S. that cow has taken in a lot of hormones and antibiotics.) The concentration becomes higher in dairy products like butter and cheese. A head of lettuce is getting the pesticide for just one season. And some the of pesticide that’s on the surface is/can be washed off.
You can conceivably eat meat that doesn’t have these things, and that would be a real test, assuming that vegetarians actually do live 10 years longer: compare people eating “pure” meat with vegetarians.
[QUOTE=ForumBot]
Meat is high in glutamic acid, which registers the fifth sense of taste identified by Japanese researchers, umami (translation: “deliciousness.”)
Your food has a deliciousness deficiency.
[/QUOTE]
By weight, tomatoes, peas, corn, certain cheeses, and even grape juice have a higher concentration of glutamate than any meat does.
[Moderating]
OK, guys, let’s quit the sniping about “sanctimonious vegetarians/omnivores” etc. Remember you are in GQ. Let’s try to stick to the factual aspects of the OP.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
[QUOTE=guizot]
But vegetables don’t have fat, so they don’t store as much pesticide. A cow that eats corn that’s been treated with pesticide is consuming it over years. (And typically in the U.S. that cow has taken in a lot of hormones and antibiotics.) The concentration becomes higher in dairy products like butter and cheese.
[/QUOTE]
Got a cite that there are dangerous pesticides normally stored in cow fat? A non-vegan cite? With footnotes and cites and all, peer-reviewed, etc? :dubious:
[QUOTE=guizot]
Of course it’s on the vegetables, and anything else that gets pesticide. But vegetables don’t have fat, so they don’t store as much pesticide.
[/QUOTE]
What about fat in fruit? And this query’s coming to you from a vegetarian.
According to this if you are vegetarian for more than 20 years, you can expect about 3.6 more years. According to the Adventist Study, you can expect either 2 or 20 more years, depending on how you interpret the results. I would imagine the China Study would be the best indication, but I can’t seem to googlefu life expectancy data for that. I do remember that it indicated a pretty direct correspondence between amount of meat in diet and Cancer rates.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Got a cite that there are dangerous pesticides normally stored in cow fat? A non-vegan cite? With footnotes and cites and all, peer-reviewed, etc? :dubious:
[/QUOTE]
Improving the Safety of Fresh Meat. Sofos, John Nikolaos (Ed.) CRC Press, 2005
Specifically, Chapter 6, by Professor J. Gilbert of the Central Science Laboratory, in York, U.K. and Dr. H. Senyuva, of the Ankara Test and Analysis Laboratory in Turkey.
They also discuss the presence of dioxins and PCBs. Granted, I’m not sure that it’s known exactly how dangerous pesticides are to consume, which is why I said it’s a “risk.” Maybe it’s fine to eat pesticides (and dioxins and PCBs).
[QUOTE=Monty]
What about fat in fruit? And this query’s coming to you from a vegetarian.
[/QUOTE]
Of course there are some fruits and vegetables that have some fat, but I don’t think there are many vegetarians who eat coconuts and avocados all day. And this answer is coming to you from a non-vegetarian.
If you are a vegetarian you might die later if you die of natural causes (though comparing Ringo Starr with George Harrison makes you wonder). But it won’t stop you from dying of a gunshot wound like John Lennon or being hit by a bus.
I read somewhere that the three major factors for living longer are don’t smoke, exercise regularly, and avoid stress. What you eat is a distant fourth, and if you are going to get all hepped up about what you eat and what other people eat, you might as well go for the super bacon cheeseburger and large fries with a milkshake.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
But as has been pointed out, vegetarians are a self-selecting group. They are disproportionately likely to be health-conscious in a wide variety of ways, and if you have a lot more people in that demographic watching what they eat, then you’ll have fewer with heart disease, diabetes, and other obesity-related ailments; they’re probably also less likely to smoke and engage in other risky behaviours.
In order to purely isolate the effects of vegetarianism you’d have to have a pretty wide-ranging study that controls for a lot of factors.
[/QUOTE]
Coming from the other side of the plate, this vegan agrees with your assessment.
Sailboat
I became a vegetarian 37 years ago. I am now 60 years old. There is no doubt that if I had been eating meat all of these years, I would now be 70 years old. So there. 
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Well, the population of India is largely Hindu, and vegetarian, but their life expectancy is significantly below that of meat-eating populations like the USA & western Europe.
However, I think that is likely due to other factors than just diet.
[/QUOTE]
Nitpick: Most Hindus are not strict vegetarians.
[QUOTE=guizot]
Improving the Safety of Fresh Meat. Sofos, John Nikolaos (Ed.) CRC Press, 2005
Specifically, Chapter 6, by Professor J. Gilbert of the Central Science Laboratory, in York, U.K. and Dr. H. Senyuva, of the Ankara Test and Analysis Laboratory in Turkey.
n.
[/QUOTE]
Okaaay, but how about a cite we can all look at? On a online MB, book cites (esp from obscure books) are very weak. 
[QUOTE=Madd Maxx]
Not if the meat eaters eat the vegetarians first.
[/QUOTE]
Well if your goal is to climb ruthlessly to the top of the food chain, you should eat only fellow omnivores. Preferably ones who have also done the cannibal thing. Now that’s good eatin’!
I’d be dubious of anything that claims it can add ten years to life expectancy. IANAStatistician, but I recently read this blog article about the inaccuracies in stories in the media regarding things you can supposedly do to increase life expectancy. My emphasis added in these quotes:
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Okaaay, but how about a cite we can all look at? On a online MB, book cites (esp from obscure books) are very weak.
[/QUOTE]
And in a library, Internet links on a MB are even weaker. I’m not here to do your homework. The chapter I mentioned alone is a literature review with about 25 academic references about contaminants in meat. If you’re really as interested as you seem to be, go to a library and read the book–or any other book on the subject.
It’s strange you ask for something “[w]ith footnotes and cites and all, peer-reviewed, etc]," and then you complain that’s it’s obscure. Anything that has footnotes and is peer-reviewed is by nature obscure. This kind of topic isn’t going to come up in People Magazine.
Honestly, I can’t understand how you haven’t read about this information before. Food researchers have known about it for decades, and have published about it for years. (Even the EPA has–and don’t snip “cite,” because I’ve thrown that document away.)
Fighting ignorance is a lot more than simply clicking a mouse.