A plant-based diet that includes fish provides the greatest protection against risk in older adults, according to a new US scientific study.
The Medical Express website said that the study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Researchers at Loma Linda University Health in California found that plant-based diets are associated with a lower risk of death from all causes, especially among males and middle-aged people.
But the vegetarian diet, which included seafood, offered a small but significant advantage over other vegetarian and non-vegetarian diets, even for older adults.
A plant-based diet appears to offer protection against death during middle age, but that advantage disappears when people reach their 80s and continue to follow a strict plant-based diet, said Dr. Gary Fraser, distinguished professor at Loma Linda University School of Public Health and lead investigator of the study.
The researchers used data from a health study consisting of a large cohort of nearly 96,000 people living in the United States and Canada between 2002 and 2007, with follow-up through 2015. Data from this cohort has been used in many studies of health, disease and mortality over the years.
The study analyzed data from more than 88,000 people and about 12,500 deaths. Dietary data was collected using a questionnaire and then categorized into five dietary patterns: non-vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, pescatarian, lacto-ovo vegetarian, and vegan.
Fraser said his team found that vegetarians, overall, had a 12 percent lower risk of death than non-vegetarians. Study participants who followed a vegetarian diet that included fish were 18 percent less likely to die.
Those who followed a vegetarian diet that included milk and eggs were 15% less likely to die, while the risk of death among strict vegetarians was less than 3% lower.
“Overall, this is some of the clearest data to suggest that American vegetarians have greater protection from premature death than non-vegetarians,” Fraser said.
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