I believe that we all have unique metabolisms and the real "science" is the personal study of how we feel physically correlated with what we have been eating, amount of exercise, lack of tension, etc. I ended up as a vegetarian (with a little fish) because I kept track of how I felt and compared with recently eaten food. I have friends who thrive on high meat diets. We are all different.
Of course statistics dont necessarily translate to the individual. But to further agree with you I would point out a rather nasty (I think) trend in medical science, which is to treat individuals who diverge from the statistical models as defective.
Look up the medical literature for "Cytochrome P-450 defects" for example. What folks are typically talking about here are differences in rates of metabolizing various pharmaceuticals. Some people like are considered defective because we process many medicines very slowly. Personally I think this is great. I take less medicine, and I suspect it may be why constant moderate drinking (alcohol) eventually makes me mildly sick and I have to stop for a while. It's great. Except that it's called a defect by pharmaceutical researchers.... and there's even experimental gene therapy to correct it.
I'd even guess that people who are happy and at peace with what they eat might outlive hardcore perfectionists. Are there any studies about that? (I'm thinking of a parallel to the study where religious people lived longer.)
A lot of people "feel" fine but blood work shows they're insulin resistant, have various deficiencies, or are loaded with cortisol. Going by "feeling" really doesn't work. Also, the evidence against a vegetarian diet is overwhelming.
Also, the evidence against a vegetarian diet is
overwhelming.
If the totality of evidence currently available clearly indicates that vegetarian diets result in premature death, it should be very easy for you to link to a dozen or so clinical studies that have produced such evidence. Please proceed.
There are many vegetarian Buddhists here in Taiwan and their food is sadly well-known for being overly greasy (as to add flavor). It doesn't help that the local Buddhists avoid onion and garlic, two staples in non-vegetarian local food. It's considered normal to eat supplements, but that's of course a recent phenomenon.
I'm not saying it's all bad (I'm mostly vegetarian), but the studies are all over the place as with everything in nutrition :)
There are so many varieties of vegetarian diet the term is a little meaningless in terms of understanding nutrition.
I've been vegetarian for about 20 years, I eat a lot of fresh veg, not much fried stuff, not much processed stuff, try and make sure I mix things up and get some protein. Broadly speaking I think I've got a pretty good diet.
But I also know vegetarian's who are massively overweight, eat crap (and too much of it), drink too much and so on.
As a broad group I suspect vegetarian's eat better but I think that's more likely to be linked to the fact that this is a group of people who have thought about what they eat as much as anything inherent in the lack of meat.
And that would be interesting (and I think they do exist - I'm curious about the poster above saying that they show it's not healthy because my understanding is precisely the opposite), just I think that there are other factors you need to control for to really understand it.
