Do vegetarians live longer than meat eaters?
Since we’re talking about vegetarianism, let’s examine the claim that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters. The late Dr. Russell Smith, who was a statistician, took a close look at the studies purporting to show that vegetarianism was a healthier life-style.25 In a review of some 3,000 articles in the scientific literature, he found only two that compared mortality data for vegetarians and nonvegetarians. One was a 1978 study of Seventh Day Adventists (SDA’s). Although published analyses of this study claim that it showed that the vegetarians lived longer, Smith’s analysis of total mortality rates as a function of the frequencies of consuming cheese, meat, milk, eggs and fat attached to meat found that the total death rate decreased as the frequencies of consuming cheese, eggs, meat and milk increased. The second study was published by Burr and Sweetnam in 1982.26. Once again, although the authors claim that their study showed that vegetarians lived longer, Smith found quite the op
