Adventist Health Study- The vegan argument

In rural China or other places that are still poor they do not suffer from modern diseases, but also they do not give most of their income on good services of modern medicine. Even in religious groups that have a rigid lifestyle the situation is similar. A good example is a line of studies known as the Adventist Health Study.

Adventist Health Studies (AHS) is a group of long-term studies done by Loma Linda University. They do these studies to see if there is any link between lifestyle and mortality and diseases of Seventh-day Adventists. By a lifestyle they usually mean a plant-based diet with no cigarette smoking because of all lifestyle factors diet is the most influential one to the overall health. In the most recent study that is still being conducted, AHS-2, around 100,000 church members are enrolled from both the US and Canada.

For more than 100 years the Seventh-day Adventist Church had been promoting health behaviors that had become a regular part of daily living. These include not smoking, eating a plant-based diet, regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy body weight. Seventh-day Adventists do have a measurably lower risk than other Americans for most Western diseases. The connection is based on, as is in all other rural parts of undeveloped countries of the world, dietary habits. Also, some part is exercise. Over the past 40 years, two Adventist health studies have been conducted involving 22,940 and 34,000 Californian Adventists.

The first significant study of Adventists started in 1958 and became known as the Adventist Mortality Study. It involved an intensive 5-year follow-up with a more informal 25-year follow-up. By comparing all causes of death Adventist men had a mortality rate of 66% and Adventist women had a rate of 88%. The overall mortality of cancer compared to their counterparts in the American Cancer Society was 60% for Adventist men and 76% for Adventist women. America is 100% baseline, so 60% means 40% lower rates. Lung cancer was 21 percent, meaning 80% lower rates, colorectal cancer deaths were 62 percent. Breast cancer death rates for Adventist women were 85 percent; prostate cancer death rates for Adventist men were 92 percent. Death due to coronary disease among Adventist men was 66%; for Adventist women, it was 98%. The stroke death rates for Adventist men were 72%; for Adventist women 82%. We have to understand that the study was done back in the 60s.

Why is this important? Because they eat a plant-based diet for religious reasons not necessarily for scientific reasons. They eat a diet that is vegan but not necessarily optimized. Sugar is vegan, and so is oil, salt and chips, and a bunch of other junk. Eating a plant-based diet essentially means little if we don’t know precisely why we eat or do not eat something. Vegans who go into this kind of lifestyle for moral reasons may end up in worse health conditions than before they consumed a standard Western meat-dominated diet if they do not know precisely what they are doing. Adventist diet is not fully optimized and actually, they do eat “clean” fish and meat like beef, chicken, or salmon. They do eat eggs. They like “clean” low-fat dairy. What they avoid are “unclean” meats like pork, shellfish, and rabbit, and high-fat dairies like ice cream, sour cream, and butter. They would avoid unclean and toxic substances like alcohol, caffeine, and smoking.

In scientific research, the most inflammatory meat besides processed meats is actually fish followed by chicken. It is not pork or red meat. Probably because of the pollution in fish tanks and fish meal is then also used as feed to the chickens as well. Game meat did prove in research to be someone less inflammatory. In more realistic scenarios on day to day basis, it doesn’t matter how your meat was raised or produced. If it is organic it would have less persistent pollutants accumulated in tissue because animal feed is also sprayed. If you want to feel good and want to have a cow that lived a happy life for psychological reasons then that is some other topic. We have to understand that meat is essentially meat, some worse than others, some terrible but it is not red meat, and process meat is bad, fish good. For example, if you eat regular store beef there would be around 40% more postprandial (post-fed) inflammatory response than for the same amount of kangaroo meat which is one of the “cleanest” meats out there (Arya et al., 2010).

All animal products are pro-inflammatory because there are no antioxidants in them. All of the meat has cholesterol, saturated fat, dead bacteria that will cause endotoxemia, environmental pollutants and toxins, mutagens, and hormones. Also, bacteria that feed on meat in our gut are not probiotic like bacteria that feed on fiber, and that just by itself is pro-inflammatory.

Adventist diet is eaten for religious reasons and not health reasons. They would eat much more calorie-dense foods like vegetables and fruits than the rest of the population, but still, not all vegetables are made equal. This is not a scientifically based and nutritionally optimized diet.

The reason why scientists want to research this type of diet particularly is that in nutrition and health and medicine researchers believe that this type of diet is more realistic as a goal for the average individual. There is a belief that even if the government goes against the corporative interest and was true to advise the most nutrient-dense, antioxidant and phytochemically rich, mineral and vitamin-rich no cholesterol, no fat and no animal products, whole food plant-based diet, a normal phycological response from the average individual would be to ignore it. Just a goal of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine avoidance is almost completely unrealistic for most of the population. This study was conducted to see what a more realistic approach would have on a large scale population mortality rate. Most people in real life do not have an adequate level of education in the field of nutrition.

Adventists as a group are more educated than the rest of the Californians, and they did have to calculate that into the study as well. The more education we have the greater the chance is that we will go more to healthier food choices independently from any other factor. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, had eaten an ovo-lacto-vegetarian diet just by his conviction in human anatomy. He cut corpses for science.

In the end, mortality rates can be much better, and this study was done back in the 60s. The situation is worse today for the average American with skyrocketing obesity, diabetes, and so on. The current study Adventist Health Study 2 (AHS-2) which began in 2002 also had some sub-studies later. For example, (Orlich et al., 2013) and (Tonstad et al., 2013). They concluded that: “Vegetarian diets are associated with lower all-cause mortality and with some reductions in cause-specific mortality.”

The more plan based we go, the more all-cause and cause-specific mortality drops and not just that. We might live ten years longer or 15, it does not matter. What matter is that we would avoid most of the diseases of affluence which include osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and most of the other cancers, acne, gout, depression, and diseases related to vitamin and mineral deficiencies too many to count and all the prescription drugs side effects.

Summary:

Study of Adventist Mortality, 1958-1966 involved 23,000 California Adventists over the age of 25. Conducted at the same time as the American Cancer Society study of non-Adventists. Many causes of death were compared between the two populations. Results:

• Vegetarian Adventists had a significantly lower risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) than non-vegetarian Adventists.
• Consumption of green salads had a significant positive association with all-cause mortality and a significant negative association with egg intake.
• Compared to other Californians, Adventists had lower rates of death for the following cancers: all cancers (60% [of non-Adventist rates] for Adventist men, 75% for Adventist women); lung cancer (21%); colorectal cancer (62%); breast cancer (85%); and CHD (66% for Adventist men, 98% for Adventist women).

Adventist Health Study-1: 1974-1988 involved 34,192 California Adventists over the age of 25. Results:

• Vegetarians had a lower risk of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and all-cause mortality.
• Beef consumption was significantly related to the risk of fatal heart disease in men.
• Consuming nuts and whole grains on a regular basis was linked to a lower risk of CHD.
• Non-vegetarian Adventists had an 88% higher risk of colon cancer than vegetarian Adventists. Consumption of legumes (beans) reduced the risk of colon cancer.
• Adventist men live 7.3 years longer on average, and Adventist women live 4.4 years longer than the rest of California.
• Men who ate a lot of tomatoes had a 40% lower risk of prostate cancer.

Adventist Health Study-2: 2002-Present, involved 96,000 U.S. and Canadian Adventists over the age of 30. Results:

• Data show a progressive weight gain from a total vegetarian diet to a non-vegetarian diet.
• Vegans, for example, weigh approximately 30 pounds less than non-vegetarians of comparable height.
• Cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, and metabolic syndrome all followed the same pattern: the closer you were to become a vegetarian, the lower your risk in these areas. This is true for both Black and non-Black participants.
• Consuming a lot of cooked green vegetables, brown rice, legumes, and dried fruit has been linked to a lower risk of colon polyps, which is a precursor to colon cancer.
• A vegetarian diet was not linked to lower vitamin D levels. Other factors, such as the amount and intensity of sunlight exposure, had a greater impact on vitamin D levels.

References:

Find out more about Adventist Health Studies and Loma Linda University at adventisthealthstudy.org

1. Orlich, M. J., & Fraser, G. E. (2014). Vegetarian diets in the Adventist Health Study 2: a review of initial published findings. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 100 Suppl 1(1), 353S–8S. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.113.071233
2. Le, L. T., & Sabaté, J. (2014). Beyond meatless, the health effects of vegan diets: findings from the Adventist cohorts. Nutrients, 6(6), 2131–2147. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu6062131
3. Orlich, M. J., Singh, P. N., Sabaté, J., Jaceldo-Siegl, K., Fan, J., Knutsen, S., Beeson, W. L., & Fraser, G. E. (2013). Vegetarian dietary patterns and mortality in Adventist Health Study 2. JAMA internal medicine, 173(13), 1230–1238. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.6473
4. Tonstad, S., Stewart, K., Oda, K., Batech, M., Herring, R. P., & Fraser, G. E. (2013). Vegetarian diets and incidence of diabetes in the Adventist Health Study-2. Nutrition, metabolism, and cardiovascular diseases : NMCD, 23(4), 292–299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.numecd.2011.07.004
5. Arya, F., Egger, S., Colquhoun, D., Sullivan, D., Pal, S., & Egger, G. (2010). Differences in postprandial inflammatory responses to a ‘modern’ v. traditional meat meal: a preliminary study. The British journal of nutrition, 104(5), 724–728. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114510001042