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What is the basis of the belief that vegetarians are healthier than meat-eaters?

A vegetarian can consume as much cake, cookies, pie and ice cream as they please. That's not healthy. A vegetarian can consume processed foods along with all of those desserts mentioned. That's not healthy. How can anyone say that vegetarians are healthier than meaters without any other details whatsoever? Where do you get such information?

Public Comments

1. Guess what's coming with dinner? Animal diseases in your meat! If you feel comfortable knowing that you are 50% more likely to develop cancerous tumors, and other diseases than a vegetarian is, feast away on the flesh of dead animals to your heart's content. Aki T - Wrong. White meat linked with colon cancer: http://www.aliv-e.com/EN/education/articles/nutren1.asp http://www.animalliberation.org.au/vegocolo.php I can find more but I will stop here for now.
2. Supposedly they are. But I think a person who eats a balanced diet with a small portion of meat is just as healthy. I think most vegs say that because they like to feel a lot more powerful than people who eat meat. I'm a veg, but I still feel the same as when I used to eat small portions of meat. In fact, right now, I'm going through a cold, which isn't very fun. A veg diet can be made unhealthy if not eaten correctly, just like an omnivorous diet can be made unhealthy if not eaten correctly. runi--do some research. It's red meat that increases cancer. If meat caused cancer, my parents would have been dead decades ago, and I would have been dead more than thirteen years ago. And guess what? I reported you.
3. animal meat has growth hormones and all shorts of stuff in it
4. The fact that animal meats are loaded with trans fats, saturated fats, and cholesterol.
5. I'm pescetarian and don't eat cake, cookies, pie, or ice cream because it has milk in it. But I think meat eaters are pretty healthy. I'm not becoming a vegetarian for the health reasons. I just can't stand eating an animal. It just kind of grosses me out.
6. A person who consumes meat weekly is ALOT more liable to develop a type of cancer, and I stress on the world ALOT. Meat was never the best option for food, but it has now come to our attention more than ever with the diseases rapidly increasing in animals. Aki T - Reported for engaging in personal chat/communication.
7. For one thing you are not eating a diseased animal. Another thing is you can never be sure if they treated the animal (that you are eating) properly. KFC treats their animals horribly. I am a vegetarian and I do not stuff cake, cookies down my throat all day and either way a meat eater has the same consumption, if not more, as a vegetarian. Common Sense and Internet.
8. Vegetarians are not necessarily healthier than meat-eaters. The basis of that belief, however, is the fact that a typical vegetarian diet - which usually consists of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, legumes, and low-fat protein sources like soy - is generally healthier than a typical non-vegetarian diet, which is mainly meat with simple carbohydrates or starches (like potatoes or white bread), and very little vegetables. Of course someone cannot eat as much junk food as they want and claim to be healthier than someone else just because they don't eat meat - that would be absurd. On the other hand, a person who never eats junk food, but always eats a lot of meat, can't make that claim either. Any nutritionist will tell you that the healthiest eating habits are those that prominently feature lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Vegetarians usually have that kind of diet. A non-vegetarian can have that kind of diet as well; you don't have to completely give up meat to start eating healthy. I would say that a good rule of thumb is to make sure you're eating at least as much veggies (by weight) as meat, starches, or processed grains. P.S. Some vegetarians are vegetarian for moral reasons. Don't get caught up in that unless you want to. It is not a necessary part of being vegetarian or incorporating vegetarian eating into your meat-eating diet.
9. I don't eat meat because of the unhealthy things the animals are fed like each other, hormones etc. My father's friend raises cattle for a living and he told me he would never eat beef out of his commercial herd, but only from the small herd he keeps for his family. That put me off beef for good.
10. Pride and wishful thinking. The points you make more than address the issue. Okinari---do you know it's a violation to tell someone you've reported them? Meriah---The meat KFC gets is already dead and cut into parts. How can they treat that badly?? **
11. Statistics bear out the fact that vegetarians have lower risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke; that they have lower blood pressure and serum cholesterol; that they have less chance of becoming obese or developing type II diabetes; and that they have less risk of developing certain types of cancer, most notably colorectal cancer. Statistically, vegetarians live 6-10 years longer. All of this is supported by medical research. None of it, of course, says anything about any individual vegetarians. Yes, one could definitely by a junk food vegetarian and not be able to claim any of the health benefits. But I suspect that, on the whole, vegetarians are somewhat more attuned to the healthfulness of what they eat and their health overall. For example, vegetarians have lower instances of lung cancer, which is less likely due to any dietary protection against lung cancer than it is due to the fact that vegetarians are less likely to smoke.
12. You are absolutely correct, correlation does not prove correlation. A vegetarian can eat extremely unhealthy. However, since all other things being equal a vegetarian diet is generally viewed as healthier, people who are concerned about their health and want to remain healthy are more likely to become vegetarian in the first place.
13. The American Dietetic Association is one of the nation's leading nutrition experts, and the organization states: "...vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases....Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer." Research has shown that vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease, and they have 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters. Check out "The China Study" book for more info on this. Yes, a diet of mostly sweets isn't healthy, whether the person is vegetarian or omnivore. It's important to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and grains. As a group, though, vegetarians are healthier than meat-eaters.
14. Either diet can be healthy or unhealthy. I think though that, although of course it's possible to be a veg*n and live on junk food, overall veg*ns tend to be more health conscious - and I said 'tend to' I haven't made a generalisation about meat-eaters. It's likely that many people choosing to become vegetarian are already health-conscious and make the decision on health grounds. I agree that much of the information sources given to back up claims that veg*ns are healthier is not scientific but comes from biased sources. An example is the links someone gives re white meat and colon cancer. What cancer doctors (as opposed to vegetarian and animal liberation websites) are generally prepared to say is that diets HIGH in meat MAY increase the incidence of colon cancer by increasing the fecal concentration of various carcinogens; a high intake of animal fat also may increase the risk of colon cancer and it is also POSSIBLE that carcinogens are produced by cooking meat at very high temperatures.
15. It comes from this thing we have called science. Every year scientists all around the world perform research prjects looking at various factors. If they find anything interesting or unusual, it gets published. But there is too much stuff for anybody to understand themselves, so other scientists make reviews of all the publications and judge them in order of merit. Then they look for relationships in those large groups of studies. Most recently the American Institute for Cancer Research reviewed 7000 studies looking at cancer and diet. This took them five years, and they found that poeple who ate meat were far more likely to get cancer than vegetarians (http://www.aicr.org/site/PageServer?pagename=dc_home_guides). These were cancers associated with the digestive system such as colorectal (aka bowel) cancers, stomach, oesophagal and pancreatic cancers. Vegetarians have very good protein to fibre ratio, so that probably cancels out the negative effects of eating protein, which is thought by some health professionals to be the cause of diabetes and obesity (http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html)