Eating only fruits and vegetables would not be such a healthy diet according to the results of a study conducted by researchers from the Medical University of Graz in Austria.
Researchers at this Austrian university analyzed medical data from 15,000 people and compared the health of people with different diets.
“We started our study with 15,000 case studies and we divided the controls into food groups. We selected 343 vegetarians and then looked at their age, gender, and social and economic background, which included education level, income, and career. We then compared vegetarians with people with similar characteristics in the other three food groups,” explains Nathalie Burkert, epidemiologist and co-author of this study.
The researchers found that while vegetarians had a body mass index (BMI) weaker than the others and that they drank less alcohol, they nevertheless declared to be in poor health, to suffer from allergies, to have a lower quality of life and to have poor social relations.
The Mediterranean diet is good for your health
The results of this analysis also suggest that the healthiest diet is the Mediterranean diet, a mixed diet rich in fruits and vegetables, fish and low meat. In fact, the participants who eat this diet mostly reported feeling fit and suffering less from chronic diseases. These witnesses rarely consulted doctors.
Nathalie Burkert remains tempered all the same about the conclusions of the study and affirms that “we cannot say what is the cause and what is the effect of this phenomenon, because we have not evaluated whether the vegetarians have chosen this diet because they had a poorer quality of life, or whether being a vegetarian is the cause of this poor quality of life. She concludes, however, that “vegetarians who do not prefer to eat meat in moderation could modify their diet and supplement it with protein-rich alternatives to be healthier. »
