Recent article” Vegetarian Diet Risk of Stroke”

The British Medical Journal published a recent research article from Epic-Oxford Group, the study was run from 1993 until 2001 people who had not had any cardiovascular disease. Vegans and vegetarians were out into a group, other groups are meat eaters, and fish eaters.

What they found

Fish and vegetarian/vegan show a statistically significant dropped in heart disease than meat eaters. When they look at risk of stroke show an increased for the group that was vegan/vegetarians. However, this was not statistically significant. Statistically significant means that it was not due to chance, since this finding is not statistically significant it could be due to chance.

Study Details

The recent news headlines have been reporting on this study. This study was quite large with 48,000 people asked food questions and they were put into three groups meat eaters, fish eater and vegetarian/vegan group. 50% of the study people were meat eaters, 7500 were fish eaters, 16000 were vegans/vegetarians and they were followed for 18 years.  The study reported 3000 new heart disease cases and 1000 new strokes, 520 had bland ischemic strokes (non bleeders), and 300 bleeding strokes.

How to Interpret the Results

They found 20% increase in stroke, again nonstatistical but what exactly does that mean? if you have 1000 people over a 10 year period 3 more people had strokes but this could have been due to chance or in this case if you look at the supplemental article, the amount of fiber eaten by vegetarians 14,000 was quite low, better for vegans 1800 and the diet was not optimal as many could have been eating ultra-processed foods. Vegetarians were eating a lot of cheese and highly saturated foods

The data show statistically improvement of fish and non-meat eater over meat eaters, it did show decrease in heat disease and a non-statistically significant of stroke that could be attributed to non-optimal diet. Many other studies and data that show health improvement with whole food plant base diet.

Many trials from respectful organizations like Harvard have shown that even a vegetarian or vegan diet that is full of processed foods, frozen, microwave or junk foods is no better than the standard American diet.

Take Away 

Eat more whole food plant based and reduction in meat to improve your health and help the planet.