Last Updated on November 9, 2023 by Fasting Planet
Your diet is one rich in red meat, including beef, ham, pork, and even veal on occasion. You try to eat your fruits and vegetables, and you think your diet is okay, or you did. Recently, you heard a statistic that vegans outlive meat-eaters. Is that true?
Vegans may live between six and 10 years longer than meat-eaters, says PETA. This is mostly due to their eschewing red meat, which may be a carcinogen and is packed full of cholesterol, saturated fat, and hormones.
In today’s post, we’ll take a deeper dive into why vegans enjoy longer lives than meat-eaters. If you’re thinking of quitting meat, this is one post you’re definitely going to want to pay attention to. The reasons to go vegan or even vegetarian are about to be made abundantly clear.
Why Vegans Live Longer Than Meat Eaters
Let’s go back to that PETA data for a moment. It was published in a PETA Prime article and cited a 2013 study from JAMA Internal Medicine. The study involved a large group of participants, which started at 96,469 people but decreased to 73,308 due to some exclusions.
The study began in 2002 and lasted until 2007, so it was five years. The researchers categorized their large class of participants into one of five different diets: vegans, lacto-ovo-vegetarians, pesco-vegetarians, semi-vegetarians, and nonvegetarians.
During the study period, 2,570 of the participants died. More of the deaths were attributed to the non-vegan diet than semi-vegetarianism or veganism. PETA says the study concluded that women might have 6.1 more years on this earth as a vegan and men up to 9.5 years more.
Why? We’re glad you asked. Here are the primary reasons vegans and vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters.
Plant-Based Foods Have More Minerals, Vitamins, and Nutrients
The plant-based diet is a natural one, so it’s packed with more of the things we need. That includes minerals, vitamins, and nutrients such as fiber and protein. Your eating habits also ensure you get more compounds such as antioxidants and phytochemicals.
Antioxidants are especially important to good health. These substances safeguard you from free radicals, a type of molecule that’s contained in tobacco smoke. Your body also makes free radicals when you digest food. Consuming more antioxidants can prevent free radical damage, including:
- Parkinson’s disease
- Huntington’s disease
- Diabetes
- Premature aging and the symptoms that go along with it, among them gray hair, skin wrinkles, and loose, saggy skin
- Cataracts and other vision issues
- Cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory or autoimmune disorders
- Cardiovascular disease
- Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other diseases of the central nervous system
Phytochemicals, or plant-based chemical compounds, are also a huge part of the vegan diet. Breast Cancer.org states that phytochemicals in food may prevent carcinogen exposure. If the carcinogens do get through, they should damage cells at a reduced rate.
To ward off cancer, the best phytochemicals to add to your diet are isothiocyanates, polyphenols, resveratrol, and carotenoids. Isothiocyanates are found in vegetables such as cauliflower, turnip greens, mustard greens, kale, kohlrabi, Brussel sprouts, broccoli, collards, bok choy, and cabbage.
Tea is a great source of polyphenols, and red wine (often vegan but not always) contains high levels of resveratrol. Vegetables and fruits, especially veggies like carrots, will ensure you get beta carotene and other carotenoids in your diet.
A Vegan Diet Is Often Lower in Calories
This one is an obvious benefit, but it’s still worth mentioning, we think. It’s no secret that plant-based foods are naturally low in calories. If you’ve ever looked up the nutritional information for your favorite fruits and vegetables, you’ve seen this for yourself.
Nuts, although they’re more calorically-dense, are high in fiber. You’ll stay fuller longer so you don’t go poking through your snack cabinet or refrigerator in an hour or so.
Depending on your source of meat, the number of calories per serving varies, but no red meat is calorically light. Just check out this list to see what we mean:
- Beef – 407 calories per 164 grams (one steak)
- Beef tenderloin – 305 calories per 140 grams (one steak)
- Chicken breast – 344 calories per breast
- Chicken leg – 346 calories per leg
- Chicken thighs – 254 calories per thigh
- Filet mignon – 278 calories per 104 grams (one small steak)
- Flank steak – 365 calories per 188 grams (one steak)
- Flat-iron steak – 345 calories per 252 grams (one steak)
- Ground beef – 172 calories per 70 grams (one burger patty)
- New York strip steak – 426 calories per 214 grams (one steak)
- Pork – 363 calories per chop
- T-bone steak – 580 calories per 287 grams (one steak)
Ingesting more calories increases your likelihood of becoming overweight, then obese. The more weight you carry on your body, the greater your health risks. Obesity can cause osteoarthritis, gallbladder disease, stroke, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension.
Meat Is Full of Cholesterol and Saturated Fat
You’re always told by your doctor to keep your cholesterol levels down, and eating meat isn’t conducive to that in the slightest. Cholesterol, which is how much fat the blood contains, is produced in the liver. Depending on your diet, you can also increase your cholesterol levels.
The biggest offenders if you’re trying to maintain low cholesterol are milk, cheese, butter, eggs, fish, and meat. A three-ounce serving of red meat, which is 85 grams, may contain up to 62 milligrams of cholesterol. If you’re ingesting more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day, then you’re overdoing it, says the American Heart Association. That’s not too hard to do if your diet is built around red meat.
Not all cholesterol is bad, as you’re surely aware. Low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol is the poorer of the two types of cholesterol because it delivers more cholesterol to your blood. High-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol takes that cholesterol away.
Elevated cholesterol levels increase your risk of stroke and heart attack.
If that wasn’t bad enough, besides being high in cholesterol, meat also contains a lot of saturated fat. Despite that some cholesterol can be good for you, that’s not the case with this source of fat at all. The bonded fatty acid chains in saturated fat can encourage the accumulation of cholesterol in the blood while making you more likely to develop heart disease.
Processed Meat May Be a Carcinogen
Perhaps you’re still not convinced that red meat should be avoided going forward. This ought to do it.
The World Health Organization or WHO shared this report about the cancer-causing likelihood of red meat. The research took place in 2014 through the International Agency for Research on Cancer or IARC and the WHO.
The two organizations categorized processed meat as Group 1 and red meat as Group 2A. Wait, what are those numbers and what do they mean? Well, Group 1 agents are proven carcinogens. As the WHO says, “there is convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer.” To come to that conclusion, the WHO and IARC reviewed many epidemiological studies.
We discussed how processed meats are carcinogens in our eBook on animal byproducts, which is worth a read if you missed it. Between the cooking methods of processed meats and the chemical processing they undergo during manufacturing, long-term consumption could be very dangerous.
For context, the WHO also puts asbestos and tobacco in Group 1.
What about Group 2A? Although there’s less of a strong link, the WHO states that they have found “positive associations between eating red meat and developing colorectal cancer as well as strong mechanistic evidence.” It’s not just colorectal cancer that’s a risk, but prostate and pancreatic cancers as well.
Tips for Acclimating to the Vegan Diet
Last week, we published a lengthy post on going vegan in 2021 that was chock full of tips for adjusting to the diet. If you missed that post, here are some of our top pointers recapped for you now.
Try Vegetarianism First
Jumping right into veganism is a huge dietary shock. You might want to start with the in-between of eating meat and going vegan, which is vegetarianism. The vegetarian diet omits meat and poultry but still allows you to consume dairy, eggs, honey, and most other animal byproducts.
We’d suggest you go vegetarian for at least several months. If the diet suits you, then you can continue modifying what you eat so you’re completely vegan.
Omit One Food Group at a Time
This doesn’t have to be an overnight process. Ease your way into veganism by taking it one food group at a time. Start with an easy one so you can have an instant win. For example, the first week of your vegan diet, you cut out honey.
Continue working your way up to harder and harder food groups. During your second week, you might remove eggs from your diet, then milk. By the time you get to omitting foods you love such as cheese, you’ll already be a pro at modifying your diet.
Find Support
The vegan diet, while rewarding for your health and your longevity, is not always easy. Without a support system, you may feel cut off from your friends and loved ones. You can’t shop at the same grocery stores as them anymore, nor can you share dishes when you go to a restaurant or cook at home.
With some vegan confidants on your side, you can share your frustration about these isolating experiences and get tips on how to overcome them. This will keep you going with conviction!
Conclusion
The proof is in the data. Plant-based foods are lower in calories, cholesterol-free, and far less likely to cause cancer than red meat. Vegans might get close to 10 more years of life compared to meat-eaters. Not only does their diet provide more longevity, but it’s better for our planet and the animals that inhabit it.
Cutting red meat out of your diet alone is a step in the right direction. We hope this post encourages you to do so!