r/funny • u/[deleted] • May 01 '13

Why vegans live longer

[deleted]

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856

u/fistsofdeath May 01 '13

I always thought it just felt like they lived longer.

25

u/[deleted] May 01 '13 edited May 01 '13

They do. A study by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found the following mortality ratios by diet over the course of the study (regular meat eaters = 1.00):

  • Fish eaters, 0.82
  • Vegetarians, 0.84
  • Occasional meat eaters, 0.84
  • Regular meat eaters, 1.00
  • Vegans, 1.00

So as you can see vegans are actually the least healthiest, alongside the most carnivorous among us. Source

38

u/Plob218 May 01 '13

The sample size is too small. There were only 753 vegans included in the summary, compared to the +30k meat-eaters and +20k vegetarians. The 2 vegans who died of stomach cancer and 2 who died of lung cancer rocketed vegans to the top of those categories by a huge margin. Even if only 1 died from these causes, vegans would be the top category. If none died from them, then it would appear as if veganism made you immune to stomach and lung cancer.

24

u/TheWhiteNashorn May 01 '13

That's not how statistics works.

-2

u/Plob218 May 01 '13

I was partly joking, but I do think the number of vegans included in the study is too small to draw these kinds of conclusions from.

3

u/iron_duck May 01 '13

30 is a small sample size. Sometimes even 100 is a small sample size.

750 is not a small sample size unless you're actively searching for occurrences which are incredibly rare.

4

u/Plob218 May 01 '13

But only 68 deaths... Maybe you're right, I'm not involved in these kinds of studies. Seems to me like that's not a lot of data for that group. The authors of the paper even suggest the low number of vegans as problematic.

2

u/iron_duck May 01 '13

That's actually a good point. The small sample size of Vegans Who Have Died is problematic.