Vegetarians defend patch

Grandma told us that eating our greens would make us strong and healthy. But recently, arguments for including LOTS of vegetables in our diets – even REPLACING meat with them – extend to issues concerning our health (too much meat is bad for us!), the environment (polluted water ways and global warming!) and animal welfare (animals suffer because of industrial farming!).

These are important issues that deserve the public’s attention and are reflected in the efforts of a variety of stakeholders to encourage people to have more meatless meals such as celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley Whitingstall, as well as the online ‘Meatless Monday’ movement.

An article, published in the NZ Herald, 'Vegetarians are less healthy and happy' and based on a study by the Medical University of Graz in Austria (see full published paper here) risks undoing a lot of the good that the aforementioned campaigns have done by stating vegetarian diets are associated with ill health, consequently biasing the reader into believing vegetarian diets cause ill health. The article only mentions in passing that causal inferences can’t (and shouldn’t) be made, but this is done so at the very end of the article and is not elaborated on.

What should be explained is that we cannot make causal claims about vegetarian diets, because it is as likely that many other factors contribute to the findings that vegetarians have poorer health. One plausible explanation worth considering is that people in poorer health make changes to their diet (for example, adopting a vegetarian diet) to improve their condition. In which case, the finding that vegetarians have poorer health would be explained by the vegetarian diet suiting those with poor health in the first place.

In conclusion: Please do not take the Herald article and the study on which it is based as “proof” that vegetarians are ‘wrong.’ Whilst I would not argue that we all need to become vegetarians, accepting that significant evidence points to the fact that it is a valid and safe diet to follow is important.  Articles like this can fuel biased arguments against limiting meat consumption at a time when plant powered meals should be celebrated!

Opinion: posted 5 May 2014