People who don’t eat meat are more likely to break bones, especially their hips. This is evident from the largest study to date on this topic.
The increased risk may be due to a lack of calcium and protein in the diet. In addition, vegetarians and vegans are often thinner and therefore have less meat to absorb a fall.
Previous studies had shown that vegetarians have weaker bones than meat eaters, but it was still unclear whether this actually has an effect on their risk of fractures. The new research used data from a long-term study called EPIC-Oxford. It was originally set up to see whether diet affects the risk of cancer. The health of about 65,000 people in the UK has been mapped as of 1993. The study recorded those people’s diet and tracked their health through hospital records.
More than twice as much
In 2010, vegans had more than twice as many broken hips as meat eaters. Vegetarians and fish eaters had a smaller increase in risk, at about 25 percent. Additionally, unlike vegetarians and pescotarians, vegans had a higher risk of breaking bones other than hips as well.
That increased risk of fractures for vegans is relatively small: about twenty extra broken bones per thousand people over ten years. But the percentage is probably higher in the elderly, who are more likely to break hips anyway.
Enriched vegan products
Dietary analyzes show that meat eaters consume more calcium and protein. Calcium is an important constituent of bones and proteins can promote the absorption of calcium from food. ‘Unless they actively supplement this, vegans are quite unlikely to get enough calcium,’ he says Tammy Tong, nutritional scientist at the University of Oxford.
However, it is possible that people who follow a vegan diet today have higher calcium levels. “In the 1990s, there were fewer fortified vegan products,” says Tong.
Heather Russell, dietitian at the Vegan Society, says: “It is certainly possible to take care of your bones with a good vegan diet. But people do need information to make healthy choices. ‘
An analysis of the same group of people has previously shown that vegetarianism is linked to a lower risk of cancer: a reduction in cancer about 10 percent after 15 years. Also, roughly speaking, vegetarians have 20 percent less risk of heart disease. On the other hand, there is a higher risk of a stroke: about 20 percent.
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