The popularity of vegetarian diets has increased the need for studies on long-term health outcomes of vegetarian diets in human. A limited number of studies, including only one study from a non-vegetarian population, investigated the risk of mortality with self-identified vegetarianism and reported inconsistent results. Therefore, a study by Blackie et al., (2023) conducted a prospective study with 117, 673 participants evaluating the association between vegetarian diets and all-cause mortality. After an average follow-up for 18 years, 39,763 participants deceased and the risk of all-cause mortality was not statistically significantly different among omnivores group, lacto-and/or ovo-vegetarian group, pesco-vegetarians and vegans. The study concluded that the mortality risk did not differ when compared to lacto- and/or ovo-vegetarians plus vegans with meat/fish eaters (omnivores and pesco-vegetarians) (hazard ratio 1.09, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.93-1.28). Authors advocated for further investigation into this phenomenon since vegetarian diet was previously thought to reduce the all-cause mortality compared to non-vegetarian diets.

References

Blackie K, Bobe G, Takata Y. J Health Popul Nutr. 2023 Nov 23;42(1):130