On March 28, I reported that the media had failed to pick up the story about a study associating a vegan diet with a lower risk of cataracts.

It took awhile, but a story surfaced on April 8, Vegetarian diet linked to lower cataract risk by Leigh Krietsch Boerner for Reuters.

Of course, they interview Dr. Jack Dodick, who was not part of the study, and who proceeds to discount the findings with a final comment of, “The moral of the story is, live life in moderation[.] A healthy active lifestyle with exercise might decrease the risk of cataracts.”

While one epidemiological study cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a vegan diet leads to less cataracts than a meat-eating diet, it was pretty funny how they took a study showing vegans had lower cataracts and turned it into the idea that moderation and exercise might reduce cataracts.

I love to hear good news about my good habits!

It’s funny – when bad news comes out about vegan diets, news articles are quickly written and disseminated, and I get to spend the day fielding emails about them. But where is the media when good news comes out about the vegan diet? I couldn’t find anything in the mainstream media.

That means I am probably the first to let you know about some good news just reported from EPIC-Oxford – Vegans were found to have a statistically significant, 40% reduced risk of cataracts.

The study was limited to those in EPIC-Oxford who were 40 years or older at recruitment. More details can be found in Disease Rates of Vegetarians and Vegans and in the abstract linked to below.

Reference:

Appleby PN, Allen NE, Key TJ. Diet, vegetarianism, and cataract risk. Am J
Clin Nutr. 2011 Mar 23. [Epub ahead of print] (Link)

Ginny Messina made an interesting blog post on Reliable Nutrition Information for Vegans. Click here to read. And I’m not just posting it because she gives my work a plug, though I do appreciate it!

In July, the American Dietetic Association released a new position paper on vegetarian diets. You can click here to read it.

The information is not new, but it’s a good synopsis of all the pertinent research on vegetarian diets. It’s also a handy link to give to all the people out there who still do not think people can be healthy as vegetarians.

Nothing earth-shattering, but I just updated VeganHealth.org with the nutrient intakes of vegetarian and vegans from a 2003 EPIC-Oxford paper.

I’ve referred to pieces of this information in other articles, so I finally decided to list it in one place.

Click here.