A study from Taiwan shows differences between vegans, lacto-ovo vegetarians, and omnivores (1).

I’m only going to report the findings for vegans, but the study abstract lists the findings for lacto-ovo vegetarians if you’re interested.

At baseline, vegans had lower rates of abnormally high waist circumference, body mass index, blood pressure, blood glucose, total cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol. Vegans had a higher rate of abnormally low HDL cholesterol, but a lower rate of abnormally high total to HDL cholesterol ratio (which is more important than absolute HDL levels). Theses finding are all very similar to what’s been found in Western vegans.

Subjects were followed for an average of 2 years. The one statistically significant finding during follow-up for vegans was that each additional year of a vegan diet lowered the risk of obesity by 7%.

Other items of note are that the lower rates of high blood pressure could be explained by lower body mass index and that vegans ate the smallest amount of fried foods of any diet group.

In conclusion, Taiwanese vegans have better metabolic markers than omnivores.

References

1. Chiu YF, Hsu CC, Chiu TH, Lee CY, Liu TT, Tsao CK, Chuang SC, Hsiung CA. Cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of metabolic profiles between vegetarian and non-vegetarian subjects: a matched cohort study. Br J Nutr. 2015 Sep 10:1-8. [Epub ahead of print] | link

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