Vegan Diet Associated with Lower Risk of 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)
March 28th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Small error?
“The results appeared to be confined to those aged ≥ [***]65[***] years at recruitment.”
March 28th, 2011 at 1:02 pm
> Small error?
Thanks for emailing me about that. No, it’s not an error. There were no differences between the diet groups in those younger than 65. But that could be because there were much fewer cases of cataracts.
March 28th, 2011 at 5:07 pm
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.
Yes, if a study showed that there might be a fraction of a percent in the reduction of risk of any disease by eating beef it would be all over the news as “Eating Beef May Cure ____”.
It will be a great day when the bean council has more money than the beef council.
April 4th, 2011 at 9:13 am
Dear Jack,
I am from Taiwan. Today i saw this website incidentally, and i love it.
sorry my English is not that good, i can not describe what i want to say completely….also i can not totally understand all thesis you posted. But i got your point, and i support you 100%, i knew that you are doing the right thing. I born in 1986, and I’ve been vegetarian for over 20 years. Of course i will keep going on till my life finished.
Human shouldn’t just kill any lives easily only for a meal. there are lot of things we can eat in the earth.
Glad to found this website, i will keep reading also practice my English-reading ability. Life is fair.
Thanks for your effort to protect animals.
Regards,
Cassidy Chen
April 4th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
[…] the media gives a flying ****. Whereas if the reverse were true, we’d never hear the end of it. Link. Spread the […]
April 4th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
[…] Jack Norris blogs that middle aged and elderly vegans are 40 percent less likely to get cataracts than non-vegans, but nobody in the media gives a flying fuck. And he correctly points out that if the reverse were true, we’d never hear the end of it. Link. […]
April 5th, 2011 at 10:11 am
Quite ironic to see vegan.com (or animal-free.net) to complain about bias in mainstream media while misrepresenting the study (“[…] middle aged and elderly vegans are 40 percent less likely to get cataracts than non-vegans […]”).
But what do I care, you won’t publish this comment either, mein Fuhrer.
April 5th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Anonymous,
> But what do I care, you won’t publish this comment either, mein Fuhrer.
No, I don’t put all your comments through because some readers subscribe to my comments and I don’t want them to have to read all your comments, some of which I don’t find very important. If you left a real email address for yourself, then I could write you about them, but you are apparently afraid of something. In any case, I am putting this one through just to let you (since I have no other way to communicate with you) know that I don’t put the comments by you through that I find impertinent to the discussion.
> Quite ironic to see vegan.com (or animal-free.net) to complain about bias in mainstream media while misrepresenting the study
I don’t think Erik purposefully misrepresented the study – he probably didn’t click through to read the details. Or perhaps he didn’t fully understand them. In any case, the mistake was not huge.
April 5th, 2011 at 11:31 am
Very true! My optometrist marveled at my eye health and knew the first time I saw him when I moved here, that I was eating more veggies than his usual patients. In fact, he sells some kind of supplement at the checkout counter for improved eye health and to help prevent or slow cataracts and macular degeneration…for patients who don’t eat veggies, he said. Whatever. 🙂 Ask your doctor if veggies are right for you. 😉 Thanks for the post.