How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

by Michael Greger

Both the vegetarian and traditional Asian diet groups were following healthy diets, avoiding soda, for example. Despite the similarities in diet among the four thousand study subjects and after accounting for weight, family history, exercise, and smoking, the researchers found that the vegetarian men had only half the odds of diabetes as the occasional meat eaters. The vegetarian women had 75 percent lower odds of diabetes. Those who avoided meat altogether appeared to have significantly lower risk of both prediabetes and diabetes than those who ate plant-based diets with an occasional serving of meat, including fish. The researchers were unable to compare the diabetes rates of the more than one thousand vegetarians in the study to the sixty-nine vegans in the group, however, because the prevalence of diabetes among those eating strictly plant-based was zero.