Risk of death in meat and non-meat eaters

BMJ 1994;309:955 (8 October)

Letters

Risk of death in meat and non-meat eaters

EDITOR, - Margaret Thorogood and colleagues omit what is arguablythe most important summary statistic from the abstract of theirpaper comparing mortality in vegetarians with that in meat eaters.¹A comparison of total (all cause) mortality after five years(after the well known "healthy volunteer effect" has had timeto wear off) shows a relative risk of 0.99 (95% confidence interval0.76 to 1.30). Classifying (and comparing) cause of death ismore subjective than is reporting the fact of death itself.²Jan P Vandenbroucke has remarked on the authors' unusual methodof selecting controls.¹ Burr and Sweetnam compared similar numbersof vegetarian volunteers with non- vegetarian volunteers invitedin a comparable manner and found a death rate ratio (all causes)of 0.96 (0.81 to 1.13), which did not alter appreciably afterthe exclusion of early deaths (those occurring in the firstyear).³ Vegetarian volunteers clearly have a low standardised. . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Risk of death from cancer and ischaemic heart disease in meat and non-meat eaters: M Thorogood, J Mann, P Appleby, and K McPherson
BMJ 1994 308: 1667-1670. [Abstract] [Full Text]