Vegans More Likely to Break Bones Than Meat Eaters, Study Finds | Hacker News Reader

Vegans More Likely to Break Bones Than Meat Eaters, Study Finds

newsweek.com

27 pointsoedmarap22 comments

Well, maybe the vegans more often ride a bicycle than the other group because they care more about the environment.

EDIT: also have a look at the numbers: 65,000 people of which "nearly 2,000" were vegans, so only 3% of the sample. And they found "20 more cases per 1,000 people", so an increase by 2%. The study is likely to have an error margin of more than 3%. And the study "did not account for poor bone health or accidents".

Not accounting for accidents seems inexcusable considering the subject matter. Why bother even spending the time writing this up? The downside is that a bunch of click bait “news” sites will pick this up and publish a load of nonsense without context.

That vegans - in the comparison to a conventional nutrition - take less of certain nutrients without food addition, is well-known. One can therefore ask why such a study is necessary. Possibly the chapter "Funding" of the study provides a hint: The work is supported by [...] Wellcome Trust Our Planet Our Health (Livestock, Environment, and People, LEAP 205212/Z/16/Z); see https://www.leap.ox.ac.uk/home.

EDIT: recently I watched "The Game Changers" (https://gamechangersmovie.com/) which shows a rather different view on our nutrition and its relation with health and environment, highly recommended.

I wonder if it could be caused by them being more health concious and doing physical activities that increase the risk of injury. The article even mentions that it could be because they have a lower BMI, so their bones don't have as much of a fat cushion to absorb impacts.

"We found that some of these nutrients, which can have implications in neurologic disorders, anemia, bone strength and other health concerns, can be deficient in poorly planned vegan diets.... Vegans may be at increased risk of deficiencies in vitamin B12, iron, calcium, vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids and protein."

Fields,H.,Ruddy, B., Wallace, M. R., Shah A., Millstine, D., & Marks, L. (2016). How to monitor and advise vegans to ensure adequate nutrient intake. The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, 116(2), 96. doi:10.7556/jaoa.2016.022

“Poorly planned vegan diets” is key. Oreos are vegan. Being vegan doesn’t necessarily meant you eat a lot of fruit and vegetables and pulses and nuts and seeds.

As a “vegan” I prefer the term Whole Food, Plant Based, which at least avoids the Oreos and other manufactured crap that suffers from the same deficiencies as non-vegan manufactured crap.

The issue is that there are 500 different kinds of vegeteriansism/veganism/omnivorism/carnivorism.

So if a certain person eats a slighty different variant across his lifetime you could easily have one person become deficient in X but the other one won't even though they both follow "roughly" the same diet (eg vegan).

Also the extremists in each diet camp are the loudest ones always, and those extemists will be the last to see the forest for the trees (eg how a slight variation could be beneficial).

In general no one knows what the best diet is.

Up until ~100 years ago we just needed food to SURVIVE. Now the question becomes: once we have all food available 24/7: which is the best food to THRIVE on?

The body isn't that good when it comes to detecting this, eg if we'd let the body do its thing it would just eat cookies all day long..

For a lot of vegans, the question isn’t so much what diet is best to thrive on (it’s clear that humans can thrive on a lot of diets), but rather, “What diet is most compassionate.”

Off topic but I noticed your name and wanted to say I am a huge fan of Zen Habits! You are making the world a better place. Thank you!

What's surprising about this is soy, greens, and legumes are all naturally rich in calcium. Fortunately I've yet to find a vegan multivitamin that doesn't have calcium and most people I know are taking one these days for Vitamin B12. At the same time I am curious what other factors for bone health besides dietary calcium a vegan might be deficient in.

The article mentions BMI. Which makes sense, muscle and fat mass will cushion impacts.

Unfortunately, I've realized there are two types of vegans. Vegans, who know this and stick to well-rounded nutritional diets. And then "vegans", who I would grossly summarize as "obtains 1/3 of every day's calories from potato chips". The former group have figured it out, but I worry for the latter group.

“Whole Food, Plant Based” for the win! We need to jettison terms like Vegan which are too watered down to mean anything and politicized enough that they manage to divide rather than unite toward a goal of overall health improvement.

An interesting factor often overlooked in both the vegan and vegetarian community is bioavailability. So despite soy, greens and legumes being rich in calcium, the calcium might not be available for the body to use.

Vitamin K2 is critical to bone health and most/best forms of it (MK-4) are found in organ meat and fermented dairy.

There are supplements derived from natto that are vegan friendly, but in the less desirable MK-7 form.

From the article:

Dr. Tong said: "Well-balanced and predominantly plant-based diets can result in improved nutrient levels and have been linked to lower risks of diseases including heart disease and diabetes.

Headline (paraphrased):

VEGANS BAD!!!!!!!

Please just don't make the mistake that most people I come into contact with make and lump vegans and vegetarians into the same category. Completely different.

This shouldn’t be downvoted. As a vegan it is extremely common to be offered fish or cheese. Travelling in China a few years ago, I ordered through a guide a vegan meal and was surprised to find chicken in it! Best to jettison the terms altogether and focus on Whole Food, Plant Based. Can’t argue fish or cheese or chicken meet that definition!

I saw a poster in an Arby's (fast food restaurant chain specializing in roast beef) that said "Don't Worry, Vegetarians, We Also Have Turkey & Chicken". Here's a photo I found of it [1].

[1] https://foursquare.com/v/arbys/4b849cd7f964a520473e31e3?open...

causation does not equal correlation, there are various things the study does not cover, for example the people most likely to become vegan are those with health issues so they become vegan to get around digestion issues, inflamation, weight gain etc.. they already have a body that is not in the best condition. then there are the opposite who are super fit and going to be doing athletics and putting themselves more at risk

It would be interesting how vegeterians compare to vegans and meat / fish eaters.

For the most of people, we, vegetarians are the same as vegans. So the either thinks that vegans are vegetarians or vice versa.

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