Healthy vegetarian diets support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against numerous diseases, including our country’s three biggest killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes. The American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians have “lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; … lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer” and that vegetarians are less likely than meat-eaters to be obese.Okay, I guess I can believe most of that. Meats are fatty and all of that. I do have some issues with talking about obesity in meat-eaters, though, what with rampant anorexia and whatnot. To me, it sounds a lot like playing on people's fears of weight gain.
Vegetarian diets can also supposedly increase IQ. I was skeptical of this claim and did some extra research. According to this BBC article, vegetarianism does not promote higher IQs so much as children with higher IQs usually become vegetarians. Additionally, this "higher" IQ is only 5 points above the average IQ: 106 compared to 101 for men and 104 compared to 99 for women. It is also very important to note that there was no difference in IQ for "strict" vegetarians and "vegetarians" who also ate chicken and fish (I have news for those people: those are both meat). So parents, don't think that raising your children as vegetarians will cause them to grow up into the next Einstein.
Works Cited
"Eating for Life." GoVeg.com. PETA. 24 Oct. 2008
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