A study of 45,000 British adults found that not eating meat or fish was associated with better heart health, while vegetarians also displayed lower levels of harmful cholesterol in their blood and reduced systolic, or maximum, blood pressure.
Between the ages of 50 and 70, the chances of dying, or becoming seriously ill, with heart disease were 6.8% for nonvegetarians and 4.6% for vegetarians. A total of 34% of participants were vegetarian, the vast majority of whom were women. The study, undertaken in the UK, was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
