I also posted a similar article on my Facebook. That article is located here. I now have two vegetarian friends or pseudo-friends who are, essentially, very unhappy I've posted this. One began attacking comments in the article. She was right; if you read the CBS article, the last sentence is a garbled mash of nonsense. However, I had already looked up the actual study, published here and pointed out that her objections to my link were based solely on the strength of the article and not the study itself, which she could read (and I linked it). She actually got at least her master's, if not her doctorate, in a scientific field and I thought she would be interested to read the study. I called it a "classic case of 'we have found a bunch of correlations but we cannot say a vegetarian diet caused anything we have observed, really.' "
Instead she refused to address any of the scientific shortcomings of the study, despite having what I know to be a much more solid background in statistics than I. I would have been very interested if she could actually make a real argument. Instead, she bowed out.
My other friend is simply asking if the article is a joke and calling it bullshit. She is not offering anything helpful, either.
As this has occurred I have been struck with the thought that this is perhaps a great example of the phenomena where people who already have opinions, are using what they see to back up their judgments. Anti-vacciners actually become more anti-vaccine when presented with facts about vaccines and/or the dangers of not vaccinating. My friends are refusing to look at evidence (now backed up by multiple studies; I have checked the first study's sources) because they are vegetarian and emotionally invested in the topic.
I, on the other hand, love meat, love eating meat, and recently had a bad time dating a vegan (couple of months ago). Maybe I am also just posting this article because it reflects my opinion and makes me happy. Maybe there are real flaws. But no one is bothering to point them out to me.
What do you think, Hubski?
So a few things.
1) The abstract of the study states "...the aim of our study was to analyze differences between different dietary habit groups in terms of health-related variables." That's a very different thing than saying "the aim of our study was to analyze differences between different DIETS in terms of health-related variables." So we're talking about vegetarians... not a vegetarian diet. And we're talking about girls only, for all intents and purposes - 40% under 30, 76% female. If you wanted to take a swing at a meat-free diet, this isn't how you'd do it. If you wanted to conclude that young vegetarian women are less healthy than they think they are, bam. FTA:
2) Moby put a little factoid in the liner notes of one of his albums arguing that one cow consumes as many resources as like five acres of wheat or something like that. Yeah, Moby, but I only have to eat one cow. That's the point. Predators exist because herbavores are excellent concentrators of nutrients and energy. That's why ungulates stand out in the middle of a field chewing all goddamn day but lions only mosey out from under the trees every couple days to work up a sweat and tear up some flesh. Adventurers have relied on hardtack and pemmican for millennia, not fruits and berries. If you had to map the Louisiana Purchase without depending on meat you'd be fucked.
3) There are advantages to a vegetarian lifestyle from a health perspective but you really have to work at it. My wife has vegetarian patients regularly - women who are building babies without eating meat. And unlike non-pregnant vegetarians, these women get regular blood tests and health examinations... which means my wife can quote their own lab results when she says "you're gonna need a lot more protein." It's a slog matching a vegetarian diet to a carnivorous diet nutrient-for-nutrient. Calorie-for-calorie? No sweat. Carbs are everywhere. Protein's a bitch, though. Nuts are no match for fish. Fish is no match for chicken. Chicken is no match for pork. And beef? beef's got some protein. My vegetarian friends tend to be pragmatic vegetarians - when they're overseas, they eat meat because being a vegetarian in Vietnam or Thailand is a laughable pursuit. You just can't find the protein.
We've got pointy teeth. We've got a digestive system evolved to process high concentrations of fat and protein. That doesn't mean we have to eat meat, but if we don't, we're at a disadvantage. That disadvantage typically manifests itself as increased cost, increased effort and increased vigilance. Should you lack any of these three you end up with a substandard nutritional balance and a substandard nutritional balance leads to health concerns. This study doesn't say "a vegetarian diet is unhealthy" it says "the people surveyed had poorer health outcomes the less meat they ate."
We're also talking exclusively about Austrians. I don't know that much about the Austrian diet, but if it's anything like the Swiss diet, avoiding meat is a stone-cold bitch. Might as well be in Vietnam.
Your friends might very well be those uber-healthy vegetarians that have a perfectly balanced diet. If so, good on 'em. Let 'em be offended. They might not be, though. It's been my experience (and, vicariously, my wife's experience, 'cuz she's worked with a lot of vegetarian women and looked at a lot of data) that vegetarians tend to be less healthy than they think they are because they underestimate the amount of energy they're getting from carbs and overestimate the amount of nutrients their diet provides.
And that's pretty much what the study says - "you're not as healthy as you think" not "the core philosophy of your diet is flawed."