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Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans: Bone Density and Fracture Risk

dann

Penultimate Amazing
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Possible selection bias maybe? The slight little people are more likely to decide to go Veggie?

Did any studies do a BMD 'before' years of veggie?
 
If I were to go by pure speculation, vegetarians and vegans aren't randomly distributed. The two factors I can think of are traditional cultural reasons and modern social reasons.

People with traditional cultural reasons to avoid animal products will be more from particular countries and will be from particular genetic backgrounds.

People who convert to vegetarianism are more likely to occupy a certain cultural place where they would find a lot of advocacy for those ideas. In the US, that's a cultural space which is more artsy and intellectual and liberal. While plenty of people of all body types can be those things, they tend to have more than their share of more fragile folks. Maybe its because without athletics as an option they're more likely to turn to other avenues? Pure speculation. But the demographics certainly seem to line up to some extent.
 
Lack of dairy products - for calcium - in a vegan diet and not taking care to find other sources? Seems too obvious, so what am I missing?
 
GlennB said:
Lack of dairy products - for calcium - in a vegan diet and not taking care to find other sources? Seems too obvious, so what am I missing?
Click to expand...

There is plenty of calcium in green stuff. Cows don't need to eat dairy food do they?

It may be that those uber health conscious* vegrants are too concerned with skin cancer. They don't get enough sun light to make enough vitamin D. But osteoporosis is not that slam-dunk. Possible not enough saturated fats to make hormones from? 'Bones' are hard...

Take me as an example. Lots of milk my whole life, lots of hard work to encourage strong bones. But x-rays and MRIs show "lucent lesions', areas of low calcium within bones. And bone spurs elsewhere, and calcifications on heart valves and artery walls.

*there is a word for people that are so diet conscious, so concerned that they eat only the right stuff, that they get a malnutrition from skipping somehting. Something like "ortho-nutriants"?
 
casebro said:
There is plenty of calcium in green stuff. Cows don't need to eat dairy food do they?
Click to expand...

Cows eat little but green stuff, 'in the wild' at least.

Meanwhile broccoli is considered a good veggie source of calcium yet 100gms/4oz supplies only 4% of the rda for an adult. Vegans are recommended to use calcium-fortified soya milk and other supplements to ensure adequate dietary calcium.

From a vegan website:

"While acute calcium deficiency is rare, many vegans (and non-vegans) don’t consume enough calcium to maximize lifelong bone health. It’s not at all hard to get adequate calcium from plant foods, but new vegans may not know where to look."
 
3point14 said:
Why?
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Okay, I'll expand your question to what you might have meant: "Why does Casebro think petite people are more likely to go vegrant?"

Anorexics would probably tilt the scales to my way of thinking. They fersure don't want to eat greasy meat. Big men, on the other hand, want to eat meat, also tilting the scales my way

The two biggest factors associated with bone density are petite woman get weak bones, and hard work (exercise or labor) make for strong bones. If dietary variations were as important, osteoporosis could be fixed with a supplement. It isn't. Calcium is not the answer, nor vitamin D. Vit K2-7 shows some promise though.

Which in toto makes me thing of selection bias of some kind, "people who are more prone to low bone density become vegrants".

Were any of the studies DBPC ?
 
So vegetarians just need to drink lots of vitamin D milk and get enough protein, and exercise?
 
+ moderate consumption of alcohol, no tobacco, no soft drinks, and put on some weight if you're skinny.
 
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As someone whose household in now mostly plant based, I can speak a little to this.
Any diet, but especially a plant based one requires attention to the nutritional values of the food.
My wife started down the plant based path just to loose weight, and I joined along. The first thing we noticed was a decrease in indigestion.

After a six months my wife besides not eating mammals or avians decided to give up dairy. She actually lost a hundred pounds over two years.

She also found out she is lactose intolerant upon re-exposure to dairy.

She has done a lot of reading as prior to her hysterectomy she was very anemic (even when she ate meat), she has found that calcium, iron and B12 are the ones you really need to make a conscious effort to eat the right foods to get enough from diet alone. So she takes supplements.

I myself appreciate the pant based diet, but still eat meat when other people serve it
 
Dancing David said:
.......and I joined along. The first thing we noticed was a decrease in indigestion.

.....
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I suspect that when you quit the meats you also cut way back on foods fried in vegetable oils. Especially the commercial hydrogenated stuff. ( No burgers means no fries.) Because meat protein is no more fattening than veggie proteins.

And you probably even cut down on the "white" carbs, dropped starches for the veggies. .
 
casebro said:
I suspect that when you quit the meats you also cut way back on foods fried in vegetable oils. Especially the commercial hydrogenated stuff. ( No burgers means no fries.) Because meat protein is no more fattening than veggie proteins.

And you probably even cut down on the "white" carbs, dropped starches for the veggies. .
Click to expand...
(Just so you know we only eat in restaurants once a week)

Not me!

I still eat the fried food and white carbs. I have reduced my calorie intake four years into this, but I still get at least 40% or my calories from 'bad' carbs
:)
 
GlennB said:
Lack of dairy products - for calcium - in a vegan diet and not taking care to find other sources? Seems too obvious, so what am I missing?
Click to expand...

It's a meta-study, compiling data from other studies. One would need to look into the other studies to look for selection bias. Also, It lumps veganism and vegetarianism together.

It's a big world. Vegetarianism is more common in India than other parts of the world, so if any of the studies drew from that population they might have skewed the results towards health issues predominant in that area. So they could have been comparing an area with high poverty and food insecurity to areas with low poverty and no food insecurity.

It might be interesting to compare India to China. India has lots of vegetarians, but also consumes a lot of dairy: milk, paneer/cheese, cream, butter/ghee are all common in Indian diets. China consumes less milk/dairy per capita and adults are more likely to be lactose intolerant - but they eat 10x more meat per capita than India.
 
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