Adventist Review: Evidence for All to See

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BY GARY E. FRASER AND TERRY BUTLER Exclude PDF Files

F YOU WERE BROUGHT UP IN AN ADVENTIST home, it is probably

part of your life story to be a careful eater and to believe that a
meatless diet is healthier. Even if your compliance was less than
perfect, the ideal was clear. Such is the power of early life
experiences.

Our non-Adventist neighbors have not had this advantage. And in an age
of scientific "proof" our society is unlikely to be persuaded by the writings
of a nineteenth-century author, even if she did have health insights that
were far ahead of her time. Vegetarians have been around for thousands
of years, but it is only quite recently that one rationale for their diet has
been better health, as compared to animals' rights or religious beliefs.

One way to make our health message vibrant and

clearly relevant again is to respond to twenty-first-
century expectations and provide the scientific
evidence. The Adventist experience over the past 140
years is a marvelous "natural experiment" that begs
study. What is less commonly understood is that
Adventists provide other natural advantages for
research seeking to link diet to the risk of disease. This
is why investigators at Loma Linda University have

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Adventist Review: Evidence for All to See

received highly competitive funding from federal and other resources for
more than 45 years to do such work.

Adventists vary widely in their eating habits. Yet similarities in other

areas of their lifestyles make for easy comparisons between the health
experience of a vegan Adventist and a hamburger/fries Adventist. That's
right; without the participation of nonvegetarian Adventists this research
would hardly be possible.

Past Findings
What does past evidence show? Are the previous conclusions of benefit
real? It takes a book to do justice to this question,* but here are a few
recent results.

California Adventists have only half the risk of heart attack as other
Californians. In Figure 1 the horizontal line represents the non-Adventist
experience. At all the ages measured in this analysis, the rate of heart
attack was much less for both male and female Adventists. Benefits are
especially apparent in younger and middle-aged Adventists, in whom the
risks are an extraordinary one third or less those of a non-Adventist.
Vegetarian Adventists had lower risks yet.

Another major fear for

many people is cancer. As
compared to other
Californians, Adventists
again have strikingly lower
risks of many cancers, as
indicated in Figure 2, in
which the value of 1.0
represents the risk of a non-
Adventist. The risks for
Adventists are nearly
always lower--often by a
lot.

You may notice a few

cancers missing from
Figure 2. In no case is there evidence that a cancer is more frequent in
Adventists or vegetarians. But there are a few in which the risk is not
clearly lower (lymphoma, leukemia, brain cancer, uterine cancer), and
the jury is still out for prostate cancer, concerning which there are other
research complications. The apparent slight excess of prostate cancer in
Adventist men is easily compatible with a chance result, and may be the
result of earlier diagnosis in Adventists because of their good medical
care and preventive orientation. So more work is necessary. As potent a
factor as diet seems to be, it is unreasonable to expect it to affect all
diseases.

Adventist men in California live an amazing 7.3 years longer than non-

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Adventist Review: Evidence for All to See

Adventist men, and the advantage for Adventist women is 4.4 years. The
equivalent figures for vegetarian Adventists are 9.5 and 6.6 years for
men and women, respectively. Moreover, there is every reason to
suspect that most of these extra years are accompanied by a good
quality of life. We are now seeking firm evidence of this. It will take the
general population 40 to 50 years to catch up with the current Adventist
life expectancy at present rates of increased longevity. It is interesting
that life expectancy in Adventists also appears to be increasing over the
years, even with our initial advantage.

Putting Off the Inevitable

So what do Adventists die from? The answer is simple: from essentially
the same causes as everyone else. But whether we consider heart
disease, cancer, stroke, pneumonia, flu, diabetes, etc., the striking
difference is that deaths from all these causes occur much later than in
the general population.

For example, although about 38 percent of both Adventist and non-

Adventist women die of heart disease, on average this occurs at age 83
years in non-Adventists, at age 87 years in Adventist women as a whole,
and at 92 years in Adventist women who are more careful with their
lifestyle.

The broad range of Adventist

diet has allowed studies of
Adventists to be the first to
strongly suggest that nuts and
whole grains reduce risk of
heart attack; that meat
increases the risk of heart
attack and several cancers;
and that tomatoes, legumes,
and fruits reduce the risk of
cancer. Because of this, and
also based on the evidence
from subsequent similar
studies of non-Adventists, the
dietary recommendations of
the American Heart Association
and the American Cancer Society are moving closer and closer to the
positions that Adventists have promoted for so long.

We can be proud to have had an important part in this process. However,

despite these recommendations most Americans have made only minor
changes in eating habits. Obesity is a national epidemic. Did you know
that vegetarian Adventists are on average 13 pounds lighter at the same
height than nonvegetarian Adventists? We have learned a lot from
previous research, but when it comes to the effects of specific foods on
risk of disease, the evidence is still very sketchy and controversial. Much
more research is necessary, and this will come only from studies that
gather a great deal of detail about the diets of a very large number of

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Adventist Review: Evidence for All to See

people.

Participants Needed
Our new federally funded study of 125,000 Adventists (AHS-2) addresses
these needs. As we collect data on heart attacks and particular cancers
during the next four years, the large number of subjects in the study
ensures that our results will become more precise and trustworthy. We
will be in the same league as the famous Nurses' Health Study (directed
by Harvard University), the very large AARP study of retired Americans,
and the EPIC study in Europe. Adventists have the great opportunity to
be the key players contributing in a way that only a handful of other
studies will do anywhere in the world.

Adventists have a proud health heritage: the famous Battle Creek

Sanitarium, which pioneered the production of soy foods; the Five-Day
Plan to Stop Smoking; world-class clinical institutions, such as Loma
Linda University Medical Center; and the Sanitarium Health Food
Company, a commercial producer of health foods for entire nations, are
some examples of activities and institutions that are world-class.

Please join us in the latest of these opportunities to improve the health of

the world's population (see the enrollment card in this issue). We are
thankful for the 50,000 members who have already joined AHS-2. This is
by now the largest study of Adventists ever. However, over the next two
years we need at least this many again to partner with us. We believe
that this is another facet of God's work.

The marvelous good advice given to Adventists more than 140 years ago
was not for us alone. Help us share it with others. You can make an
important contribution, no matter what your health status, even if you
are overweight, nonvegetarian, or not in perfect health. The beauty of
this research program is that all contribute equally.

_________________________
*Gary E. Fraser, Diet, Life Expectancy and Chronic Disease, Studies of Seventh-day
Adventists and Other Vegetarians (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

_________________________
Gary E. Fraser, M.D., Ph.D., and Terry Butler, Dr.P.H., are director and
associate director (respectively) of the Adventist Health Study-2, Loma
Linda University.

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