A new study assessing data from over 166,000 adults in the UK found that vegetarians seem to have a healthier biomarker profile than meat-eaters, regardless of their age, weight or smoking and alcohol consumption.
Biomarkers can have bad and good health effects and have been widely used to assess the effect of diets on health.
In the study presented at the European Congress on Obesity, vegetarians had significantly lower levels of 13 biomarkers, including total cholesterol, a protein linked to cardiovascular disease and liver function markers indicating inflammation or damage to cells, among others.
However, vegetarians were also found to have lower levels of beneficial biomarkers including the 'good' HDL cholesterol, vitamin D and calcium.
Apart from not eating processed and red meats, vegetarians also eat a lot more vegetables, fruits and nuts. These nutritional differences may help explain why vegetarians appear to have lower levels of disease biomarkers that can lead to cell damage and chronic disease, noted the lead author of the study.