Choices: how your diet, exercise, and other behaviors can affect the length and quality of your life. (Scientific update: a review of recent scientific papers related to vegetarianism).

Many factors affect how long and how well a person lives. Can we make conscious choices to improve the quality and span of our lives? A recent study suggests that it is possible. More than 34,000 Seventh-day Adventists living in California were studied for 12 years. Seventh-day Adventists are less likely to smoke and may exercise more than the typical person in the US. Many follow a vegetarian diet; nearly 30% of the subjects were vegetarians, and another 20% described themselves as semi-vegetarian (ate meat fewer than one time per week but more than once per month). At birth, an infant who would grow up to be a California Adventist male would be expected to live 78.5 years, a female California Adventist, 82.3 years. If the California Adventist was also vegetarian, life expectancy at birth increased to 80.2 years for men and 84.8 years for women. Compare this to a US male whose life expectancy at birth is 73 years and a US female who can expect to live 79.7 years.

Let's look at it another way. Say you are a typical American woman, age 65. If you are truly average, you can expect to live 19.1 more years--to age 84. If you are a typical vegetarian Adventist, you can expect to live 22.6 more years--almost to age 88. A typical American male, age 65, can expect to live almost 15 more years--to age 80. A vegetarian Adventist male can expect to live 20 more years, to age 85.

This study did not examine quality of life, but other studies have shown that vegetarian Adventists take less medicine and have fewer hospital stays than do non-vegetarians. They also have been shown to have lower rates of several chronic diseases that can affect the quality of life.

Yes, it does appear that choices about diet, exercise, smoking, and other factors can help one to live longer and with less risk of disease.

Fraser GB, Shavlik DJ. 2001. Ten years of life. Is it a matter of choice? Arch Intern Med 161:1645-1652.