Let me put it out there right away: I was born and raised vegetarian. As someone who came to vegetarianism by default, I have spent most of my life keeping quiet about it. I consider it a very personal matter and somehow feel like it's too deep of a topic to be evangelical about it. Furthermore, I can't even imagine what it's like to be raised on meat and how I would have responded.
That said, I grew up with people repeatedly questioning the health of vegetarianismand asking me ridiculous questions like, "where do you get your protein?" Even today, after decades of research, after a vegetarian/vegan was named Sportsman of the Century and Olympian of the Century, many people still have odd ideas and think a vegetarian diet isn't an adequate or healthy diet. (A few people have made comments to me along these lines just within recent weeks.) That gets old.
From all the research and science I've read on the matter, the findings of a new study from Loma Linda University don't surprise me at all. As I stated in the headline, it found that vegetarians (and also "semi-vegetarians") live 20% longer than omnivores. In addition, it found that they create about 33% less greenhouse gas emissions.
