WASHINGTON, USA, May 13, 2002: U.S. Researchers say vegetarian teenagers have a healthier diet than their meat-eating counterparts. “It seems that rather than viewing adolescent vegetarianism as a difficult phase or fad, the dietary pattern could be viewed as a healthy alternative to the traditional American meat-based diet,” epidemiologist Cheryl Perry and colleagues wrote in Sunday’s issue of the Journal Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine. They studied more than 4,500 teenagers in Minnesota. Of them, about 262, or nearly 6 percent, said they were vegetarian. They compared the diets of these teen to the Healthy People 2010 recommendations, which are dietary targets issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services. They include goals of getting less than 30 percent of one’s daily calories from fat and less than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat, eating more than two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables daily. “Overall, adolescent vegetarians were significantly more likely to meet the dietary recommendations of Healthy People 2010,” Perry’s group wrote. “Vegetarian adolescents, similar to their adult counterparts, have dietary patterns that, if maintained, could significantly lower their risk of the leading causes of death as adults,” the researchers said.
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