Can Eating Less Meat Reduce Risk for Cataracts?

All About Vision considers this interesting question that has received a lot of public comment since researchers at the University of Oxford published a study in March 2011 that compared cataract incidence with dietary intake.

Could eating more greens and less meat help you delay the onset of cataracts?

The study, as reported in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, examined the dietary surveys filled out by 27,670 self-reported nondiabetic people aged 40 or over and monitored their medical records to see if and when cataracts developed. Strong correlations showed up between cataract risk and diet type.

The risk was greatest for high meat eaters (who ate more than 3.5 ounces of meat each day), and it decreased from one group to the next, in this order: moderate meat eaters, low meat eaters, fish eaters (people who eat fish but no other meat), vegetarians and vegans. In fact, the risk for vegans was roughly 40 percent lower than for the high meat eaters.

Does this mean you should stop eating meat? Maybe, maybe not. The study doesn't answer every question. Perhaps the reason for the lower risk is that if you eat less meat, you probably eat more vegetables. And perhaps those veggies are providing nutrients that reduce cataract risk.

Also, vegetarians and vegans may tend to lead healthy lifestyles, avoiding cataract risk boosters such as smoking, excess sun exposure and diabetes.

 It may be true that cataracts are inevitable if you live long enough, but living healthy just might delay them for a good long time.

To read more about Cataracts you can read the original article at http://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/cataracts.htm and for the above mentioned study you can visit http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2011/03/23/ajcn.110.004028 for more details.

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