Veganism and Quality of Life

“Is it worth giving up meat?” is the question that many athletes consider, when thinking about switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet. At any rate, within in the span of a decade, interest in veganism has risen from 17% to 97% (Keizer, 2017). Due to this recent spike in interest in veganism, scientists have a smaller range of research pertaining to the vegan diet and how it affects Quality of Life and physical performances in athletes. However, the Nutrition and Running Higher Mileage(also known as NURMI) decided to conduct experiments comparing the Quality of Life and performance in vegan/vegetarian runners to omnivore runners using a cross-sectional design and WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire.

NURMI hypothesized that the athletes diets wouldn’t affect their running performance or Quality of Life and this would be proven to be quantitively true.

Subjects

Before any tests began, NURMI required that all its participants were at least 18 years old, had completed a form of written consent, and had successfully completed a running event in the past 2 years.

Running events that met the qualification were half-marathons, marathons, ultra-marathons, and 10km, which were used as the control group. Next, runners were divided by gender and then subsequently divided by either vegetarian/vegan diet or omnivore diet. NURMI defines an omnivore diet as a “. . . Western Diet, no dietary restrictions.” and a vegetarian diet as a diet consisting of no meat and lastly a vegan diet consisting of no meat or animal bi-products(NURMI, 2018). Eventually, NURMI collected a total of 281 participants consisting of 159 women and 122 men, of which 123 were omnivores and 158 were vegetarian/vegan.

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In addition to this, 108 participants served as the 10km control group along with 70 marathoners/ultramarathoners, and 103 half-marathoners. Lastly, 200 participants lived in Germany, 50 in Austria, 14 in Switzerland, and 17 lived in either Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and or the United Kingdom.

Methods

To measure the participants Quality of Life, NURMI used the World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment( or WHOQOL-BREF), which comprises of 4 domains: phycological well-being, social relationships, environment, and physical health. These domains each have specific categories(i.e. environment: home environment) that provide greater detail for each aspect of an individuals life. Individuals are measured against each other based on their rating in a 5-point Likert scale with respondents using 1 as strongly disagree and 5 as strongly agree. Lastly, after each individuals scores were collected, NURMI translated the range from 1-5 to 4-20 and used the mean score of all the items in each domain as the final result. Lastly, all subjects completed a brief survey consisting of questions regarding gender, age, height, BMI, as well as marital status, country of residence, and academic qualification to further distinguish participants. Once all the data was collected, NURMI complied the results into a graph separated by genders and diets to compare mean results from the four domains.

Results

By the end of the experiment, NURMI’s hypothesis was proven true in that diet choice played little role in QOL in psychological wellbeing, environment, physical health, and social relationships in either omnivore or vegetarians/vegans. However, scientists did find a small effect of diet in social relationships in men and environment in women. Hence, despite small differences, results for the domains appeared relatively the same throughout the experiment. Due to this, NURMI was able to conclude that runners could have either a vegetarian, vegan, or omnivore diet, but they would have the same QOL and running performance regardless.

Discussion

All in all, while it is still unproven if 1 of the 3 diets is significantly better for you than the other, NURMI found significant findings surrounding veganism/vegetarianism and their relation to QOL and athletic performance in long distance running. Even more so, NURMI was also able to record that high QOL scores in vegetarian and vegans could be due to the fact that “. . . a diet rich in fruit and vegetables leads to a higher degree of fitness and lower morbidity, and thus to a good health status” (NURMI, 2018). Hence, anyone seeking to possibly enhance their QOL or athletic performance can consider a vegetarian/vegan diet as equally effective as a omnivore diet. All in all, NURMI has found quantitative evidence showing the positive attributes of a vegan lifestyle and proven that athletes can pursue any of the 3 diets and with little to no changes in QOL and athletic performance.

Implications

In conclusion, everyday GCU college students can apply this knowledge to their lives with how students choose to eat on campus. For example, many GCU college students find themselves surrounded by the exact same food options everyday with little to no variation in menu options(i.e. Habit Burger, Jamba Juice, GCBG etc.). Due to this, it makes it difficult for students trying to maintain specific dietary/ nutritional standards. Hence, students can now open their diet to a wider food selection, giving students easier access to having variety, maintaining kcal control, moderation, and eating all the essential nutrients. Even more so, it gives students athletes the advantage of not being confined solely to an omnivore diet or a vegan diet. Lastly, this information is vital to students serving in food ministries off-campus(i.e. CLC-Hunger and Environmental Project) as students can pick and choose from a wider range of healthy, nutrient-rich, filling meal options to give out to the local community members. In sum, whether a student follows a vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore diet, each student has freedom to choose their diet without any consequences in Quality of Life or athletic performance.

References

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4. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2003). Managing asthma: A guide for schools (NIH Publication No. 02-2650).