Originally Posted by
GadgetFreak
You cant compare whole countries to other countries, there are too many other differences. But if you want to do that, try comparing the US, conveniently missing above, which has very high beef consumption, with the others. The US is like 27th or 28th in life expectancy. Also comparing a country like India to Japan is to be honest, totally laughable.
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The leading cause of combined mortality/morbidity in terms of lost days of productive life from either death or disability is diarrhea in the developing world and cardiovascular disease in the developed world (per the WHO and it has been that way for a long time).
Exactly. Studying this is extremely difficult given the number of things to control for: health care, social support, economic status, lifestyle variance, vaccinations, etc. I don't have the citation offhand, but there is at least one study of intra-country diet, from France, that looked at differences between Mediterranean (meat-light) and northern diets, and came out in favor of the former.