I have recently received a couple of request for answers to similar questions over on Quora. Because the topic of seems to be of high interest I will provide a summary of my responses below:

Do vegetarians and vegans have a higher risk of stroke? Recently the British Medical Journal released its conclusion based on analysis of theEPIC-Oxford study. Among the findings was the following:Non-meat eaters had 10 fewer cases of heart disease and three more strokes per 1,000 people compared with the meat-eaters.

Though I would not categorize the recent data that indicated a slightly increased risk of a specific type of rare stroke being higher among non-meat eaters and non-sense, it like all data must be considered in context. To be specific, the context of the top line data includes

• The study included both vegans and lacto-vegetarians in the non-meat eaters category
• The indicated increase in stroke risk was small (3 in 1000)
• The specific risk for which the increase was reported is a rare type of stroke
• The over all health benefits of eating a vegan diet likely outweigh the increased incidence of the specific stroke (10 fewer cases of heart disease).

Dr. Neil Barnard provided an excellent response to the new study. His video response is here:

Dr. Barnard'sresponse helps fill out the details of the study and provides a very digestible summary of the results.