Key Takeaways:
- According to a recent study, your genes may contribute to whether you are a vegetarian or not.
- It wasn’t surprising when the study found out that DNA does play a role in people’s food preferences.
What Should You Know About The Study Linking Vegetarianism To Genetics?
- New research suggests that vegetarians may have genetic reasons to continue their diet. Researchers have identified a group of genes that are common in persons who followed a vegetarian diet for at least a year. The research results were released last week in the journal PLOS ONE.
- The study’s principal author, emeritus professor of pathology at Northwestern University, Nabeel Yaseen said the results might suggest that maintaining a vegetarian diet requires more than just willpower.
- “The take-home message is that a vegetarian diet may or may not be appropriate for you, based on your genetics,” Yaseen said. If you find that you can’t truly keep with this, don’t blame yourself.
- The U.K. Biobank, a scientific research database with information from about 500,000 individuals in the U.K., was used in the study to compare the genetics of thousands of vegetarians and meat eaters who submitted their medical and lifestyle data with it.
- Three genes that are strongly associated with choosing a vegetarian diet were found after the study analysed data from about 5,300 vegetarians and 329,000 meat eaters.
- All three are found on a chromosome that also contains genes related to lipid metabolism, which is the mechanism by which lipids are converted into energy.
- The findings also suggested 31 additional, albeit weaker, genes related to vegetarianism. Many of the genes are also involved in lipid metabolism.
- “We speculate that a person’s capacity to follow a vegetarian diet may be related to how they handle fats in their bodies and how that influences brain function”, according to Yaseen.
- The study does not claim that specific genes are directly responsible for people’s preference for a vegetarian diet, he continued, only highlighting a genetic connection.
- Yaseen and his team concentrated on severe vegetarians for the study, defined as those who have abstained from eating animal products or flesh for at least a year. Two questions that participants completed for the U.K. Biobank were used to identify who qualified.
- The first, which was given to participants four times between 2006 and 2019, asked them to self-report whether they had consumed meat in the previous year.
- The second survey, which was conducted five times between 2009 and 2012, asked participants to list every meal they had consumed in the previous 24 hours.
- It is not novel nor surprising that our genes affect our preferences for food. Aversions to particular meals are known to have genetic roots, and a study released last year discovered connections between people’s DNA and the types of food they like.
- For instance, it is generally accepted that certain people have a particular gene variant that can make them loathe cilantro.
What does this mean for you?
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