Successful Vegetarian Lifestyle Suspected to Be Linked to Genes

    In the article, 'This study finds vegetarianism may be in the genes". Dr. Nabeel Yaseen, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and collaborators conducted a study by comparing data from the UK Biobank that included 30,000 individuals; where about 5,324 of the individuals were vegetarians who had not eaten any meat or products derived from animal flesh for a year plus. With this data, they found approximately thirty-four genes that may assist in an individual's ability to follow a strict [vegetarian] diet and three genes closely linked to this trait.

    This information is what led to Yaseen's hypothesis that vegetarians may have different variants of these genes when compared to an individual who follows an average non-vegetarian diet, this gene is what could allow vegetarians to sustain this diet. Yaseen and colleagues then ran a genome-wide association study to further their research. Since there are SNP's (single nucleotide polymorphs) associated with the trait, they observed the neighboring genes, which led to finding the three genes strongly associated with vegetarianism. Two of the three genes (NPC1 and RMC1) both play a role in lipid metabolism. This leaves readers to ponder Yaseen's final hypothesis regarding the association of these two genes with vegetarianism: meat may contain lipid nutrients that some individuals need and others can thrive without it [vegetarians being the ones who don't need it, thus allowing them to keep away from animal-based proteins for extended periods of time.]

I found this article interesting because I've been a vegetarian my whole life, I was raised as such. Throughout my life, people have always shown interest in my diet, so much so that they try to follow the diet. This effort typically lasts about a week, and then they return to their previous diets. This is why when the article discussed the possibility of genetics affecting the ability of an individual to adhere to a strict vegetarian diet over others, I was curious. However, the way the research was conducted and the data that came from it, may be flawed, i.e. the data was only pulled from Caucasian participants because they wanted the findings to be linked to the vegetarian diet not "ethnicity", etc. Furthermore, I find the premise strange-- simply because I find diets are typically more environmentally influenced, such as by one's culture, budget, immediate environmental conditions, preferences, health desires, ethical and religious beliefs, etc. As to whether I agree or disagree with this article, I believe more research needs to be done with a larger study group to refine these findings and then I will be more apt to decide.