Quality of life of female and male vegetarian and vegan endurance runners compared to omnivores – results from the NURMI study (step 2)

Abstract

BackgroundHealth-related effects of a vegetarian or vegan diet are known to support parameters positively affecting exercise performance in athletes, whereas knowledge about psyche and wellbeing is sparse. Therefore, the aim of the Nutrition and Running High Mileage (NURMI) Study (Step 2) was to compare Quality of Life (QOL) scores among endurance runners following a vegetarian or vegan diet against those who adhere to an omnivorous diet.MethodsThe study was conducted following a cross-sectional design. A total of 281 recreational runners (159 women, 122 men) completed the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire consisting of the domains physical health, psychological wellbeing, social relationships and environment, which generates scores on a scale from 4 to 20. Data analysis was performed using ANOVA.ResultsIt was found that 123 subjects followed an omnivorous diet and 158 adhered to a vegetarian/vegan diet. There were 173 runners who met the inclusion criteria (‘NURMI-Runners’), among them 103 half-marathoners and 70 marathoners and ultramarathoners, as well as 108 10 km runners as control group. Overall QOL scores were high (~ 16.62 ± 1.91). Men had higher scores than women due to high scores in the physical health and psychological well-being dimensions. Adhering to an omnivorous diet affected environment scores for women and social relationships scores for men. A minor effect concerning race distance was observed in women, where half-marathoners had a higher environmental score than 10-km runners. A moderate diet×race distance interaction on environment scores was shown for men.ConclusionsThe results revealed that endurance runners had a high QOL regardless of the race distance or diet choice. These findings support the notion that adhering to a vegetarian or vegan diet can be an appropriate and equal alternative to an omnivorous diet.Trial registrationISRCTN73074080. Registered 12th June 2015, retrospectively registered.

Meat and mental health: a systematic review of meat abstention and depression, anxiety, and related phenomena

“…Secondary outcomes (Table 3) Ten of the 18 studies examined the secondary outcomes of self-harm, mood, stress perception, affective well-being, and QoL (Table 3). In contrast to the clear results on depression and anxiety, three studies found no differences between groups (Boldt et al 2018;Pfeiler and Egloff 2018;Wirnitzer et al 2018), three favored meat-abstainers (Beezhold et al 2015; Beezhold and Johnston 2012; Beezhold, Johnston, and Daigle 2010), three studies favored meat-consumers (Baines, Powers, and Brown 2007;Neumark-Sztainer et al 1997;Perry et al 2001), and one study provided mixed results (Lavallee et al 2019).…”

“…Two studies examined well-being and QoL (Boldt et al 2018;Pfeiler and Egloff 2018). In a sample of 281 endurance runners (57% female), Boldt et al (2018) found that QoL did not differ between groups (Boldt et al 2018).…”

“…Two studies examined well-being and QoL (Boldt et al 2018;Pfeiler and Egloff 2018). In a sample of 281 endurance runners (57% female), Boldt et al (2018) found that QoL did not differ between groups (Boldt et al 2018). Similarly, in a large sample of 4496 German adults, Pfeiler and Egloff (2018) found that neither affective well-being nor current life-satisfaction differed between meat-abstainers and meatconsumers (Pfeiler and Egloff 2018).…”

“…Similarly, Neumark-Sztainer et al (1997) employed a matched sample drawn from a much larger study population. Conversely, a number of studies attempted to over-sample vegans and vegetarians by directly targeting these groups via internet sources such as "social websites geared to VG and VEG [vegan and vegetarians]" (Beezhold et al 2015) and vegan chat-rooms and/or magazines and vegetarian "fairs" (Boldt et al 2018;Wirnitzer et al 2018). As discussed below, these sampling strategies in concert with selfreported data are a major design flaw.…”

Characterization, dietary habits and nutritional intake of omnivorous, lacto-ovo vegetarian and vegan runners – a pilot study

“…Furthermore, such data form the basis for assessing the relationship of a plant-based diet with the body composition, the antioxidant and immunological capacity and, ultimately, with the health and performance of athletes [24,26,27]. Present studies investigating the relationship between a vegetarian and VEG diet and exercise do not differentiate between vegetarians and VEG [26], are outdated [28], questionnaire-based [25,29,30] or do not contain nutritional assessment including biochemical markers [31,32].…”