Lower risk of diabetes to bone fractures: What are the benefits and drawbacks of being vegetarian?

Vegetarian and vegan diets are associated with both health benefits and risks, which is why it’s important for people thinking of eating plant-based foods to pay attention to balancing their meals, a group of experts has said in two new reports.

Experts from France’s Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (Anses) said there’s moderate evidence that suggests vegetarian diets are linked to a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with non-vegetarian diets.

There’s also some weaker evidence that vegetarian diets could lead to a reduced risk of heart disease, ovulation disorders, certain cancers, eye problems, and gastrointestinal issues.

Some more tenuous evidence suggests, however, that plant-based diets could lead to a higher risk of bone fractures or congenital urethral malformations – though some experts posit there is not enough information on the possible link.

The two new reports – which include a wide-ranging scientific literature review and dietary recommendations – are the result of five years of work for Anses experts who said that vegetarian diets are becoming more popular in France.

“We know that it's a diet that is increasingly popular [so] Anses first carried out a systematic review of published studies to identify the link between vegetarian diets and health and established dietary benchmarks to enable vegetarians to optimise their nutritional intake,” Perrine Nadaud, deputy head of the French agency’s nutritional risk assessment unit, told Euronews Health.

The scientific literature review included 131 studies on vegetarian diets’ impact on health, while the dietary recommendations were created with an optimisation tool that considers nutrition, possible food contamination, and