Researchers says that vegetarians may be deficient in certain nutrients that are vital for bone health.
The University of Leeds has suggested that women who have a vegetarian diet are 33 per cent more likely to have a hip fracture.
Their findings come after studying over 26,000 middle-aged women within the UK, where it was found that vegetarian women were more at risk compared to their meat-eating counterparts.
Researchers observed thousands of women and more than 820 hip fractures over a 20-year period, taking into account their lifestyle habits such as smoking, their age and diet.
Several other diets were observed including occasional meat-eaters and pescatarians but against all these groups including meat eaters, women who practiced vegetarianism were most at risk.
“Vegetarian diets can vary widely from person to person and can be healthy or unhealthy, just like diets that include animal products,” said study lead author James Webster.
“However, it is concerning that vegetarian diets often have lower intakes of nutrients that are linked with bone and muscle health. These types of nutrients generally are more abundant in meat and other animal products than in plants, such as protein, calcium, and other micronutrients.”
Although they’ve established this connection, Mr Webster said that he’s not encouraging people to give up being a vegetarian but for more research to be done to give better guidelines on a healthier diet.
“Low intake of these nutrients can lead to lower bone mineral density and muscle mass, which can make you more susceptible to hip fracture risk.
“This makes it especially important for further research to better understand factors driving the increased risk in vegetarians, whether it be particular nutrient deficiencies or weight management, so that we can help people to make healthy choices.”
It’s estimated that five to seven per cent of the UK population is a vegetarian.
