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Going Vegan Makes You 43 Percent More Likely To Break A Bone, Study Reveals

(Photo by ROMEO GACAD/AFP via Getty Images)

Dylan Housman Deputy News Editor
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People who go vegan are 43% more likely to suffer bone fractures than those who eat a more traditional diet that includes meat, a new study has found. 

The major new study from BMC medicine showed that vegans suffered 19.4 more cases of bone fractures per 1,000 people than meat-eaters. Vegetarians had only 4.1 more cases than meat-eaters, the New York Post reported.

The study’s lead author, Tammy Tong, told CNN that “This is the first comprehensive study and the largest study to date to look at the risks of both total fractures (fractures occurring anywhere in the body) and fractures at different sites in people of different habitual dietary habits.” (RELATED: Vegan Cory Booker Says Meat Eaters’ Days Are Numbered)

The study also found that vegetarians and pescatarians were more likely to suffer from hip fractures than meat-eaters, but that those risks were substantially dampened when accounting for body mass as well as sufficient protein and calcium consumption, the Post says. However, even when including those additional factors, vegans did not see their risk decrease, the NYP reported. (RELATED: CDC Director Says School Is ‘One Of The Safest Places’ For Children, Data Supports In-Person Learning)

Katherine Tucker, a nutritional epidemiology professor at the University of Massachusetts, told CNN that the study “cannot be generalized to … other populations and further study is needed,” because the study was mostly done on white Europeans and women. Still, she said that vegans and vegetarians “need to be very careful about getting the nutrients that they are missing.”