05. Going Green After Gray

Visanto Melina, R.D., got the surprise of her career last year, when the Seattle-based vegetarian nutritionist was asked to give a seminar on vegetarianism at a senior citizen center. "I thought there'd be four or five people," she says. Instead, the room was packed with seniors who had paid a $5 fee to hear her advice. And their interest in better health wasn't only keen; it was informed. "They've obviously been paying attention to new research," she says.

If Melina studied demographic trends for a living, she probably wouldn't have been so surprised. Trend watchers have verified an intriguing new phenomenon. Older people are turning to a vegetarian diet in ever-increasing numbers. Not surprisingly, demographics (or the statistical data relating to the study of the human population and the groups within it) are driving the drift. By the year 2005, people born between 1949 and 1963, the Baby Boom Generation, will make up 38 percent of the American population. Furthermore, statistics suggest this educated, health-conscious, rebellious and relatively affluent contingent fits the traditional vegetarian profile. Add to the fact that older people seek natural, pleasant ways to combat problems associated with aging—weight gain, higher cholesterol and blood pressure, increased cancer risk and impaired digestion—and you have real motivation to go meatless, says Suzanne Havala, R.D., author of the American Dietetic Association's position paper on vegetarianism.

Quantifying this new trend isn't easy, but a 1994 study by Health Focus Inc., an independent research organization based in Des Moines, Iowa, found that shoppers over age 50 are cutting down on their consumption of red meat or eliminating it from their diets entirely. More compelling evidence for the senior surge toward vegetarianism comes from vegetarian groups nationwide, which report a swell in the ranks of older vegetarians. For example, one out of five members of the new Syracuse (N.Y.) Area Vegetarian Education Society is over 50; unusually high for a fledgling organization. And two-thirds of the 850-member Vegetarian Society of Honolulu are also members of the American Association of Retired Persons, society executives say.

An informal poll of older people suggests better health is often the main incentive and objective for turning veg. Three years ago Nancy Roberts, a 53-year-old magazine editor, found herself doing what many people do over the holidays: overindulging in rich treats. However, this time it made her in. "The crash felt like the flu," she says. By chance, Roberts was asked to edit some vegetarian recipes during that same period. She made a few at home, and her "flu" disappeared.

More dramatically, Ruth Heidrich believes vegetarianism saved her life. The 61-year-old marathoner and triathlete was diagnosed with breast cancer 14 years ago, at age 47. When an initial biopsy indicated far more cancer than her doctors had thought, she was ready to take desperate measures. On the day of the diagnosis, she spotted a newspaper ad looking for volunteers to enroll in a study of breast cancer and diet, conducted by John McDougall, M.D., a leading advocate of the use of diet to fight disease. After meeting McDougall and reviewing what she says was an eight-inch thick file of statistics linking a high-fat diet with breast cancer, Heidrich converted from a traditional American diet to an extremely low-fat regimen with no animal products. "I didn't even have skim milk on my cereal," she says. After breast surgery, she is now cancer-free. She never had to undergo radiation treatment or chemotherapy and believes her strict vegetarian diet helped speed her recovery from surgery.