Vegetarians may have a lower BMI and drink alcohol sparingly, but vegetarian diets are tied to generally poorer health, poorer quality of life and a higher need for health care than their meat-eating counterparts.

A new study from the Medical University of Graz in Austria finds that vegetarians are more physically active, drink less alcohol and smoke less tobacco than those who consume meat in their diets. Vegetarians also have a higher socioeconomic status and a lower body mass index. But the vegetarian diet — characterized by a low consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol that includes increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain products — carries elevated risks of cancer, allergies and mental healthdisorders.

Vegetarians were twice as likely to have allergies, a 50 percent increase in heart attacks and a 50 percent increase in incidences of cancer.

The cross-sectional study from Austrian Health Interview Survey data and published in PLos One examined participants dietary habits, demographic characteristics and general lifestyle differences.

The most significant dietary habit difference between meat-eaters and vegetarians concerned their BMI and alcohol consumption – with both being higher for those who consume meat.

Many past studies have instead put an emphasis on the health risks associated with red meat and carnivorous diets, but this study points the other dietary direction. However, the researchers do caution that continuing studies will be needed to substantiate some of the rather broad dietary distinctions, associations presented in this current research.

Overall, vegetarians were found to be in a poorer state of health compared to other dietary groups. Vegetarians reported higher levels of impairment from disorders, chronic diseases, and “suffer significantly more often from anxiety/depression.”

Subjects who consumed lower amounts of animal fat were also linked to poor health care practices, such as avoidance of vaccinations and a lack of preventive care.

Study: Vegetarians Less Healthy, Lower Quality Of Life Than Meat-Eaters « CBS Atlanta

If you want to trace Americans’ fear of fat, the place to start is the U.S. Senate, during the steamy days of July 1976.

That’s when Sen. George McGovern called a hearing to raise attention to the links between diet and disease.

And what was the urgency? The economy was booming, and many Americans were living high on the hog. A 1954 Capitol Hill restaurant menu offers a glimpse of what lunch looked like then: steak with claret sauce, buttered succotash and pineapple cheesecake. But soon, that prosperity began to cast a dark shadow within the halls of Congress.

“If you look at the statistics, members were dying at a rather large rate,” Senate historian Don Ritchie tells us.

And there was a hint that the American diet might be to blame.

This was an era when it was not uncommon for men to drop dead of heart attacks. By our count, eight U.S. Senators died in office of heart disease during the 1960s and 1970s.

“When you have colleagues who die prematurely,” says Ritchie, “that’s sort of a wake-up call.”

The harms of smoking were already on the radar. The new concern was the connection between diet and heart disease.

Scientists had evidence that foods with saturated fat such as eggs and meat could raise LDL cholesterol. But there were a lot of complexities that scientists didn’t yet understand, and not a lot of data.

So, when Sen. McGovern, a Democrat from South Dakota, called his hearing, he summoned the likes of Nathan Pritikin, a longevity guru who believed you could reverse heart disease with diet changes. And he called as a witness a Harvard University professor who pointed to the harms of overconsumption of fat.

The hearing led to the creation of the first set of dietary guidelines for Americans.

“The thinking of the day is that you wanted to reduce fat,” says science writer Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat.

He adds that once fat was fingered as the villain, the thinking was that any way Americans could get fat out of their diets would be a good thing.

Sen. George Shoup, who died in 1904, was Idaho’s first governor. “He protrudes,” says Senate historian Don Ritchie. “This was the epitome of success in the late 19th century.” But the link between corpulence and power would cast a dark shadow within the halls of Congress.

“And if we did it by merely replacing milk and cheese and fatty meat with carbohydrates, with pasta and potatoes and rice,” Taubes says, the theory was that we would live longer, and be thinner.

So, one of the top goals listed in the original dietary goals: eat more carbs.

“In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing, but this was the thinking at the time,” Taubes says.

via Why We Got Fatter During The Fat-Free Food Boom : The Salt : NPR.

A comedian under the impression he had rented out his posh Chelsea pad to a man with family in town for a wedding returned home to a wild orgy, he said.

Ari Teman, 31, claimed he left his apartment keys with David Carter, 32, on Friday night and stepped out for dinner before leaving town.

When he returned to the building to grab his luggage, a rowdy sex party featuring “Big Beautiful Women” was in the process of being shut down by building management.

“This was just so bizarre,” said Teman, who had rented his apartment via the website Airbnb.

“The worst part of the Internet right there was in my apartment.”

“There were all sorts of people walking out of my apartment and people coming in from the back yard. It was a huge mess.”

Teman said his apartment was trashed by a group of nearly nude, overweight people. After the shindig was broken up, Carter was a nervous wreck in the lobby, Teman said.

“This guy had a look of horror on his face,” Teman said. “He didn’t expect to see me for a few days. He said, ‘They shut us down, man, they’re shutting it down.’ ”

Carter, however, claimed he just had a small, quiet get-together and that Teman was overreacting.

“I had six people, friends and family,” Carter told The Post. “He is making a big to-do because he is being evicted.”

Carter posted on Airbnb that he wanted a place for his in-laws to stay while they were in town for a wedding, Teman claimed.

“He had a verified account and he seemed legit,” Teman said. “He had three positive reviews and so I approved the deal.”

When Teman later searched Carter’s phone number on the Internet, he found the raunchy soiree involving plus-size women advertised online as “Turn Up Part 2: The Pantie Raid.”

Airbnb renter returns to ‘overweight orgy’ | New York Post

A Saudi cleric named Saleh al-Fawzan has issued fatwa against all-you-can-eat buffets in Saudi Arabia. He made the statement on a Saudi Quranic TV station.

Fawzan said the value and quantity of the food sold should be pre-determined before hand.

“Whoever enters the buffet and eats for 10 or 50 riyals without deciding the quantity they will eat is violating Sharia (Islamic) law,” Fawzan was quoted on al-Atheer channel.

The fatwa attempts to add plate piling eateries to the long list of things outlawed by religious edicts. It has been the subject of condemnation and debate on social media channels.

While some twitter users slammed the cleric’s fatwa by using the hashtag “prohibiting-open-buffet” (in Arabic) others tweeted supporting it.

Saudi Cleric Issues Fatwa Against All-You-Can-Eat Buffets

It appears that Target went a little too far with Photoshop in an ad for a girl’s bathing suit.

The model in the ad has a thigh gap, the gaping space between her legs and a worrying body trend among teenage girls. But the gap actually extends into her pelvis (and the bathing suit the ad aims to sell) in an apparent slip of the Photoshop eraser.

“It was an unfortunate error on our part and we apologize,” Target spokesman Evan Miller told ABCNews.com. “We removed the image from the site and we’re working to get a new image up there.”

‘Thigh Gap’: New Teen Body Obsession?

Several bloggers captured the Photoshop fail before the image was removed.

“If it weren’t part of an ongoing attempt to mold unrealistic bodies in fashion marketing, it would almost be funny,” The Ethical Adman wrote on his blog.

The model was also missing part of her hip and ribcage.

Target Apologizes for ‘Thigh Gap’ Photoshop Fail – ABC News