Kathy Rayner is a Seventh Day Adventist and an emergency-room nurse. The 59-year-old vegan is also a missionary of sorts — for the vegetarian way.

“Good health is not a coincidence,” she insists. “It’s a choice. You have to be intentional about it.”

Rayner and her husband, Gord, 70, have been vegan for 12 years. The London couple were part of a vast study of Seventh Day Adventists — ideal subjects for research on the health benefits of a meatless diet because most Adventists are either vegetarian or vegan. They also represent a variety of nationalities.

The survey has revealed startling connections between plant-based diets and good health and longevity. Adventist men live to an average age of 83.3 years, nine-and-a-half years longer than the average male. Adventist women live an average 85.7 years — about 6.1 years longer than average.

Studies like this are changing the conversation about vegetarianism.

Early adopters embraced vegetarianism so they wouldn’t have to harm animals. The next wave of vegetarians were influenced by environmental studies about the disastrous impact factory farming is having on air and water quality, soil pollution and climate change. (One study estimated animal agriculture accounts for up to 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.)

More recently, the allure of vegetarianism is just as likely driven by health concerns.

While it’s estimated that 4 per cent of Canadians are vegetarian or vegan, converts are hopeful more people will join the revolution to save both the planet — and themselves.

The Adventist Health Study-2 might provide motivation. It has been gathering data for more than a decade at Loma Linda University in California, and includes 96,000 participants from across the U.S. and Canada.

The study has found that adventists have a lower risk of heart disease. They are less inclined to develop several cancers. They have lower blood pressure. They experience less arthritis and diabetes.

Though these are preliminary results, the study will be analyzed to determine if certain foods help prevent such diseases as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and arthritis. (Some of the health benefits may not be related to vegetarianism: Adventists also tend not to drink alcohol or smoke.)

The study also suggests vegans weigh less, with their BMI being on average five points lower than people who are nonvegetarian — for the average 55-year-old vegan, male or female, that’s about 30 pounds.

David Alexander, the 30-year-old executive director of the Toronto Vegetarian Association, began flirting with vegetarianism as a student — both as an animal rights advocate and as an environmentalist. But these days he’s happy to approach a potential convert by quoting health statistics.

“Animal foods contain more cholesterol and more saturated fats than plant-based foods. There are also certain kinds of cancer that are affected by animal foods — breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, stomach cancer,” he says.

As the vegetarian movement gains more converts from those who care about the environment and about their health, the lifestyle choice is experiencing less push back from meat eaters. “When you explain things in terms of the environment or your health, people don’t see it as a value judgment,” says Alexander.

Alexander’s experience with vegetarianism is common. Ten years ago he was a 20-year-old university student and a part-time vegetarian. He began by exploring diets that “used the least amount of resources,” ways of eating that had a diminished ecological footprint, influenced by the David Suzuki Foundation’s push for people to eat meatless one day a week. But what sealed the deal was the 2004 documentary film, Peaceable Kingdom,which follows the transformation of farmers who create a sanctuary for “unproductive” farm animals and become vegan in the process.

Others were convinced by The China Study — which served as the basis for the documentary Forks Over Knives. Published in 2005, it investigated the link between nutrition and illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer. It was compiled by nutrition and health researcher Dr. T. Colin Campbell, who found, “people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic diseases,” including some kinds of cancer.

That link was backed up by a 2009 study of 61,556 meat eaters and vegetarians in the U.K. that was published in the British Journal of Cancer. It investigated the association between diet (vegetarians, fish eaters and meat eaters) and more than 20 cancers. The participants were followed for more than 12 years. The study acknowledged that people who adhered to a plant-based diet were 12 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with cancer than nonvegetarians. It suggested the vegetarian diet was particularly beneficial for certain cancers including stomach and bladder cancer.

Many people are reluctant to go vegetarian by another health concern — that they might not get enough protein. It’s a worry that annoys Rayner.

“People say to me, where do you get your protein?” says Rayner. “And I say, where do you get your fibre? This whole protein thing is a big myth. All you need is a small amount of protein.

Alexander agrees. “I hear a lot of people dying of heart disease. I don’t hear a lot about people dying from protein deficiency.”

The Washington-based non-profit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine insists, “any normal variety of plant foods provides more than enough protein for the body’s needs. Although there is somewhat less protein in a vegetarian diet than a meat-eaters diet, this is actually an advantage. Excess protein has been linked to kidney stones, osteoporosis and possibly heart disease and some cancers. A diet focused on beans, whole grains and vegetables contains adequate amounts of protein without the ‘overdose’ most meat-eaters get.”

Rayner attributes many of the illnesses she sees at the hospital to an unhealthy diet.

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“Being an emergency-room nurse has been such an eye-opener. The majority of the people I see is because of their diet. Animal products are like cement in your bowel — there’s no fibre. People come in with constipation and abdominal pains and high blood pressure and strokes and diabetes and infections and every time I think you could prevent this. Those are all reversible.”

While Rayner is enthusiastic about the Adventist Health Study-2, she is equally passionate about her work with the Complete Health Improvement Program. Once a year she and her husband act as facilitators for people who want to become vegan or vegetarian. For the past 10 years they’ve helped 500 people make the transition.

“We take blood work before and after. If they give up animal products their blood pressure will fall. Their blood sugar will fall. Their weight will come off. They’ll have less joint pain,” she promises.