Vegetarianism May Be In The Genes, Study Finds: NPR 🥕🥦 [View all]

- NPR, Oct. 5, 2023. - Ed.

People are motivated to try a vegetarian diet for different reasons – from ethical and religious, to potential health and environmental benefits. But many people have a hard time sticking with it. In fact studies show many self-reported vegetarians actually do consume some animal products.

"A lot of people who want to be vegetarian are perhaps not able to," says Dr. Nabeel Yaseen, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "We wanted to know if genetics is part of the reason," he says. Yaseen and his collaborators compared the DNA of about 330,000 people, using data from the UK Biobank initiative.

The study included 5,324 vegetarians, who had not eaten any animal flesh or products derived from animal flesh for at least one year.

They found 34 genes that may play a role in adhering to a strict vegetarian diet. And they identified 3 genes that are more tightly linked to the trait. "What we can say is that these genes have something to do with vegetarianism," Yaseen says. "Perhaps vegetarians have different variants of these genes that make them able to pursue a strict vegetarian diet," he explains. The study is published in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed science journal.

Deciphering the genetic role is not exactly an easy riddle to solve. Humans have thousands of genes and there are millions of tiny variations in DNA building blocks, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs,) where you can see differences between individuals.. Lots of factors influence what we eat, everything from our taste preferences, to our budgets to our culture. So, the idea that food choice is also influenced by genetics is not surprising, Yaseen says...

- More, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/05/1203601131/vegetarianism-vegetarian-genes-diet-meat-genetics