IJCS | Volume 32, Nº6, November / December 2019

628 Table 2 - Sociodemographic and lifestyle data of vegetarians and omnivores, stratified by sex Variables Vegetarians Omnivores Female Male Female Male Mean ± SD or n (%) Mean ± SD or n (%) Mean ± SD or n (%) Mean ± SD or n (%) Sociodemographic Sex 33 (59) 23 (41) 27 (68) 13 (32) Age 35.1 ± 7.3 31.9 ± 7.7 33.5 ± 7.3 32.5 ± 6.3 Educational attainment Completed high school; some higher education 5 (9) 5 (9) 13 (33) 8 (20) Completed higher school; postgraduate degree 28 (50) 18 (32) 14 (35) 5 (12) Marital status Without partner 20 (36) 17 (30) 11 (27) 6 (15) With partner 13 (23) 6 (11) 16 (40) 7 (18) Life style Physical activity Inactive 20 (36) 17 (30) 21 (53) 11 (27) Active 13 (23) 6 (11) 6 (15) 2 (5) Smoker No 32 (57) 21 (37) 25 (64) 13 (33) Yes 1 (2) 2 (4) 1 (3) 0 (0) Number of meals < 3 meals 6 (11) 6 (11) 5 (13) 2 (5) 4 or more meals 27 (48) 17 (30) 22 (55) 11 (27) Sleeping hours < 8 hours 28 (50) 20 (36) 24 (60) 11 (28) > 8 hours 5 (9) 3 (5) 3 (7) 2 (5) Vitamins / supplements No 15 (28) 13 (24) 20 (51) 11 (28) Yes 17 (31) 9 (17) 7 (18) 1 (3) Pimentel et al. Nutritional status and vegetarians Int J Cardiovasc Sci. 2019;32(6):623-634 Original Article Considerable research on the effects of a vegetarian diet has been done with seventh-day Adventists, whose practices include refraining from eating meat. 22 So far, three cohort studies involving seventh-day Adventists have been conducted in the USA. The Adventist Health Study-1 (AHS-1) collected data from approximately 34,000 non-Hispanic Californian Adventists on fatal and non-fatal events. 23 The study provided important information, showing that obesity was less prevalent among vegetarians, and, similar to our study, the most common diet followed by vegetarians was the ovo- lacto vegetarian diet. The Adventist Health Study-2 (AHS-2), started in 2002, is a cohort prospective study involving more than 96,000 seventh-day Adventists, 52% of them vegetarians. The most common diet also was the ovo-lacto-vegetarian diet (28%), followed by semi-vegetarians (16%) and vegans (8%). 24 The study has reported some important results, including the relationship between vegetarianism and lower risk for diabetes, 25 hypertension 26 and obesity. 27 There has been much debate on the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of vegetarian diets. Petterson et al. 26 highlighted that the lower incidence of hypertension among vegetarians in the AHS-2 study is due to the lower BMI in this group. Another cohort study (the EPIC-Oxford investigation) recruited 65,500 adults (20-89 years old); 51.8% were omnivores, 28.8% ovo-lacto-vegetarians, 15.5% semi-vegetarians and 3.9% vegans. Mean BMI was higher in non-vegetarian men (24.2 kg/m 2 ), in line with our results (see Table