Vegetarians are smarter
A new study links being a vegetarian with higher IQ. High IQ link to being vegetarian:
A Southampton University team found those who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10.
This news struck me because:
- I know a lot of programmers who are vegetarians
- I work with the largest group of vegetarians I've ever been around
- My sister is a vegetarian (and her intelligence must correlate to mine somehow, right?)
Of course there's lots of caveats and they aren't sure yet what is cause and what is effect. For example, other factors that have to be weighed in are:
- Vegetarians are more likely to be female. (But I know an awfully lot of male vegetarians!)
- Vegetarians usually have higher socioeconomic status. (Cause or effect?)
- Vegetarians usually have more education. (Did they become vegetarian before or after the education?)
And the big question … Are they vegetarians because they are smarter than the rest of us? Or are they smart because they are vegetarians?
To me the cause/effect are reversed here. The statement says that if they had higher IQ at age 10, then they were more likely to be vegetarians at 30 (not that being vegetarian makes you smarter, but if you are smarter you are more likely to be vegetarian). Higher IQ is also linked to more will power and more action based on belief – so this correlation makes sense to me.
I have argued with other vegetarians before on the matter of socioeconomic status. There is a good chunk of vegetarians who subscribe to a prmitivist, or even luddite philosophy, believing that simple things are better. These people tend to reject many modern things as evil or at least suboptimal. They tend to lump meat production in with these “industrial evils” largely because of the very real horrors of factory farming. The proponents of simplicity are also quick to bring up statistics about the amount of energy or land it takes to make a burger, compared to how much it takes to make a salad. This is generally an argument in favor of vegetarianism as a less wasteful, more egalitarian practice.
The thing that gets forgotten in this analyis, though, is the fact that vegetarianism is a very modern luxury. We have access to a huge variety of vegetables and produce *because* of our agricultural infrastructure. I eat bananas almost every day. If I had to live more “simply” and grow my own food here in Colorado, I would not even know what a banana was. My own belief is that a healty vegetarian diet is a uniquely 21st century phenomenon.