First things first: It goes without saying that lighting up a cigarette or knocking back a bottle of booze is bad for your health. In fact, here are five ways alcohol may be sabotaging your healthy diet efforts.
With that being said, some interesting new research, presented at the European Congress of Obesity from researchers at the University of Glasgow is a testament to just how powerful a vegetarian or vegan diet can be. Even if you account for lifestyle factors like smoking and alcohol intake, vegetarians had significantly better biomarker levels than meat-eaters across important areas like total cholesterol, metrics related to heart disease, signs of inflammation, and more.