Well it looks like your vegetarian friends will be bitching about the eggplant parmesan at your post-funeral lunch too, because they're definitely out-living you.

A British study finds vegetarians run a 32 percent lower risk of heart disease than their carnivorous counterparts. Researchers followed 44,500 volunteers for 11 years and found that vegetarians were far less likely to have fun cardiac issues.

The study's lead researcher Francesca Crowe has this explanation: "We think [it] is due to their lower cholesterol and blood pressure."

In the study, of people between the ages of 50 and 70, 6.8 percent of those who ate meat went to the hospital or died of heart disease; for vegetarians, the number was only 4.6 percent. Vegetarians also had lower weight-to-height ratios and were less likely to become diabetic. Researchers say they also took into account other factors including age, smoking, alcohol intake, exercise, education and income.

Of the 44,500 people in the study 1,235 developed heart disease. It was fatal for 169.

It's important to note that this study was done in Britain and not in America where a Snickers bar counts as a vegetarian snack. According to the CDC, here in America there's already a 1 in 4 chance you'll die of heart disease so it's basically hopeless. Burgers up!

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