Comment by Terretta

> So does it apply to all SDA's or just in Loma Linda.

Applies all across the country. Scientists looked at just high school grads w/o college, or those with four year degrees. You could group by people with incomes above, or below, certain thresholds. You could throw out irregular church goers and only look at evangelicals or conservatives by denomination. SDAs consistently emerged as the longer living group, no matter how grouped.

And regardless of the slicing, the factors most indicative proved to be how closely the health plan is followed. Looking within the SDA group, and dividing by adherence to the health guidelines, found the differences there as well.

Unlike your sibling comment suggests, this was not a black swan.

> although entirely non-meat diets commonly hurt from inadequate amounts of iron and in some cases protein

This is a common misconception. It's remarkably easy to get more than enough iron and protein in a non-meat diet. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism#Protein and the next section for some specific food ideas.

SDAs have espoused vegetarianism since the 1800s, and have been focused on diet and health since the beginning. In fact, there's a good chance you ate food formulated by the Kellogg brothers this morning...

To quote Wikipedia:

Kellogg's was founded as the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company on February 19, 1906, by Will Keith Kellogg as an outgrowth of his work with his brother John Harvey Kellogg at the Battle Creek Sanitarium following practices based on the Seventh-day Adventist Christian denomination.