The Netherlands Cohort Study – Meat Investigation Cohort; a population-based cohort over-represented with vegetarians, pescetarians and low meat consumers

Table 3 Hours of sleep, perceived general health, family history of cancer, cancer screening participation, and bowel movement of members of the NLCS-Meat Investigation Cohort by meat consumption status

	Men							Women
	All confirmed vegetarians, pescetarians and low meat consumers from the total cohort			Random sample of meat consumers from the total cohort			Self-reported vegetarians	All confirmed vegetarians, pescetarians and low meat consumers from the total cohort			Random sample of meat consumers from the total cohort			Self-reported vegetarians
	Vegetarian	Pescetarian	1 day/wk	2–5 day/wk	6–7 day/wk			Vegetarian	Pescetarian	1 day/wk	2–5 day/wk	6–7 day/wk
	n = 217	n = 152	n = 482	n = 1326	n = 2973	P ^b	n = 416	n = 485	n = 242	n = 914	n = 1639	n = 2676	P ^b	n = 734
Hours of sleep per day (h)	7.8 ± 1.1^c	7.7 ± 0.9	7.8 ± 1.1	7.8 ± 1.1	7.8 ± 1.1	0.34	7.8 ± 1.1	7.6 ± 1.1	7.6 ± 1.1	7.5 ± 1.3	7.6 ± 1.2	7.6 ± 1.1	0.28	7.6 ± 1.1
Perceived general health (%)
Excellent	25%	22%	19%	18%	18%	0.12	24%	20%	20%	14%	13%	13%	<0.001	20%
Reasonable/good	69%	72%	71%	75%	74%		72%	70%	67%	72%	77%	79%		70%
Poor/bad	6%	7%	10%	7%	8%		4%	10%	13%	14%	9%	7%		11%
Family history of cancer at baseline (first degree) (% yes)	40%	47%	45%	43%	46%	0.57	42%	47%	43%	50%	46%	48%	0.20	48%
Cancer screening (women only)
Cervical Smear (% yes)								73%	73%	74%	76%	73%	0.50	74%
Breast cancer screening (% yes)								23%	25%	29%	32%	28%	0.031	26%
Bowel movement (men only)
>2 times per day	7%	5%	5%	3%	3%	<0.001	6%
1–2 times per day	43%	46%	35%	34%	35%		44%
Once a day	48%	45%	54%	57%	56%		47%
Every two days or less	2%	3%	6%	7%	6%		3%
Constipation frequency (men only)
Never	55%	62%	46%	53%	56%	0.008	53%
Seldom	36%	27%	40%	34%	33%		36%
Sometimes or more often	9%	11%	13%	13%	11%		12%

^aExcluding prevalent cancer cases at baseline.
^bP values are derived from one way anova for continuous variables and from a chi2 test for categorical variables comparing the five meat consumption groups (vegetarian, pescetarian, 1 day/wk-, 2–5 day/wk-, and 6–7 day/wk meat consumers).
^cMean ± SD, all such values.

ISSN: 1475-2891