Jezebel fail at science? That's unpossible!

Pardon the bastardization of a well-loved Simpsons quote, but that was my eye-rolling response when I read this  Jezebel headline that says that vegetarians are less healthy than meat eaters.

If they're going to regularly post science articles, they really need someone who can look at them critically. Yes, the validity of the study was eventually questioned, but not without a cheap shot at "smug" vegetarians. Here's a better breakdown  of it from The Grist (emphasis mine):

But the real message here is that this study shows correlation, not causation. No one can say for sure that going vegetarian will make you depressed, give you cancer, or kill you. As several Redditors suggest, maybe people with food allergies or cancer go vegetarian in an attempt to eat healthier (which would definitely skew the results). 

Plus, the “veg” in “vegetarianism” doesn’t mean someone is eating lots of vegetables, only that she doesn’t eat meat. But French fries do not a healthy vegetarian make, and the study didn’t take that into account — carnivores were classified according to whether they ate a lot of fresh fruits and veggies or not, but vegetarians weren’t. Maybe it’s time we develop some catchy shorthand for “people who eat plant-based, nutrient-rich diets,” and then see if THAT is correlated with poor health. Until then, saying that kale-eaters are sicker is just bad science.