Over the past 30 years, I have periodically taught health and fitness to certified teachers during the summer. Since it was just one of the many ways for the teachers to accrue additional educational credits needed to retain certification, the classes almost always contained students who had a yearning to learn.

Some were obese or overweight and determined to do something about it. Some were battling chronic illness and seeking a remedy or relief. And some just needed knowledge to allow them to function more efficiently, have more energy, and possibly pass along that new-found knowledge to help their own students or family members.Whatever the case, the collective knowledge base was always diverse. Someone with 20 years' experience teaching physical education and health could be seated beside someone with two year's experience in computer science who sat besides the life skills teacher fresh out of college.As a result, the initial classes would cover the rudiments of health and fitness and then the classes' requests would direct the rest.If there were questions about the effectiveness or safety of the Atkins diet we'd take a half hour and answer them. If a few wanted workouts to not only burn calories but also reshape the body, we'd discuss how to go about that. If others claimed no time to cook and a need to know the best fast-foods options, we'd even discuss that.If you remember, the focus of last week's column was to forget about finding the "one big thing" to transform your health, but rather to seek out several small changes to accomplish the same.To do so, your approach to health and fitness may need to be as eclectic as that aforementioned class. What follows are a few interesting studies about vegetable consumption that might intrigue you enough to make few small alterations.Because when in dietary doubt, it seems, the no-fail strategy is to eat more vegetables.Research performed at Loma Linda University in California and published in 2013 in JAMA Internal Medicine, for example, has linked greater vegetable consumption with a lessened incidence of death. To determine that, researchers analyzed the eating habits of over 73,000 adult Seventh-day Adventist Church members (average age 58) for six years.About 46 percent of the subjects followed some form of a vegetarian diet, about 6 percent were primarily vegetarians but did eat meat no more than once a week, and about 48 percent regularly ate meat.Questionnaires and follow-ups ascertained increased longevity for those eschewing meat, with men benefitting the most. Not only did the non-meat eating men have a 12 percent decreased risk of dying, but they were also 29 percent less likely to die from heart disease.While Dr. Michael Orlich, the study's lead author told the Tribune News Services that "this adds to the evidence showing the possible beneficial effect of vegetarian diets in the prevention of chronic diseases and the improvement of longevity," others asked to comment on the results were quick to mention that using only Seventh-day Adventists because they tend to be better educated, thinner, and definitely less likely to smoke than the average American may have affected the results.I agree. But such a decision did not create the positive correlation. If anything, it minimized it.A greater cross-section of the American population (note: some Canadian Seventh-day Adventists were used in the study) would have included far less discriminating meat eaters than would be found in a meat-eating group of Seventh-day Adventists. Remember, meat eating Seventh-day Adventists are not only more educated than typical meat eating Americans, but they are also outliers. Their religion strongly advocates abstaining from eating meat.Those members who do so in all likelihood do so responsibly, thereby mitigating the disparity in longevity and the incidence of chronic diseases that would be present when dyed-in-the-wool meat eaters are compared to devout vegetarians.For those more interested in the here and now, research published earlier this year by the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that weight loss results from following a vegetarian diet, even when the reason for adopting the diet is one other than weight loss.The research considered more than 750 subjects in 15 studies, some as brief as two weeks and others as long as two years. Overall, the average weight loss at the 44-week mark for all was about 10 pounds, with men, particularly older men, averaging even more than that.The "take-home message," according to the study's lead author, Neal Bernard, M.D. president of the Physicians Committee and adjunct associate professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health, is that eating a plant-based-diet is a natural way to lose weight without the hassle of counting calories or increase in time needed to burn more calories through exercise.