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been officially organized as a church for about 120 years. Within a few years after their organization, Church leaders began to advocate particular habits and prac-tices that were felt to promote better health. Smoking and drinking of alcoholic beverages soon became Church proscrip-tions. Data from our current ongoing project among 40,000 SDAs indicate that these proscriptions are carefully adhered to by the vast majority of SDA Church members (99 per cent nonsmokers, 90 per cent nondrinkers). The Church also rec-ommends (but does not require) its mem-bers to avoid certain dietary items such as meat, poultry, fish, coffee, tea, other caffeine-containing beverages, rich and highly refined foods, and hot condiments and spices. These Church recommenda-tions account for the fact that currently about one-fourth of SDAs are lifetime lacto-ovo-vegetarians, one-fourth have adopted the vegetarian diet sometime in life (usually shortly after joining the Church), and one-half of the SDA mem-bership currently follows a nonvegetarian diet. A previous eight-year prospective study comparing California SDAs to the general
Phillips et al. (Fri,) studied this question.