Save on Life Insurance Premiums: Go Vegetarian

When most applicants think about how to lower their life insurance premiums, they might consider reducing their alcohol intake, quitting smoking, or losing a few pounds. However, it rarely occurs to life insurance applicants that going vegetarian could save them at least as much if not more than any of the other aforementioned lifestyle changes. Though no official discount is offered for vegetarians in the U.S. yet, an insurer called Animal Friends Insurance (AFI) in the U.K. began doing so in July of 2007. Considered the first of its kind, AFI’s discount program offers a 25% discount on premiums for the first year of coverage and a 6% discount thereafter for vegetarians. Many believe the decision represents a nascent trend in the life insurance industry that will eventually extend to American life insurers. Irrespective of whether your insurer offers a specific discount for non-meat eaters, you can still save money on your life insurance policy by going vegetarian. We’ll explain how in what follows.

The Dreaded Health Exam

In order to explain the financial advantages of going veg for your life insurance policy, we must first explain the life insurance medical exam to which all applicants are subjected. During a basic exam, a paramedical will measure your height, weight, blood pressure, pulse, and collect blood and urine samples. The blood work will reveal things like your cholesterol and lipid levels and determine if you have any conditions such as diabetes or hepatitis. Depending on your age and your insurer, you may also have to submit to an EKG or a treadmill test. The outcome of this battery of tests will determine which premium tier you fall into with your insurer, with the most salubrious applicants categorized in the “preferred” premium tier.

How Vegetarianism Can Help

The health benefits of a vegetarian diet are innumerable. Research has shown that vegetarianism can drastically reduce the risk of developing all three of the country’s biggest killers (heart disease, strokes, and cancer). Indeed, vegetarians are half as likely to develop heart disease as meat eaters and have 40% of the cancer rate of meat eaters. Moreover, meat eaters are a whopping nine times more likely to be obese than pure vegetarians, or vegans. As if the empirical evidence in favor of a meat-free diet weren’t compelling enough, a 2004 study revealed a positive correlation between the consumption of red meat and type II diabetes. In summary, here is a synopsis of the specific things vegetarianism can do to help you on your life insurance medical exam, thereby saving you money:

• Lower your blood cholesterol levels
• Lower your blood pressure and rates of hypertension
• Reduce your risk of heart disease
• Reduce your risk of type II diabetes
• Lower your risk of developing a variety of cancers, including prostate and colon cancer

The Dissenters

American insurers’ reluctance to get on board by offering special discounts to vegetarians is partially due to the difficulty of proving the assertion that one does not eat meat. Arguably, the discount might be easy to take advantage of, as some might spuriously profess a meat-free diet only to garner the discount. On the other hand, life insurance applicants can also easily fabricate their lifestyle habits about smoking, drinking, etc. by abstaining near the time of the medical exam, so this quagmire would not be a novel one to the industry. Official vegetarian discounts notwithstanding, a meat-free diet can still help you attain the cheapest premiums possible by improving your health in so many ways. The animal welfare, environmental, or world famine arguments for a meat-free diet may not provide the requisite impetus for you to go veg, but the prospect of saving thousands of dollars over time on your life insurance just might be the extra boost of motivation you need.