| I don't know that much about the Austrian diet, but if it's anything like the Swiss diet, avoiding meat is a stone-cold bitch.

As a Swiss vegetarian, I have no idea what you are talking about. They even sell Quorn here (a meat substitute from funghi). Plus, meat is super expensive. I'd say being a vegetarian here is as easy or as hard as in the rest of the western world. Being vegan could be super hard though, you'd have to avoid all the great cheese...

As for the study: I think it is interesting, and if it was shown that a vegetarian diet is indeed detrimental to health, I would consider eating meat every now and then. However, as many already mentioned, the paper does not even make this point. It's unfortunate they did not ask the vegetarians why they are vegetarians and at least mention how many of them follow a vegetarian diet for health reasons.