Why Eat Plants?

Today, we take a close look at the pros and cons of plant-based eating.

Vegetarian diets and lifestyle have been shown to reduce the risk of many chronic diseases, which now account for the major global burden of diseases. But the actual direct medical costs had never been quantified before. Here’s what they found. The same amount spent on dental work, but compared to meat-eaters that similarly don’t smoke or drink, or compared to the general population, vegetarians had significantly lower inpatient, outpatient, and total medical care expenditures––suggesting more plant-based eating could be an effective strategy to save on healthcare costs.

Here’s how it broke down. Significantly lower costs for chronic lifestyle conditions, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. This makes sense. Those eating plant-based diets centered around whole plant foods nailed the targets for cholesterol, triglycerides, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure 93 percent of the time, 97 percent of the time, 88 percent of the time, and 95 percent of the time, respectively.

Nearly a 50 percent drop in medical costs due to depression too. That’s interesting, as well as lower costs across the board.

Cerebrovascular disease is another name for stroke. Wasn’t there that study that showed vegetarians had higher stroke risk? True, but that was before two subsequent studies found a lower risk of stroke with a vegetarian diet and not just by a little. For ischemic stroke, the most common clotting type of stroke, vegetarians consistently had about 60 percent lower risk. And, for bleeding strokes, about 65 percent lower risk than nonvegetarians. And, this was despite higher homocysteine due to lower vitamin B12 intake, which is what may have led to higher stroke risk in the previous study.

Overall, if you do a systematic review of all the major studies, a comprehensive meta-analysis found a significant protective effect of a vegetarian diet versus the incidence and/or mortality from ischemic heart disease and incidence from total cancer, with a vegan diet conferring about twice the reduced risk cancer-wise.

You can also look at it the other way. What if you decide to stop eating vegetarian and start eating meat? The Adventist Health Study looked at that and found that compared to those who stayed vegetarian, those who started eating meat suffered a 231 percent increased risk of gaining weight, 166 percent increased risk of developing diabetes, 152 percent increased risk of having a stroke, and 146 percent increased risk of being diagnosed with heart disease. And if you keep eating meat, you may cut your lifespan by three and a half years. So, better to not just to cut out meat, but cut it out for good.

But, it’s not all-or-nothing. Even just cutting down may help. A food pattern that emphasizes plant-derived foods was found to be associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality, meaning living a significantly longer life.

So, there are multiple benefits even eating the direction of a more plant-based diet. But, what about any risks? Despite concern for protein deficiency, adequate amounts of protein, which means 0.8 g/kg body weight, which is about 50 grams a day, can be consumed in a solely plant-based diet, as seen among the other billion plus people around the world who don’t eat meat. Vitamin B12 deficiency, on the other hand, is a very real concern without a regular reliable source, and I have videos on how to do that, either through supplements or fortified foods.

One benefit you don’t hear much about is the role our diets play in the emergence of pandemic infectious diseases, the subject of one of my recent books. It doesn’t take much for a virus to jump from one animal to another, but there are no examples of plant viruses ever jumping to humans for the same reason we don’t ever come down with a really bad case of Dutch elm disease. 

The largest and oldest association of nutrition professionals in the world is clear: Plant-based diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle and may actually provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. For example, vegetarians and vegans are at reduced risk of ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, certain types of cancers, and obesity. And, to learn more, they encourage people to go check out a few good websites. 

As the emeritus dean of the School of Public Health at Loma Linda once said at a nutrition conference: “Attitudes toward vegetarian diets have progressed from ridicule and skepticism to condescending tolerance, to gradual and sometimes grudging acceptance, and finally to acclaim.”

In our next story, we look at how healthier plant-based diets compare to unhealthy plant foods and animal foods for diabetes risk.

In my video on flexitarians, I talk about how the benefits of eating a plant-based diet are not all-or-nothing. “Simple advice to increase the consumption of plant-derived foods with [parallel] reductions in the consumption of foods from animal sources [was found to] confer a survival advantage,” a live-longer advantage. They call it a pro-vegetarian eating pattern, just moving in that direction, as a more gradual, gentle, doable approach.

If you’re dealing with a serious disease, though, like diabetes, avoiding some problem foods completely may be easier than attempting to moderate your intake. It’s like clinicians would never tell alcoholics to simply cut down on alcohol. Avoiding alcohol entirely is more effective and, ironically, easier for a problem drinker.

“Paradoxically, asking patients to make a large change may be more effective than making a slow transition. Diet studies show that recommending more significant changes increases the changes that patients actually accomplish. It may help to replace the common advice, “all things in moderation” with “big changes beget big results.” Success breeds success. After a few days or weeks of major dietary changes, patients are [more] likely to see improvements in weight and blood [sugar] levels—improvements that reinforce the dietary changes. Furthermore, they may enjoy other health benefits of…plant-based [eating]” that may give them further motivation.

Those who choose to eat plant-based for their health say it’s mostly for general wellness and disease prevention, or to improve their energy levels or immune function. They felt it gave them a sense of control over their health, helps you feel better emotionally, improves your overall health, and makes you feel better. Most felt it was very important for maintaining their health and well-being. For the minority that used it for a specific health problem, it was mostly for high cholesterol or weight loss, followed by high blood pressure and diabetes. Most reported they felt it helped a great deal.

But others choose plant-based diets for other reasons, like animal welfare or global warming, and it looks like they’re more likely to be eating things like vegan doughnuts, and sugary and fatty foods, compared to those eating plant-based because of religious or health reasons.

I mean the veganist vegan could bake a cake (using soda instead of eggs), with frosting, covered in marshmallow fluff and chocolate syrup, topped with Oreos, with a side of Doritos dipped in, vegan bacon grease. But fruit for dessert…in the form of Pop Tarts and Krispy Kreme pies? This, is a vegan meal.

Yes, plant-based diets have been recommended to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. However, not all plant foods are necessarily beneficial. Like in that pro-vegetarian scoring system, you got points for eating potato chips and French fries, just because they were technically plant-based, but Harvard researchers wanted to examine the association of not only an overall plant-based diet, but both healthy and unhealthy versions. So, they created the same kind of pro-vegetarian scoring system weighted towards any sort of plant-based foods, and against animal foods, and then also created a healthful plant-based diet index, where at least some whole plant foods took precedence, and Coca-Cola was no longer considered a plant. Then lastly, they created an unhealthful plant-based diet index by assigning positive scores to processed plant-based junk and negative scoring healthier foods and animal foods.

And, they found that a more plant-based diet in general was good for reducing diabetes risk, but eating especially healthy plant-based foods did better––nearly cutting risk in half, while those eating more unhealthy plant foods did worse. Now, but is that because they were also eating more animal foods? People often eat burgers with their fries; so, they separated out the effects of healthy plant foods, less healthy plant foods, and animal foods. And, healthy plant foods were protectively associated, animal foods were detrimentally associated, and less-healthy plant foods were more neutral when it came to diabetes risk. Higher diabetes risk with more and more animal foods, no protection whatsoever with junky plant foods, and lower and lower diabetes risk associated with more and more healthy whole plant foods in the diet. So, they conclude that yes, plant-based diets are associated with substantially lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. But, it may not be enough to just lower the intake of animal foods, but also less healthy plant foods as well.