In this video I look at some overall stats on the potential benefits
and risks of eating a plant-based diet.
It's a great introductory video if you're just getting started
or want to share with friends and family.
Check it out.
"The Negative Effects and Benefits of Plant-Based Diets"
Vegetarian diets and lifestyles have been shown to reduce the risk
of many chronic diseases, which now accounts
for the major global burden of disease,
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
who 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% of the time,
97% of the time, 88% of the time, and 95% of the time, respectively.
Nearly a 50% 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% lower risk.
And for bleeding strokes, about 65% lower risk than nonvegetarian.
And this despite higher homocysteine due to lower vitamin B12 intake,
which is what may have led to the 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% increased risk of gaining weight,
166% increase in the risk of developing diabetes,
152% increased risk of having a stroke,
and 146% 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 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.
Here are the cumulative hazards of death across categories
of pro-vegetarian eating,
meaning the closer you eat towards a completely plant-based diet,
the lower your risk of death falls.
The researchers conclude that there is now evidence
that the simple advice to increase the consumption
of plant-derived foods with reduction in the consumption
of foods from animal sources confers a survival advantage.
So there are multiple benefits even eating in the direction
of a more plant-based diet, but what about any risks?
Despite concerns for protein deficiency,
adequate amounts of protein -- which means 0.8 grams
per kilogram of 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."