"Is Vegan Food Always Healthy?"
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 their intake.
It’s like clinicians would never tell alcoholics to simply cut down on alcohol.
Avoiding alcohol entirely is a 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, with most
reporting 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, 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 then 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.
Here’s what the graph looks like: 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.