Is Vegan Food Always Healthy?

"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..

Video Transcript – As found on YouTube

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