Why Plant-Based: Skirting the Vegan Hard Sell
By: Suzanne Morris, DVM, MWC
I recently started writing summaries of dietary guidelines with respect to various organ systems and disease states. But I realized, 2 posts in, that a little background is needed.
Sometime in late 2019, I attended a meeting for people interested in volunteering for a women’s health organization. To teach the adult participants a lesson in civics (which could fuel a separate discussion), the meeting presenter divided us up into groups representing House and Senate committees. We then were directed to author and find sponsors for bills. I authored a bill that would require that lunches be vegan in public schools and in prisons. So, 1 meal per day (5 meals per week for the school kids). One meal per day was too much for the mock-committee, who questioned whether it couldn’t be 1 meal per week or whether alternative options couldn’t still be offered alongside the vegan meal. And this was among what were easily some of the city’s most progressive citizenry. Surprisingly, though, it did wind up being voted on by both chambers (and failing in 1). The points of contention were based almost entirely on nutritional fallacies. The classics, of course, were trotted out (But they won’t get enough protein!), along with a few new ones, for me, at least (How will they get any iron?—this from a self-described vegan). Again, 1 meal per day.
Full disclosure: For ethical reasons, I have been vegan for 16 years and before that was vegetarian and an on/off vegan from the age of 14. So, I would love for all humans to go vegan for other animals’ sake. But given the described scenario, a more varied, incremental approach may be required. Here, I will mention of a couple of studies which showed that people were more likely to reduce their red meat intake when informed that avoiding red meat benefitted their own health or the environment (the latter was second to personal health in 1 study), rather than if it preserved the health or life of an animal.[1,2] To that end, studies continue to reveal the health benefits of plant-based diets, which are in turn informing health guidelines.[3]
Although the vegan diet is plant-based, there are other plant-based diets that do not completely exclude animals and animal products (the Mediterranean, DASH, and MIND diets are considered plant-based), but they still greatly reduce animal consumption. (Remember: 1 meal.) Studies have shown that dietary patterns which skew more heavily towards plant-, and away from animal-, based foods are associated with a lower risk of mortality.[4,5] This has been the case particularly with respect to plant-derived dietary protein when compared with animal-derived dietary protein, which flies in the face of the protein mantra on which many of us were raised.[6,7]
Because of the entrenched nutritional misperceptions about vegan and other plant-based diets, I wanted to review what the different health and medical organizations are currently recommending and why. At the personal level, I want to be familiar with these guidelines and the data on which they’re based so that I might be better positioned to share accurate information about vegan and plant-based diets when I encounter inaccurate assumptions. For those of you who want to improve your health or are curious about plant-based diets, I hope this is informative. And for those of you who are vegan, I’m hoping this will help you in being (or becoming) healthy vegans and give you some talking points the next time you receive a forecast of doomed health at your next family reunion or even at your own dinner table. By doing so, maybe we can help nudge the global needle toward a more compassionate, environmentally sound, and healthy dietary pattern…1 meal at a time.
References:
1. Grummon AH, Musicus AA, Salvia MG, Thorndike AN, Rimm EB. Impact of health, environmental, and animal welfare messages discouraging red meat consumption: an online randomized experiment. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2022 Oct 9:S2212-2672(22)01071-1. doi: 10.1016/j.jand.2022.10.007
2. Taillie LS, Prestemon CE, Hall MG, Grummon AH, Vesely A, Jaacks LM. Developing health and environmental warning messages about red meat: An online experiment. PLoS One. 2022 Jun 24;17(6):e0268121. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268121
3. Locke A, Schneiderhan J, Zick SM. Diets for health: goals and guidelines. Am Fam Physician. 2018;97(11):721-728.
4. Martínez-González MA, Sánchez-Tainta A, Corella D, et al; PREDIMED Group. A provegetarian food pattern and reduction in total mortality in the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 Jul;100 Suppl 1:320S-8S. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.113.071431. Erratum in: Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 Dec;100(6):1605.
5. Orlich MJ, Singh PN, Sabaté J, et al. Vegetarian dietary patterns and mortality in Adventist Health Study 2. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Jul 8;173(13):1230-8. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.6473
6. Song M, Fung TT, Hu FB, et al. Association of animal and plant protein intake with all-cause and cause-specific mortality. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Oct 1;176(10):1453-1463. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.4182. Erratum in: JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Nov 1;176(11):1728.
7. Tharrey M, Mariotti F, Mashchak A, Barbillon P, Delattre M, Fraser GE. Patterns of plant and animal protein intake are strongly associated with cardiovascular mortality: the Adventist Health Study-2 cohort. Int J Epidemiol. 2018 Oct 1;47(5):1603-1612. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyy030