6 Reasons Aligned with Your Values to Include More Plants in Your Diet
Why we need more awareness in our relationship with food
With nutrition fads attracting followers of the latest trends, making sense of what is good for us is not always straightforward. There used to be a war against fat, then the battle turned to carbohydrates, but none of these macronutrients have really been shown to be deleterious for our health. Tim Spector highlighted in the Diet Myth (1) that the common denominator underlying obesity is rather a lack of fiber.
While the medical culture places excessive emphasis on treatment rather than prevention, nutrition is the best place to start and holistically nurture a healthy lifestyle, following Hippocrates’ recommendation:
Let thy food be thy medicine.
All in all, there’s an underlying truth in nutrition, and the good news is that it’s actually very simple.
People follow different dietary patterns and preferences associated to different values. We are what we eat. Some of us put our health first, or our microbiome balance, some seek athletic performance, other prefer to care for the planet’s future ; some of us prioritize animal welfare, some choose a diet compatible with the highest spiritual development — and most of us make our food decisions based on a combination of these criteria, without compromising on taste.
Well, the good point is: everything is aligned. Whichever is your main choice driver, the foods to promote and avoid are basically the same.
1) Plant-based food is better for the environment
In terms of health and environmental impact of the different food groups, an extensive review showed that whole grains, fruits & vegetables, nuts, legumes, potatoes and refined grains all have a lesser impact on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, eutrophication, acidification and water use (except nuts) when compared to animal-based foods (2).
In his last book We Are The Weather (3) Alexander Safran Foer also focused on how, as consumers and citizens, we do have a power to make an immediate change in the face of the climate crisis. Among much valuable information and inconvenient truths, he argues that 80% of all deforestation globally occurs to clear land either to make room for the animals or to make room for the crops that will feed them, and the figure rises to a staggering 91% in what concerns the Amazonian rainforest. The Worldwatch Institute published a report in 2009 claiming that livestock are responsible for at least 51% of annual global emissions — more than all cars, planes, buildings, power plants, and industry combined, and implying that replacing livestock with better alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change (4).
One could argue that the impact of animal farming depends on where and how it is produced, which is true, but Hannah Ritchie has studied the question and confirmed that plant-based protein sources have the lowest carbon footprint even compared to the lowest impact producers of meat and dairy, and that eating less meat is nearly always better than eat the most sustainable meat (5).
2) Plant-based Food is Better for your Cardiovascular Health and Longevity
As shown in the above illustration, the influence on total mortality, coronary heart disease, colorectal cancer, diabetes and stroke is best for fruits & vegetables, whole grains, nus and legumes (2). In fact, a vegan diet is usually associated with lower BMI, waist circumference, and a better cholesterol and glucose metabolism compared to an omnivorous control diet (6). The literature agrees that plant-based diets reduce atherosclerogenic lipids and cardiovascular risks (7–9).
One of the highest ranking scientific authority journal, The Lancet, established recommendations for a diet that can meet high expectations both in terms of health and sustainability (10):
Healthy diets consist of a diversity of plant-based foods, low amounts of animal source foods, unsaturated rather than saturated fats, and small amounts of refined grains, highly processed foods, and added sugars. Transformation to healthy diets by 2050 will require substantial dietary shifts, including a greater than 50% reduction in global consumption of unhealthy foods, such as red meat and sugar, and a greater than 100% increase in consumption of healthy foods, such as nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Dietary changes from current diets to healthy diets are likely to substantially benefit human health, averting about 10.8–11.6 million deaths per year, a reduction by 19.0–23.6%.
3) Eating More Plants to Harm Less Animals
From an animal welfare point of view the argument is quite straightforward: in a world in which the almost totality of animal products are grown in factory farms (according to a report from Sentience Institute dated end of 2019 (11), 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms — the term for intensive, confined conditions), generally eating meat and animal products is participating to the model of animal abuse well-described by Foer in Eating Animals (12). 60% of all mammals on Earth are animals raised for food, so it may be a good place to start for a wide impact.
4) Plant-based food is Better for Your Microbiome
We live in the Microbiome Era, in the midst of a revolution in our perception of the self, of health and of medicine in general. Discovering that our body is composed by as much microbes as our own cells (roughly 40 trillion of each) and that our microorganisms bring to our metabolism about 100–150 times more genes than our own eukaryotic cells (13) has changed the paradigm and consideration given to our genetics and shifted the big picture of health towards the superorganism.
Colonic bacteria participate in food digestion mainly through two pathways (14):
- bacteria fermenting carbohydrates and oligosaccharides such as prebiotics into short chain fatty acids with beneficial effects
- bacteria performing protein fermentation (putrefaction) generating branched chain fatty acids, ammonia, indoles, phenols and other toxic agents, if protein are consumed in amounts that allow them to arrive to the colon
We are now just discovering that the benefits of the Mediterranean diet may be mediated by the microbiome (16), similarly to the adverse effects of sugar (17), and more generally understanding more and more how the microbiome mediates the relationship between diet and health (18). For example, the transformation of choline (from egg yolk and high-fat animal products) into trimethylamine by the gut microbes leads to the conversion of this substance into atherogenic trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) in the liver. This pathway helps to explain the correlation that exists between cardiovascular disease and excessive consumption of animal products (19). Very recently, scientists reviewed the impact of beef on the microbiome and concluded that when consumed at higher than recommended levels (according to the UK NHS, the recommended level is no more than 70g per day which roughly corresponds to two thirds of a deck of cards (20)), beef has adverse consequences for the gut microbiota, basically increasing bad microorganisms like Proteobacteria and decreasing levels of beneficial bacteria such as Akkermansia (21).
In turn, if the microbiota is disturbed, the infinite number of services our microbes provide us also gets disrupted, from fine-tuning our immune system to supporting our digestion and mental wellbeing.
On the other hand, when eating a high-fiber diet, our microbes are able to feed on the fiber and release short chain fatty acids such as acetate, propionate and the all-mighty butyrate, all important molecules for the colonocytes health, and more broadly metabolic health and satiety.
This is tremendously empowering, because shifting from an animal-based diet to a plant-based diet enables change in your microbiota within just a few days (22).
5) The Best Brain Diet is Mostly Plant-Based
Have you ever heard of the MIND diet ? MIND stands for Mediterranean-DASH diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay and it was first devised in 2015 by Martha-Clare Morris and her team to highlight the most beneficial items of the Mediterranean diet and design a neuroprotective nutrition. Rich in green leafy vegetables, berries, nuts, olive oil, whole grain, fish and bean, it aims to limit cheese, meat, fried foods and sweets. Since then, the MIND diet showed an ability to slow down cognitive decline with aging (23) and reduced by half the chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease (24), and by nearly half the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease (25). If the MIND diet was a drug, it would be the billion-dollar baby!
Similarly, healthy diets such as the Mediterranean diet can show a certain protection against depression (26, 27).
6) Enhancing Your Spiritual Experience
“Food to a large extent is what holds a society together, and eating is closely linked to deep spiritual experiences”
Peter Farb and George Armelagos in Consuming Passions: The anthropology of eating (28).
If you are a confirmed yogi or if you travelled to India, you are probably familiar to the old wisdom of the sattvic diet. It is a tradition going back 5000 years in time, to ancient yoga and Ayurveda, in which sattva could translate in balance or harmony, in a holistic perspective, aiming to promote patterns of food preparation and eating beneficial for the mind, body and spirit, inducing a calm and virtuous state.
Sattvic food emphasizes fresh, plant-based ingredients with minimal processing — mostly whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein, low fat dairy, and avoids salt, color, flavors or preservatives. Certain spices such as turmeric, cardamom and cinnamon are regarded as sattvic.
“Sattvic food brings equanimity, happiness, creativity, a sense of serenity and calmness. If you want to be more sensitive and more sharp and have deeper experiences it is very important not to eat meat”
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, 29.
This recommendation is not only found in the Indian tradition, indeed most spiritual leaders encourage a light, vegetarian diet on the way to illumination. Vegetarianism is overwhelmingly the diet of choice in the holistic and wellbeing milieu, as a plant-based diet is considered as conducive to wellbeing in the body, mind and spirit. Don’t forget to cook and eat with love, as it is as much about the how as it is about the what.
You Are What You Eat
The objective of this article is to provide broad spectrum information to support fact-based decision making and encourage, where you feel it meets with your core values and needs, to include more plant-based alternatives. Michael Pollan put it in these words “Eat food” (meaning real food). “Not too much. Mostly plants.” (28). Our grandmothers knew it too, but somehow food got complicated on the way to modernity. Back to the garden, and cheers to you, your microbes and the planet!
References:
(1) “The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat”. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved November 30, 2018. Tim Spector
(2) Multiple health and environmental impacts of foods Michael A Clark, Marco Springmann, Jason Hill, David Tilman Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nov 2019, 116 (46) 23357–23362; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906908116
(3) We Are the Weather, Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, by Jonathan Safran Foer, edited in 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(4) WorldWatch Insitute 2009 report : Livestock and climate change: what if the key actors in climate change are cows, pigs and chickens?
(5) https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
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(8) Y. Yokoyama, S.M. Levin, N.D. BarnardAssociation between plant-based diets and plasma lipids a systematic review and meta-analysis Nutrition Reviews, 75 (2017), pp. 683–698
(9) R.S. Najjar, C.E. Moore, B.D. MontgomeryConsumption of a defined, plant-based diet reduces lipoprotein(a), inflammation and other atherogenic lipoproteins and particles within 4 weeks Clinical Cardiology, 41 (2018), pp. 1062–1068
(10)Willett Wet al. Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Lancet. 2019 Feb 2;393(10170):447–492. doi: 10.1016/S0140–6736(18)31788–4. Epub 2019 Jan 16.
(11)https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates
(12)Jonathan Safran Foer. Eating Animals. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009.
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(14)P. Evenepoel, B.K.I. Meijers, B.R.M. Bammens, K. Verbeke Uremic toxins originating from colonic microbial metabolism. Kidney International, 114 (2009), pp. S12-S19
(15)JRC F7 — Knowledge for Health and Consumer Safety, The Human Gut Microbiota: Overview and analysis of the current scientific knowledge and possible impact on healthcare and well-being, EUR 29240 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2018, ISBN 978–92–79–86471–1, doi:10.2760/17381, JRC112042.
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