Plant-based as Plan(health)t-based

It was a rainy Monday afternoon as Anna, 58 years old, received a call from her doctor. Having seen her last analysis, he warned she was at serious risk: the bad cholesterol in her blood, responsible for most heart attacks and diseases, had hit the terribly dangerous level of 300 mg/dL, whereas healthy standards lay between 80 and 180. She was confused and frustrated; she didn’t smoke, practiced regular physical activity, avoided junk food and had no genetic predisposition.

“I had to take action immediately: from specific pills, to special diets suggested by the doctor, I unsuccessfully tried to improve my situation”. As she was eventually losing hope, her daughter came up with an idea. “Why don’t you try with a vegan diet?” she said, “I read some studies about its potential to reduce high cholesterol”.

Being a convinced cheese-lover, she was sceptical about veganism: not only saw she this lifestyle as extreme, but she was scared she wouldn’t enjoy eating and social events anymore, as well as cooking, her great passion. But, in the end, scared of her alarming condition and under her daughter’s pressure, she eventually gave in and reluctantly accepted to try it out. “Just for four weeks”, she pointed out sharply.

Her fears were well justified by common discourse around veganism, categorizing it as unnatural, expensive and potentially harmful.  

“I was convinced humans are omnivores, thus needing both animal- and plant-based foods. Also, the common image of a primitive is that of a meat-eater and hunter” she explains.

But few people know this is probably wrong. In the first place, several human characteristics suggest we are, in fact, herbivores, such as our very long intestine and the shape of our teeth. Evidence from recent scientific research on our primitive ancestors suggests the same.

“Plants are what our apey and even earlier ancestors ate” states journalist Rob Dunn in his article on the Scientific American. During time, due to repeated use of animal products, some populations (mostly Western) developed enzymes able to handle unnatural foods, such as milk or meat. But Dann warns “just because some of us do better with milk or starch or meat than others, doesn’t mean such foods are good for us”.

With the growing wealth of developed countries in the last decades, a prominent animal products’ industry emerged. Companies in the sector rapidly started advertising for the consumption of animal products, which grew at unbelievable rate, leading to modern intensive production. Here is where common modern discourse about meat eating was shaped.

“I had never thought about it in such terms before” says Anna. “I never realised I grew up in a society where animal products were depicted as indispensable for a healthy diet, and a symbol of wealth”.

Just like many others, she also thought of veganism as expensive. This is due to much commercialised vegan food you can find today on the market. As this lifestyle became a trend, some companies reacted offering expensive, mostly ready-made vegan meals in supermarkets, often full of chemicals in the attempt to resemble animal-based diet’s flavours.

But real veganism is completely different. It is about natural, seasonal and local foods and healthy, unprocessed meals. Thus, not only is it pretty cheap, but also absolutely environmentally-friendly.

As she first decided to go on the vegan diet, she was also scared of harming her body; and people around her didn’t help. “Are you crazy? Where are you going to get your proteins?” or “You are going to be always tired, without energy and nervous!” were just standard reactions.

This erroneous view of animal products as almost sole source of proteins comes from advertisements, which also made large use of famous sportspeople as testimonials for their products, enhancing the association with proteins. But, here is the news. Any animal protein comes from plants, as many studies underlined.

After her first week as a vegan, Anna couldn’t believe her eyes. She had never felt so energetic and in better shape. “It was just like I was finally eating what my body was projected to eat; it is a difficult sensation to explain. I just felt like every cell of my body was thanking me”.

Several scientists conducted in fact comparative studies between animal and plant-based diets over the last thirty years: no evidence of harmful effects of a vegan diet were found out; on the contrary, its unique benefits came out. Plant-based diet can fight bad cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure, pathologies leading to heart diseases, the first cause of death in the industrialized world.

In this regard, veganism has proved to be not only a cure, but fore and foremost the best prevention. Plants and cereals contain in fact no bad cholesterol and fats, in contrast to foods such as dairy, eggs and meat, which are plenty of it.

As she went on with her vegan diet, Anna got more and more convinced about its beneficial effects. “I started looking up for information on the internet and I found an incredible body of literature exalting plant-based nutrition, as well as worrying studies about animal products, also linking them to heart diseases and cancer. I was astonished. Information was there all the time, but no one told me.” 

In particular, the WHO (World Health Organisation) website categorises processed meat as group 1 carcinogenic, the same group of cigarettes. Red meat is group 2A, probably carcinogenic. However, uncategorized animal products, such as poultry and dairy, are not definable as safe. All you can find on the site’s Q&A is “There is not enough research to take a position about it”, which is probably even creepier.

Motivated by her discoveries, she tried to reinvent her cooking style. “I found out there are many substitutes to animal products for achieving the needed compactness or form of certain dishes, so that you don’t need to quit your favourite or traditional foods.” For example, the compactness given by an egg, can be achieved with corn or chickpeas flour, or with bananas in the case of sweet dishes.

“I discovered vegan doesn’t mean restrictive; on the contrary, I have never been so creative in cooking. I opened to many new flavours, colours, weird foods and dishes I had never heard of.” She really loves experimenting: vegan muffins, cakes, omelettes, mashes, mayonnaise, biscuits. You name it.

After four weeks, Anna went for blood analysis again. “I looked with fear at the results, but I was overwhelmed as I saw that number: 180 mg/dL. I couldn’t believe it”.

Of course, she is still on her vegan diet, and she has never felt better.

Anna was lucky, but there are still many Annas in our society, perhaps among our acquaintance. People eating animal products with diligence, as their society thought them, improving nothing but the industries’ revenues. People getting ill, frustrated people eating tons of pills, improving nothing but the Big Pharma’s profits.

“In 2020 there will be 2.4 million deaths attributable to red and processed meat consumption, as well as $285 billion in costs related to healthcare”

Dr Marco Springmann, University of Oxford

Change is needed. Will we achieve major nutritional awareness, in the new digital age? Will we stop serving elitist economic interests and start serving our health and our planet? All information is available, if you just want to find it.

Additional interesting links:

• https://www.livekindly.co/how-big-meat-took-over-food-industry/
• https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
• http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-11-06-tax-meat-could-offset-health-costs
• https://www.vivahealth.org.uk/resources/meat-truth-report?gclid=CjwKCAiAob3vBRAUEiwAIbs5ToWtDQrZHj8V5S9RSLosxKQXRGXlAorpqf1DXBhqPnT6rql18z9KQxoCKdAQAvD_BwE