Just because you follow a vegetarian or vegan diet doesn’t mean you’re eating healthy.
“Plant-based diets are Connected with a lower risk of CVD events, CVD mortality, and all-cause mortality in a general population of middle-aged adults”: This study of a diverse sample of 12,000 Americans found that “progressively increasing the intake of plant foods while decreasing the intake of animal foods is associated with benefits for cardiovascular health and mortality’. Also, regarding plant-based diets for cardiovascular disease prevention, “all plant-based foods are not was created equal.” As you can see in the chart below and at 0:40 in my video Vegetarians and Stroke Risk Factors: Vegan Junk Food?a British study I establish higher risk of stroke in vegetarians. Were they just eating too much vegan junk food?
“Any diet without animal food sources can be he claimed be a vegetarian [or vegan] diet; Therefore, it is important to determine what it is which are eaten. One of the first things I look at when trying to see how serious a population is about healthy eating is something that is undeniably, undeniably bad: soda, aka liquid candy. Anyone who drinks plain sugar water does not have health in mind.
A large study of herbivores was conducted in the United States, where humans tend to section I cut back on meat for health reasons much more than ethics, as you can see in the chart below and at 1:20 in my video.
Researchers I establish that flexitarians drink less sugary drinks than regular meat eaters, as do pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans, as you can see below and at 1:30.
However, in the study from the United Kingdom where there was an increased risk of stroke in vegetarians I establish and where people are most likely to go veg or vegan for ethical reasons, researchers I establish that pescatarians drink less soda, but vegetarians and vegans drink more, as it seems in the chart below and at 1:44.
I’m not saying that’s why they had more strokes. it might just give us an idea of how healthy they ate. In the UK study, vegetarian and vegan men and women he ate about the same amounts of sweets, cookies and chocolate, as you can see in the chart below and at 1:53.
They too is consumed about the same total sugar, as shown below and at 2:02.
In the US study, the average non-vegetarian it is almost obese, vegetarians a little overweight, and vegans were the only ideal weight group. In this analysis of the UK study, however, they were all about the same weight. The meat eaters were lighter than the vegans, as you can see below, and at 2:19 on my video. The EPIC-Oxford study appears to have attracted a particularly “health-conscious” group of meat eaters who weigh significantly less than the general population.
Let’s look at some specific nutrients related to stroke. Dietary fiber appears be beneficial in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, including stroke, and this it seems the more the better, as you can see in the chart below and at 2:43 in mine video.
Based on studies of nearly half a million men and women, there isn’t look to be any upper limit of benefit—so, again, “the more the merrier.” At more than 25 grams of soluble fiber and 47 grams of insoluble dietary fiber, box start to see a significant reduction in your relative risk of stroke. Thus, one could consider these values ”as the minimum recommended daily intake of soluble and insoluble fiber … for the prevention of stroke at the population level.” This is what you see in people eating diets that focus on minimally processed plant foods; Dean Ornish, MD, got up there with his whole food, plant-based diet. It may not be as much as we were designed to eat, based on analyzes of fossilized feces, but it’s about where we could expect a significantly lower risk of stroke, as shown below and at 3:25 in my video.
How much were UK vegetarians to take? 22.1 gr. Now, in the UK, they measure fiber a bit differently, so it might it is closer to 30 grams, but this is still not the optimal level for stroke prevention. It is so low in fiber that only vegetarians and vegans rhythm out of meat eaters by about one or two bowel movements per week as you can see below and at 3:48 in my videosuggesting that non-meat eaters were eating many processed foods.
Vegetarians were alone eating about half a serving more fruits and vegetables. Recruitment is considered that restrict risk of stroke partly because of their potassium content, but the UK vegetarians with the highest risk of stroke were eating so few greens and beans that they couldn’t even match meat eaters. Vegetarians (and meat eaters) didn’t even reach the recommended minimum daily potassium intake of 4,700 mg per day.
What about sodium? “The vast majority of available evidence indicates that increased salt intake is associated with a higher risk of stroke…” There it is practically a straight line increase in the risk of death from stroke the more salt you eat, as you can see in the chart below and at 4:29 in my video.
Even simply lowering Reducing sodium intake by a small fraction each year could prevent tens of thousands of fatal strokes. “Reducing sodium intake to prevent stroke: Time for action, not hesitation” was the headline of the paper, but UK vegetarians and vegans appeared to be hesitatinglike the other food groups. “All the teams exceed the recommended daily sodium intake of less than 2400 mg”—and that didn’t even take into account the salt added at the table! The American Heart Association recommends less than 1,500 mg per day. So everyone was eating a lot of processed food. No wonder the blood pressure of vegetarians it was only a point or two lower. High blood pressure it is perhaps “the most important potentially modifiable risk factor for stroke.”
What evidence do I have that the risk of stroke for vegetarians and vegans would decrease if they ate healthier? Well, in rural Africa, where they could nail the fiber intake our bodies were designed to get by eating so many whole, healthy plant foods—including fruits, vegetables, grains, greens, beans, and proteins almost entirely from plant sources—not only heart disease, our number one killer was “virtually non-existent,” but so it was rap. It rose out of nowhere “with the introduction of salt and refined foods” into their diet.
“It is remarkable the stroke and the senile dementia appear to be virtually absent in Kitava, an oceanic culture [near Australia] whose almost vegan traditional diet is very low in salt and very high in potassium.” These he ate fish a few times a week, but the remaining 95% or so of their diet consisted of vegetables, fruits, corn and beans. They had an apparent absence of stroke, even despite ridiculously high rates of smoking, 76% of men and 80% of women. We evolved eating less than one-eighth of a teaspoon of salt per day, and daily potassium consumption was thought to be up to about 10,000 mg. We he went from an unsalted, whole grain diet to eating salty, processed foods with no potassium whether we eat meat or not.
Caldwell Esselstyn at the Cleveland Clinic tried putting approximately 200 patients with established cardiovascular disease on a whole food, plant-based diet. Of the 177 who followed the diet, only one patient had a stroke over the next few years, compared to a hundredfold higher rate of adverse events, including multiple strokes and death in those who deviated from the diet. “This is not vegetarianism,” Esselstyn explains. Vegetarians can eat many foods that are not ideal, “such as milk, cream, butter, cheese, ice cream and eggs. This new paradigm is an exclusively plant-based diet.”
This whole train of thought—that the reason typical vegetarians don’t have better stroke stats is because they don’t eat particularly stellar diets—might explain why they don’t have significantly lower stroke rates. However, it still doesn’t explain why they might have higher stroke rates. Even if they eat similarly crappy, salty, processed diets, at least they don’t eat meat, which we know increases the risk of stroke. There must be something about vegetarian diets that increases the risk of stroke so much that it outweighs their inherent benefits. We’ll continue the hunt for the answer next.
From a medical point of view, labels such as vegan and vegetarian just tell me what you don’t eat. It’s like identifying yourself as a ‘No-Twinkie-tarian’. Don’t you eat Twinkies? Great, but how is the rest of your diet?
What are the healthiest foods? Check out my Daily Dozen.
To catch up on the rest of the series, check out the related posts below.
