Studies have found that eating plant-based, defined as a diet rich in vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds and avoiding meat, dairy, poultry and fish, protects you by lowering your risk of all the major illnesses that can be killers, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer (including breast and prostate cancer), as well as lower your risk of ever suffering from a stroke, or  experiencing severe depression, Alzheimer’s or dying a premature death from any cause.

Plant-based eating is also an effective lifestyle approach to losing weight, including losing stubborn belly fat and maintaining a sustainable, healthy body weight, since when you focus on eating more whole foods such as vegetables, fruit, whole grains (in their least processed form) and legumes, nuts and seeds, and you give up meat, dairy and added sugar or processed flour, you will be eating more fiber, which leaves you feeling fuller for longer.

Whole plant foods contain fewer calories than foods that don’t contain fiber (such as meat and dairy products). High fiber foods also change your gut microbiome for the better, helping promote the growth of so-called good gut bacteria, which can help bolster your mood, as well as ramp up your immunity and boost your brain power, allowing you to focus and have all day energy.

Eating Plant-Based Protects You From All Causes of Mortality

In a review study published in The Journal of the American Heart Association, people who ate a high-fiber, whole food plant-based diet not only were 32 percent less likely to die of heart disease but were 25 percent less likely to die of “all causes of mortality” than the general population of middle-aged adults. In other words, everyone can benefit from eating more plant-based foods, not just those who already have heart disease or diabetes.

If you think you’re eating healthy, the next question to ask yourself is this: “Is my diet the healthiest it could be?” If you aren’t eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day (and 90 percent of Americans currently do not meet this USDA recommendation) while avoiding saturated fat that is in meat and dairy and scientifically tied to increased risk of heart disease, then the answer is likely: You could be doing better, and one way is to go mostly plant-based in order to achieve your healthiest you.

Plant-Based Diets Lower Your Risk of Every Major Disease

Studies tell us that both eating more plant-based foods and consuming fewer animal products will significantly lower our risk of all main causes of illness and death, including these:

• Heart Disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• Certain Cancers
• Alzheimer’s
• High Blood pressure
• Depression
• Infection

Plus you will lose weight and keep it off

The benefits of eating healthy plant-based include natural weight loss, because a whole food plant-based diet does not just mean avoiding meat and dairy. You will also be skipping highly processed foods such as chips or crackers, cookies or donuts, and avoiding refined flour used to make foods such as pasta and bread, as well as staying away from processed white rice and carb-filled cereal, or any packaged foods with added sugar. By cutting out highly processed food and refined flour, you will achieve a healthy weight and lose fat naturally.

Eat Mostly Plant-Based to Stay Healthy

There are well over 50 studies that have been published in the past several years that support the science behind plant-based diets for health and wellbeing. The best news: You don’t have to go fully plant-based to get the benefits. Even 90 percent plant-based is enough to switch over the balance in your gut microbiome to become more diverse, healthier, and lower your risk of disease by reducing chronic inflammation (associated with many lifestyle diseases).

Switching from a meal centered around red meat, pork or chicken to one that is focused on legumes, whole grains, fruit and vegetables is one important mind-set shift. Once you do that, the health benefits become easy to achieve.

Where Do You Get Your Protein on a Plant-Based Diet.

Whether you go vegetarian, vegan or plant-based you will be able to get enough protein, calcium, iron, vitamin B12 and other important nutrients on a plant-based diet. In fact there are more sources of protein than you might think possible, all in the produce aisle.

One fascinating misconception: You don’t need as much protein as you may be eating, and extra protein, just like any excess calories, can not be shoved into muscles or a liver already topped off, so it gets stored as fat. How much protein do you really need? For men it ranges from 55 to 75 grams a day and for women the amount is 45 to 60, both ranges depending on your age, size and fitness training schedule.

To figure out how much protein you personally need, follow this formula, The Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein is .8 grams per kilogram (g/kg) of body weight. Some experts, recommend slightly higher amounts for plant-based eaters who workout daily, so figure closer to 9. go 1 g/kg of body weight. And fitness enthusiasts may need even more, closer to 1.2 to 1.4 g/kg of body weight, and you need more as you age and lose muscle mass naturally.

Read More: How Much Protein Do You Really Need? The Answer May Surprise You 

Here are just a handful of research and expert sources that back up the research and provide extra evidence that a plant-based diet is even healthier for you than the Mediterranean diet, which while focused on vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts, seeds and some fish, still allows dairy and there are many ways in which going plant-based is just a simpler path to health.

1. Go Plant-Based to to Avoid Heart Disease, According to a Cardiologist

Dr. Andrew Freeman, an associate professor in the Division of Cardiology and Department of Medicine at National Jewish Medical Center in Denver and an advisor to The Beet, is also known as the Vegan Cardiologist. He routinely advises his healthy patients to go plant-based, as do many other cardiologists.

“Eventually, even someone who is active, fit and healthy appearing, if they are not eating right, they have a heart event,” Freeman says, when asked how can a fit, active and asymptomatic person be convinced to change their diet.

“The reason that people who are healthy, active, and fit don’t eat this way is they believe they are living healthy. Eventually, they have a heart attack, and they end up in my office,” and that’s when he gets their attention.

It makes sense that we may not know what lies ahead, he explains. Today, 48 percent of Americans have diagnosed heart disease,  according to an American Heart Association Study, and according to Dr. Freeman, many more Americans are walking around who think they are healthy or have no symptoms before their something like heart disease arises, first showing up on a health test or light-headedness, or other sign that something is not right.

Freeman has seen a seemingly fit patient, who hikes 14,000-foot peaks, or mountain bikes up mountains at altitude in Colorado and then has mysterious chest pains, or sees stars, but he or she is still unaware they have any trace of heart disease. “They don’t think they are the profile of a heart patient, since they are neither overweight nor sedentary,” he says. ”If you exercise but are not eating healthy, you will end up in a doctor’s office eventually. You have to be active and eat healthy to avoid heart disease. If you do one or the other, heart disease is fairly inevitable.”

Plant-Based Diets Help Prevent Heart Disease

You can lower your heart disease risk by 80 percent, just by living healthy, Freeman says. Genes are like light switches: You can turn them on or off depending on your choices.  “Healthy lifestyle choices may reduce the risk of myocardial infarction (a heart attack) by more than 80 percent, with nutrition playing a key role” according to a recent study.

If you want to go vegetarian, as opposed to giving up dairy, that reduces cardiovascular disease mortality and the risk of coronary heart disease by 40 percent, this study found.

A Plant-Based Diet Can Even Reverse Heart Disease

Plant-based diets are the only dietary pattern to have shown to reverse symptoms of heart disease in patients. Blocked arteries became unblocked, either partially or fully, in as many as 91 percent of patients who try it, Freeman says. “Doctors often see patients who are surgical candidates who try to eat plant-based in advance of the surgery and then find that they have reversed their blockage through diet alone.” If you have heart disease in your family, or an elevated risk factor such as high cholesterol, he recommends avoiding meat and dairy and going as plant-based as possible.

2. A Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet Helps Prevent Diabetes

In a recent review study of over 10,000 people to see which types of diets were most likely to be associated with type 2 diabetes, and the researchers, from the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, concluded that eating a healthy plant-based diet full of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts – and drinking coffee, helped lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The data divided people into three groups, those who followed a healthy plant-based diet, those who allowed themselves an unhealthy plant-based diet (with processed foods) and omnivores who identified as meat eaters. The researchers concluded that by avoiding processed foods full of refined carbs and added sugar, and eating a diet high in legumes, vegetables, and whole plant-based foods, and drinking coffee daily, it is possible to prevent diabetes in patients at risk. The study was published in the scientific journal Diabetologia.

“Our findings support the beneficial role of healthy plant-based diets in diabetes prevention and provide new insights for future investigation,” the study authors concluded.
Read More: Plant-Based Eating Can Lower Type 2 Diabetes Risk, Study Shows

3. Ditching Dairy Reduces Risk of Breast and Prostate Cancer

In recent studies, dairy has been linked to higher risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer. The study found that drinking even one serving of milk a day increases risk of breast cancer in women up by 50 percent. The more dairy you drink, the higher the risk.

The study found that consuming as little as one-quarter to one-third cup of dairy milk per day was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer of 30 percent,” lead researcher Gary E. Fraser, PhD, of Loma Linda University explained. “By drinking up to one cup per day, the associated risk went up to 50 percent, and for those drinking two to three cups per day, the risk increased further to 70 to 80 percent.”

Read More: Drinking Milk Increases Risk for Breast Cancer, a New Study Shows 

Another study looked at men and the link between dairy and prostate cancer and found a significant link between drinking milk or consuming dairy, and increased risk of prostate cancer. Men who consumed dairy on a regular basis were found to have a 60 percent increased risk of developing prostate cancer as compared to men who steered clear of dairy, or consumed only a minimal amount (a teaspoon or less per day).

Read More: Study: Drinking Milk Increases Prostate Cancer Risk by 60 Percent 

4. Lower Your Risk of Alzheimer’s on a Mostly Plant-Based Diet

In a study of 70 participants between the ages of 30 and 60 who consumed more plant-based foods (defined as a Mediterranean-style diet) showed fewer Alzheimer’s disease-related biomarker changes on their brain scans when compared to those who did not follow the diet as closely. So if you want to avoid Alzheimer’s or dementia, remember to eat more plants!

You can’t change your genes, but you can change how your body and brain express those genes, which is a field of study called epigenetics. Think of genes you’re born with as a series of light switch and the food you eat as your chance to turn the switch for heart disease on or off. The research shows we can do this by getting good sleep, exercising for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better) daily, reducing our stress by doing things that bring us joy and eating a mostly plant-based diet of whole foods. We’ll see you at the gym, and the produce section. And the movies.

5. Risk of High Blood Pressure and Stroke Connected to Red Meat

Meat eaters: Don’t order it well-done, or better yet don’t order it at all. A follow-up study of 32,925 women from the NHS and 53,852 women from the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII) and 17,104 men from the Health Professionals Study found that eating well-done meat and hypertension were linked. 

Open flame and/or high-temperature cooking and high “doneness” level for both red and white meat is associated with an increased risk of hypertension by 15% or more. (This was true of fish as well.) The results were consistent, regardless of the amount of meat consumption.

So if you still eat meat, don’t overcook it or order it well done, since you’re adding extra harmful carcinogens, and increasing your risk of hypertension, known as the “silent killer.” Meanwhile, another study links cooked meat and cancer risks. Better yet, order the veggie burger, the bean burger, or try a cauliflower steak.

Research Shows a Plant-Forward Diet Reduces Stroke

In a review study of 306,473 men and women aged 40 to 73 years recruited between 2006 and 2010 and followed for nearly seven years, those with an unfavorable lifestyle were 66% more likely to have a stroke independent of genetic risk.

In the lowest-risk category for strokes were those who followed a healthy lifestyle (defined as not smoking, eating a healthy diet high in fruit, vegetables, and low in processed meats and red meats), with a body mass index of less than 30 and who exercised two or more times a week. If you have strokes in your family, go plant-based.

6. For Healthy Weight Loss Plant-Based Beats Out Keto Diets

In a recent study, people who ate more plant-based, and loaded up on legumes, lost more body fat than those who didn’t eat a high-fiber diet. A new study found that by increasing consumption of plant-based whole foods, especially legumes, while decreasing consumption of meat, fish, poultry and oil, leads to significant weight loss and a decrease in body fat.

Read More: Study: Eat Legumes to Promote Weight Loss, Body Fat Reduction

In other studies, plant-based diets were more sustainable and effective in the long run than short-term low-carb diets such as the keto diet. Keto diets became popular a few years ago, because for a brief time cutting carbs works to achieve fast weight loss. But these diets are impossible to sustain, and they are terrible for long-term heart health since ketones, released when the body burns fat, have caused scarring in heart tissue in the lab. The minute a dieter abandons the keto diet they end up gaining back more weight than they lost to begin with.

Studies show that eating a whole food plant-based diet is more effective than even a keto diet for losing weight and keeping it off

Read More: Exactly What to Eat for to Lose Weight on a Plant-Based Diet

Plant-Based Diets Can Help You Lose Weight and Keep it Off

According to the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine. A plant-based approach makes it easier to lose weight and keep it off because it is full of fiber, which helps fill you up, without adding extra calories. Aim for 40 grams of fiber a day, PCRM says, which is easy to do when you move vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans to the center of your plate.

7. Plant-Based Diets Strengthen Immune System, Help Fight Infections

Studies have looked at the connection between immune function and plant diets. While it might seem intuitive that any diet that reduces processed foods, added sugar, and most saturated fats would offer an advantage for immunity, the science became clear recently.

Plant-based diets lower chronic inflammation. Researchers in Italy studied fecal samples of 155 healthy volunteers divided by diet into omnivore, vegetarian and vegan. The stool samples were analyzed for their anti-inflammatory capacity in a model of mouse cells and no significant differences were reported.

Plant-Based Diets Boost Gut Health Which Promotes Immunity

An international team of scientists studied the impact of 3 months of a vegetarian diet on immune health in volunteers that were omnivores. The diet change did result in changes in the diversity of the bacteria in stool samples including the appearance of bacteria producing IgA, an immunoglobulin felt to protect the GI system. The balance  of pro vs anti-inflammatory factors measured favored the plant-strong diet.

Plant-based diets improve white blood cell production. Australian researchers performed a review of the literature regarding vegetarian diets and inflammatory and immune health. The reported that inflammation markers like CRP were lower in vegetarian-based dietary patterns along with white blood counts and fibrinogen levels (an inflammatory and clotting marker). They called for more studies to further evaluate these findings.

Read More: Want Optimal Immunity? Eating a Vegan Diet May Be the Answer

8.  A Fiber-Rich Diet Leads to Less Depression

In a study of 16,807 adults ages 20 years or older, those who ate 21 grams of fiber per day from fruits and vegetables were 40 percent less likely to exhibit depressive symptoms, compared with those who consumed less fiber.

So if you’re having a tough week or feeling low for any reason, add more plants to your plate, choose fruit for snacks, and stay away from boxed cookies, bagged chips and anything that if left on the shelf would stay fresh longer than a loaf of fresh-baked bread. The best food for your mood: Fruits and veggies, nuts, grains and seeds.

Diets High In Processed Meat Linked to Higher Rate of Depression

In a meta-analysis of 41 studies on diet and depression, researchers found a direct correlation between mood and food:

• Eating high amounts of processed meats and trans fats found in junk foods increased incidence rates for clinical depression.
• Eating healthy foods such as vegetables, nuts, and fruits helped regulate emotions in patients experiencing depression, among other protective effects.
• The benefit of a healthy diet results in a 25% reduction of depression, and a lower dietary inflammatory index, which benefits your mind and body.

9. For Overall Health and Wellbeing, the Mediterranean Diet is Good…

In a review of 25,994 women over 12 years from the Women’s Health Study, researchers measured 40 biomarkers and found: Those who most closely followed the Mediterranean diet had up to 28% less cardiovascular disease. Remember that this is a mostly plant-based diet. At the least, follow the Mediterranean diet of whole plants and vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, olive oil, and fish. Want to do even better? See The Portfolio Diet, below.

But a Plant-Based Diet is Better

Go nuts on nuts. The Portfolio Diet is a plant-based approach that includes daily consumption of at least 45 grams of nuts, at least 50 grams of plant protein like tofu and beans, and at least 20 grams of viscous fiber (veggies) and 2 grams of plant sterols. For nut lovers, this is very good news.

The Portfolio Diet was developed for patients needing to lower cholesterol and it worked. The Portfolio Diet was shown to lower cholesterol as effectively as statin use. Portfolio improved blood pressure and glucose metabolism, decreasing inflammation and reducing the 10-year risk of heart disease by 13 percent, according to a review of controlled trials by doctors in Toronto.

10. You Will You See Healthy Body Results Fast When You Go Plant Based

It only takes four weeks (one month!) to change your body’s heart-healthy markers! One month is enough to see significant drops in measurable health indicators like cholesterol, blood pressure and lipids in your blood. In a study of 31 participants following a low-fat whole-food plant-based diet, in just four weeks:

• Significant reductions were observed for high blood pressure
• A drop in serum lipids, often a precursor to plaque and blockage
• A reduction in total medication usage and some took no meds at all

Other cardiovascular risk factors improved: Weight loss, smaller waist circumference, lower resting heart rate, and all blood markers for heart disease.

Change Your Gut Health and Improve Your Mood In Just 2 Weeks

Gut bacteria was measured in a study of 248 participants followed over a two-week short-term dietary intervention and in just 14 days on a high-veggie plant-based diet, the body’s microbiome changed to be healthier, more diverse, and produce the “good bacteria” that have anti-inflammatory effects on the body.

Those who consumed more fruits, vegetables, and grains improved gut bacterial diversity when compared to those who did not increase these foods. Higher-fiber diets increase bacteria associated with anti-inflammatory compounds linked to improved glucose tolerance and metabolism.

That means in just two weeks of plant-based eating, your gut health changes to produce bacteria that fight inflammation, so you feel less bloated in the short-term,  and long-term your gut bacteria can contribute to a reduction in your lifetime risk of heart disease.

Bottom Line: Going Plant-Based Is One of the Best Things to Do for Your Health

Whether you have heart disease in your family or are worried about breast cancer or diabetes, going plant-based lowers your risk of all major lifestyle diseases significantly. The best way to start? Eliminate meat and dairy and replace it with healthy whole grains, vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts and seeds. You will feel the difference in your energy in just a few weeks.

The post Scientifically Proven Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet. It Lowers Cancer Risk appeared first on The Beet.

Still, need more evidence that shifting to a mostly plant-based diet is best for your health? Below, experts weigh in on some of the most convincing studies to either prevent, reverse or slow the progression of seven health woes.

1. Your goal:  Slim down

The study:  Comparing a vegetarian vs. conventional low-calory diabetic diet on the distribution of thigh fat, according to a randomized study of subjects with type 2 diabetes, published in The Journal of the American College of Nutrition (in2017).

What the study found:  Among adults with type 2 diabetes, half adopted a nearly vegan diet (they were allowed to eat one low-fat yogurt a day, although not  everybody ate this) while the other half of the study participants followed a conventional diabetes diet, which restricts portion size and limits carbs, thus requiring people to eat more animal products. Researchers measured changes at baseline, three months and six months, and by the end, although each group ate the same amount of calories, the nearly-vegan group lost almost twice as much weight – 13.67 pounds to be exact – versus the other group, who lost an average of 7.05 pounds. The plant-based eaters also lost more fat stored in the muscles.

The take-home:  When you eat mostly plants, you’ll increase your intake of fiber, especially if you’ve been following the standard American diet (which is extremely low in fiber). Simply put, high-fiber diets promote weight loss. Fiber also changes your gut microbiome, and the gut bacteria that feed on fiber have many metabolic benefits, weight loss included, says Hana Kahleova, M.D., Ph.D., study co-author and director of clinical research for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

2. Your goal: Lower your risk of heart disease and early death

The study:  A recent study of adults 40 and over reviewed the impact of a diet that emphasizes vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, and minimizes the intake of trans fats, red meat and processed red meats, refined carbohydrates, and sweetened beverages is best. 2019 ACC/AHA Guidelines on the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease (Circulation, 2019)

What the study found:  Heart disease remains the top killer of men and women, but after four decades of decline, heart disease deaths rose again in 2015, a trend attributed to the obesity epidemic. Diet is certainly a driver of the rise in cardiovascular disease, as unhealthy eating has been linked with unhealthy hearts.

Dr. Kim Alan Williams, Chief of the Division of Cardiology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago puts it this way: “Multiple studies have focused on the association of heart disease and mortality with dietary patterns –- specifically sugar, low-calorie sweeteners, high-carbohydrate diets, low-carbohydrate diets, refined grains, trans fat, saturated fat, sodium, red meat, and processed meat,” and found that the more plant-based you eat, the better.

The take-home:  Replacing animal protein with plants can help decrease your risk not only of heart disease but also early death of all causes. In one of the studies noted in this review, eating meat was associated with a 61 percent increase in mortality rate, versus if you replaced meat with nuts and seeds you lower your mortality rate by 40 percent.

In another study, comparing a diet of plant-based protein, to protein from animal sources found this: those who ate poultry and fish had a six percent higher mortality rate than those who ate plant-protein, and this jumped to 8 percent higher mortality risk if they included dairy, and a 12 percent higher mortality risk if they ate unprocessed meat, and 19 percent higher mortality risk if they ate eggs. But the highest mortality risk was found among those who ate processed and red meat, of 34 percent elevated risk.

On the flip side, those who ate more plant protein fared better:  For every three percent of energy replacement of animal protein with plant protein, there was a 10 percent reduction in the mortality rate.

Bottom line: The more you lean into a plant-based diet, the better.

3. Your goal:  Optimize heart health

The study:  Healthful and Unhealthful Plant-Based Diets and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in U.S. Adults (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2017)

What the study found:  Not only does this study support that plant-based diets are healthy and decrease rates of coronary artery events, it also reveals that there’s a range of plant-based diets, some healthier than others. It’s easy to eat junk food that’s devoid of animal product and call yourself vegan or plant-based. The best choices are whole-foods that are minimally processed, cooking with less oil, and avoiding added sugars and fats.

“Plant-based diets that are ‘healthful’ decrease event rates, but unhealthful plant-based diets have no benefit and can even increase risk,” says Dr. Monica Aggarwal, M.D., F.A.C.C., Director of Integrative Cardiology at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

The take-home:  Understand the difference between healthful and unhealthful plant-based diets and opt for the whole foods. Unhealthful plant-based diets include refined carbohydrates and simple sugars like cookies, French fries, potato chips, non-dairy ice creams and sugary sodas. Meanwhile, a healthful plant-based diet focuses on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and lentils, nuts and seeds, and spices.

4. Your goal:  Stave off breast cancer

The study: Low-fat dietary pattern and long-term breast cancer incidence and mortality: The Women’s Health Initiative randomized clinical trial (American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, 2019)

What the study found:  The research supports a strong link between diet and breast cancer. However, this study connected diet and cancer occurrence among nearly 50,000 postmenopausal women, who were followed for over two decades. Those who ate a lower-fat diet and concentrated their diet on more fruits, vegetables, and grains had a 21 percent lower chance of breast cancer over the decades. Three things make this particularly significant, says Dr. William Li, physician, scientist and best-selling author of Eat to Beat Disease: The length of the study, the fact that patients were enrolled from 40 different medical centers throughout the United States, and the fact that minorities were included in the cohort.

The take-home:  Add more fruits, vegetables and grains (choose whole grains over refined carbs) to your diet. “Plant-based foods contain natural chemicals that are bioactive that can help starve cancerous tumors, kill cancer stem cells and protect your DNA from damage,” Li says. “Fiber, which is found only in plants, will also improve your gut microbiome, boosting your immune system’s ability to find and destroy cancer cells.” At the same time, lower the overall fat in your diet.

In addition to swapping saturated fats for polyunsaturated fats found in healthy plant oils like olive oil, reduce the amount of red meat you eat, another source of unhealthy fat. Red meat has also been shown to change your gut microbiome in ways that promote inflammation, which is associated with fueling cancer development, he adds.

5. Your goal:  Decrease symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis

The study:  Nutrition Interventions in Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Potential Use of Plant-Based Diets. A Review (Frontiers in Nutrition, 2019)

What the study found:  A surprising one percent of the world’s population suffers from this debilitating autoimmune disorder. While drugs have been the primary line of defense against RA, this study, one of the first of its kind, suggests that a simple swap to a whole-food, plant-based diet can not only help symptoms like pain and swelling improve but showed in some cases the symptoms disappear. “Animal foods promote inflammation, so when you remove the animal foods, you reduce the inflammation in as a little as two to three weeks,” says study co-author and researcher Hana Kahleova.

The take-home:  Eating mostly plants is the way to go. The one caveat? “There are some foods in the plant kingdom that can still trigger inflammation in some individuals,” Kahleova says. If you’re struggling after switching to a plant-only diet, you may need to go through an elimination diet, excluding other potential triggers like beans, citrus fruit, onions, soy, and nuts.

6. Your goal: Get elevated cholesterol in check

The study:  Examine the association between plant-based diets and elevated levels of plasma lipids (Nutrition Reviews, 2017)

What the study found: Researchers from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine compared vegetarian and vegan diets with omnivorous diets to determine which might lead to better (lower) cholesterol levels. So which one won? Although the vegetarian diet did lower total cholesterol, and even LDL (aka bad) cholesterol, a whole-food plant-based vegan diet had the most benefit on LDL, and the measure of lipid levels in the blood.

The take-home:  If you have elevated LDL, which can be a precursor to heart disease and clogged arteries (which may also lead to stroke and other causes of early death) choose a more plant-based diet. Researchers say that switching to a plant-based diet can help you lose weight and when you cut your saturated fat intake you will likely see cholesterol go down.

7. Your goal: Fight or prevent diabetes

The study:  The connection between vegetarian diets and the risk of diabetes (Current Diabetes Reports, 2018)

What the study found:  This review of studies concluded that “a vegetarian diet characterized by whole plant foods has the most benefits for diabetes prevention and management.”

Of note? In one study the researches highlighted, vegans had the lowest rates of diabetes versus Lacto-Ovo vegetarians, pescatarians, semi-vegetarians, and non-vegetarians. Vegan diets also showed the most benefits in reducing blood sugar levels — called fasting plasma glucose levels — in people with diabetes and other complications like heart disease.

The take-home:  Most people think diabetes is all about carbohydrates and sugar, but that’s not the full picture. The real culprit when trying to lower diabetes appears to be fat, according to this new research. “When you eat a high-fat diet, you tend to store fat in the body, which gets into the cells,” says Pam Popper, Ph.D., N.D., President of Wellness Forum Health in Columbus, Ohio. As a result, that fat blocks your body’s insulin signaling response. Think of insulin as a key that lets blood sugar or glucose enter your cells. When too much fat is present in the blood, insulin can’t do its job, so that glucose builds up in your blood, causing blood sugar levels to increase and making you insulin-resistant.

Yet when you switch to a healthy plant-based diet (think whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes and not a lot of oils) that’s naturally low in fat, “the weight falls off your body, and the fat pours out of your cells in a short time, allowing you to become insulin sensitive,” so you lose weight, Popper adds.

Whatever your health woes or goals, these studies all suggest that the best way to lower inflammation and lose weight for the long term is a whole-food plant-based diet, low in oils and minimally processed foods. The Beet welcomes your tips, comments and helpful hacks for how to “just add plants” to your plate to be your healthiest and eat delicious food, too.

The post Health Goals: How a Plant-Based Diet Can Keep You on Track appeared first on The Beet.

I interviewed Dr. Barnard last week to try to better understand why he believes cheese should come with a warning label, and why he wants the USDA to take dairy off the list of recommended daily foods when it relaunches its nutrition guidelines next year.

Dr. Barnard spoke about the connection between the food we eat and the hormones in our bodies. His newest book: Your Body in Balance, to be published in February, tells how eating too much dairy may cause your body to experience “hormone haywire” which can contribute to all sorts of health problems, including higher lifetime incidence of hormonal cancers, such as breast and prostate cancer, as well as contribute to debilitating menstrual cramps, mood disorders, fertility issues, and erectile dysfunction. Does he have your attention yet?

Dr. Neal Barnard has chosen cheese as the unlikely battleground in the mission to get Americans off their three-times a day dairy habit, and instead of doing it by marketing substitutes the way plant-based burgers have gained momentum by mimicking the real thing so people will make the switch without feeling a sacrifice– he is coming at it from a health and medical point of view. Want to reduce your cancer risk? Ditch the dairy.

Essentially, Barnard explained during an hour-long interview with The Beet last week, “Cheese contains trace levels of estrogen and other chemicals given to pregnant cows that stick around in their system and pass to us through their milk, that when eaten by us on a regular basis will mess with the body’s own natural hormonal balance.”

(As someone who used to eat up to 5 or 6 servings of dairy a day, including milk, cheese, more cheese and ice cream, I listened and cringed. Luckily I have been eating plant-based for six months, but the cheese part of it has been the hardest for me.)

“When you introduce even small amounts of estrogen into your body, it increases the risk of hormone-related cancers, such as breast, uterine, and prostate cancer,” says Barnard. “Milk also contains estrogen, but cheese is more condensed. The worst offender? Goat cheese has even more of it. All animal cheese is laden with fat and hormones, which add up.”

Dr. Barnard founded the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which proposed that cheese should come with a warning label that states eating this product may increase your risk of breast cancer. During our interview, he added, it actually impacts all hormonal cancers, including prostate cancer, uterine cancer and ovarian. The label sounds radical, but then again so did the initial idea of adding a warning label to cigarettes some five decades ago. Backing him up are 12,000 doctors who are members of PCRM, founded by Barnard 35 years ago. The warning label on cigarettes created the first time doctors asked consumers to begin taking one’s health into our own hands. In the intervening decades, smoking has gone from “everyone does it” to “I don’t know anyone dumb enough to do it.” The question is will cheese ever be that for the next generation?

First some corroborating science: A new study out of the Mayo Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association just came out that looked at large studies and concluded that the consumption of dairy products by men corresponds to a higher incidence of prostate cancer, which is the most common form of cancer for men and the second deadliest cancer for men. (Lung cancer tops the list of most fatal cancers for both men and women, followed by prostate for men and breast for women.) The good news in the study: Men who ate a more plant-based diet had a lower lifetime incidence of prostate cancer. Diet was clearly correlated with cancer risk in the vast populations they reviewed: More dairy equaled more prostate cancer; less dairy equaled less prostate cancer. Since men have a 10 percent chance of developing prostate cancer during their lifetime, this is not a small finding.

During the month of October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Barnard got attention for the warning labels mentioning Breast Cancer: “What we are talking about is how hormones in our diet affect a woman’s health” The warning label specifically points to breast cancer, since according to Barnard’s new book, Your Body in Balance, women with breast cancer who consume the more fatty foods, including dairy products, in the form of cheese, whole milk, and butter, have the highest chance of recurrence and dying from their disease. “Women who ate the largest amount of fatty food had a 49 percent increased risk of dying of their cancer,” in one study, according to Barnard. He compares the fatty food group against women who ate smaller amounts of animal fat and dairy. According to Barnard, the amount of dairy or fatty foods that is enough to place a woman in the risk group is one serving a day.

So if the healthy population moved to quit smoking when the tobacco labels informed the public of the dangers of cigarettes, it makes sense that we need to try to kick the cheese addiction. And it is addictive since the casomorphin in cheese acts on the brain’s dopamine receptors as effectively as morphine or other opiates. But if quitting cigarettes is hard, banishing cheese may be less difficult by comparison since there are decent nut cheese substitutes on the market. But let’s get back to Dr. Barnard and his dairy campaign.

Barnard trained as a psychiatrist, and now a nutrition expert. He gets knocked by critics for training as a shrink rather than an internist, but when I asked him what he says to the critics, he explained: “There is no nutrition specialty in medical school, so whether you train to be a psychiatrist or cardiologist, it becomes clear very early on that nutrition is a large part of what makes people healthy or not.

He also tells the story of how he became plant-based. “Before I went to medical school, I was working in the morgue of the hospital as an assistant to the pathologist, and our job was to do the autopsy when someone died in the hospital. We had the grim job of figuring out why someone had died. When the pathologist cut the ribs out to examine a patient’s heart, it was obvious that there was atherosclerosis. Fat deposits were all around the heart. I sewed the ribs back on, went to lunch that day and saw they were serving ribs. It had the same white fatty marble in the meat like the body had and it looked the same. It occurred to me this was another dead body on my plate, and I couldn’t eat it.” It was the start of a journey of not eating meat, and of connecting plant-based eating with health and wellness. His new book, Your Body in Balance makes the point that avoiding fat, especially animal fat, is one way to lower your risk of cancer and disease.

Until he petitioned the FDA to add warning labels to cheese this past fall, stating that it increases the risk of breast cancer, Barnard had been known only to a part of the medical community that focuses on how plant-based eating can affect heart health, diabetes, certain cancers and improve overall wellbeing.

The benefits of avoiding dairy that are covered in the book include fertility and mood, and avoiding “the little blue pill” for erectile dysfunction. He explains that the mechanics of male sexuality are the same as heart disease since when arteries get blocked from plaque and blood flow is restricted to the heart, legs, or lower body, the same is happening with the male erection. In fact, a lack of ability to have a healthy sex life is often an early warning sign that the man has clogged arteries and should see a cardiologist. They usually seek treatment with testosterone, but more often they can benefit from a change in diet, by going plant-based, according to Barnard in his upcoming book.

Then they followed that up with the cheese warning label stunt. Except for him and the 12,000 doctors who are part of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, it’s not any more of a stunt than when the government agreed to put warning labels on cigarettes in 1965 and then strengthed it from “Smoking may be hazardous to your health” to a more declarative “Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer” and other diseases. Dr. Barnard believes there are parallels to smoking then and eating cheese now: If consumed daily, even one serving of cheese a day increases the risk of hormone-related cancers such as breast and prostate. He also wants us to cut out fatty foods, oils and eat a whole-food, plant-based diet.

But hormones mess up your body every day, not just when disease strikes. Barnard did research with women facing debilitating menstrual cramps and found that if they go off dairy completely they can see a benefit in just one month. “Some women have bad cramps one day a month but for other women, it’s off the charts, and I started to think about hormones in food and how it could affect this. I suggested something that no doctor had ever suggested before,” meaning he changed their diets.

“I said to her: How about we get all animal products off your plate and no oils either,” Barnard recalls. He saw such dramatic results that he launched a study on menstrual cramps and diet to back it up. He asked the participants to get off dairy, fatty foods, and oils. For one of his patients, the improvement was immediate. Barnard also recalls one woman who couldn’t get pregnant actually did when her diet changed. It was a hit with most of the participants, who saw the severity and length of days they experienced crams diminish in just one month.

I asked Barnard what do you have for breakfast?  “There are a million choices. It depends if I am traveling. Oatmeal and blueberries or cinnamon. But when I’m traveling — I was over in England and there, people often have baked beans and mushrooms and stewed tomatoes. For the rest of the world it’s totally normal to have vegetables or rice and beans for breakfast. Beans are a perfect protein, and this is a great food to start the day with. They do it in Australia and Mexico. They have black beans for breakfast. In the Middle East, it would be hummus. They are not having eggs for breakfast. It’s beans.”

The post The Cheese-Cancer Connection: Why Hormones in Dairy are Dangerous appeared first on The Beet.