Recommending plant-based diets

The physician community has started to acknowledge the health benefits of a plant-based diet; the next step is to start recommending it to our patients.

Dr Grant’s commentary “Time for change. Benefits of a plant-based diet”¹ is remarkable for a number of reasons. It highlights the broad and impressive health benefits of a plant-based diet, all backed by scientific evidence. Vegetarians, and especially vegans, are much less likely to be overweight, have high cholesterol levels, or have diabetes. The exposure to carcinogens and microbes (that can cause food poisoning) in certain meat products is nearly eliminated by eating only plants. If a new pill were discovered that had all these health benefits, it would constitute a groundbreaking discovery!

It is a step forward that these health benefits are being clearly acknowledged in medical journals such as Canadian Family Physician. No longer is it acceptable to view a plant-based diet as a fringe or quirky activity.

The general public and popular media are becoming increasingly aware of the health benefits of a plant-based diet. As physicians, we should not lag behind them. We should acknowledge the health benefits of a plant-based diet, but we should go further, too, and actually recommend its use to our patients.

Here are some selected resources for patients considering more plant-based meals:

• Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: 21-Day Vegan Kickstart (website)²

• Forks Over Knives: Getting Started on a Plant-Based Diet (website based on the documentary of the same name)³

• The Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon (vegan cookbook)⁴

• Plant-Powered Families by Dreena Burton (vegan cookbook)⁵

• Becoming Vegetarian by Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis (information and cookbook)⁶

Doctors should consider advising patients that if they move toward a plant-based diet they will be healthier, need to take fewer pills, improve and possibly reverse the courses of chronic diseases such as diabetes, and increase their longevity.

When put this way, why wouldn’t we recommend a plant-based diet to our patients?

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