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Plant-based Diet: Facts & Fiction
Many people believe that a plant-based diet is good for you. But to really qualify for this designation, it must be supported by well-designed studies.
My healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, once sent me a glossy brochure extolling the virtues of a plant-based diet. My own diet is already rich in fruits and veggies and I rarely eat meat except for the occasional social barbecue.
So, I promptly relegated the brochure to the recycling basket. I didn’t think about the topic again until some friends asked me to take a critical look at it.
Primum non-nocere
“ First, do no harm,” thus spake Hippocrates 2500 years ago, and every budding physician declaims on graduation day. And in this respect, the plant-based diet shines: Nobody has died from eating it-if you exclude patients with food hypersensitivities (peanuts, tomatoes) or celiac disease -and adverse reactions are practically nil.
No wonder that even in the difficult and contentious field of nutrition science, a wide consensus has formed. The plant-based diet is “good for you”. But lack of “bad” doesn’t mean “good”. To qualify for this designation, the scientific bar is much higher.
