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Why plant based diets are not able to support human health over the long term and why most adherents go back to eating meat and other animal foods within a few short years.
Sources of conventional health information seem to be trumpeting the catchphrase plant based diet. Notice the word “vegetarian” or “vegan” is not used perhaps because the vast majority of people find such a diet and its common, associative terms unappealing.
Estimates on the number of people who never eat meat varies somewhere between a paltry 3% and 6%.
Even more telling, the vast majority (75%) who identify as vegetarian end up omnivores again within a few years.
Surprisingly, the Vegetarian Resource Group estimates that only 20-30% of people are good candidates for vegetarianism. (1)
Perhaps this is the reason for this new semantic trend which attempts to repackage vegetarianism simply as “a healthy plant based diet”. Note even cow milk substitutes are now called plant based milk instead of simply dairy-free.
The best selling success of the error-ridden book Blue Zones is one commercial example fueling this semantic change.
There is no doubt that an increase in the number of folks eating a “plant based diet” would result in quite a profit boost for Big Ag and Big Food companies that deal in the various stages of production of textured vegetable soy protein (TVP) and other frankenfood substitutes for meat, dairy, and eggs.
Aside from the big profits to be had should more people embrace this manner of eating, could a “plant based diet” even be healthy?
The 2017 documentary What The Health claims plant based diets to be healthy despite being unable to name a single successful vegan population group that ever existed outside of a few small religious sects that did not reproduce.
Little to No Variety in Modern Food Plants
The reality is that the world today depends on a variety of only 150 food plants. Twenty of these account for 90% of our food. And, of these twenty, only three account for half! What are the Big Three? Rice, corn, and wheat – difficult to digest, grain based carbs that ninety percent of the people who ever lived never even ate!
Considering that there are between 30,000-80,000 edible plants in the world and that traditional cultures such as the American Indian regularly consumed about 1,100 of these, it seems virtually impossible that a “plant based diet” of today would contain enough variety to ensure health.
Surely, a modern “plant based diet” could only lead to nutritional deficiencies and ill health in the long run given these statistics. This especially if a primary source of all those veggies is a daily green smoothie.
Despite the American Indian’s consumption of a wide variety of nutritious food plants from soil that was arguably much richer and more fertile than the monocrop farms of today, guess what? They still ate meat!
What about the hunter-gatherers? They sampled between 3,000 and 5,000 plants and still consumed animal foods as well.
“Healthy Plant Based Diet” is an Oxymoron
A “healthy plant based diet” on only 150 food plants at best and less than 20 at worst? That simply doesn’t add up to anything remotely resembling health according to my logic. Not enough variety by a longshot.
Compare this to a person who consumes foods from wild and/or pastured animals. The plant variety these animals sample throughout the year is enormous, which the person eating the meat benefits from indirectly.
Another salient point is that much of the fresh produce plant based fans are eating is hydroponically grown. Hydroponics is much lower in nutrients than plants grown in rich organic soil.
This is why organizations like the Cornucopia Institute are so against the hydroponic invasion of the USDA Organic label over the past decade.
It seems that the term “healthy plant based diet” is nothing more than a semantic marketing ploy contrived for television personalities beholden to their corporate advertising sponsors to pawn off to an unsuspecting public.
Next time you hear the term “plant based diet” and “healthy” used in the same sentence, feel free to roll your eyes and press “off” on the TV remote.
References
Seeds of Change, Kenny Ausubel
Vegetarian Journal
Cornucopia Institute: Why Organics Needs to Be Rooted in Healthy Soil (NOT hydroponics)
More Information
Vegetarians Suffer from More Cavities than Meat Eaters
All Plant-based Diets a High Risk for Fractures
RE:Hinduism… I did not see your comment about small religious enclaves. where this would apply … forgive me.
If you click over to the What the Health article, more detail and sources are provided.
Just read that article about what the health and looked up some of the citations. I’m sad that a pure vegetarian diet is not as healthy as it has been made out to be but at the same time I have discovered some amazing vegetarian recipes that I can now add to my meat eating diet. *sigh* I’m glad i read this to be honest and I’m glad I delved deeper into the research before I “wrecked” my health.
I’m not seeing the proof in your article that “Plant Based” diets are dangerous. Further, even if it is “New” to the human race, so are the massive amounts of processed food that you are also trying to pass off as healthy. I think you also forgot to mention that Most Hindus (not all) are vegetarian so we have a large group of vegetarians right there in India. Those Hindus that do eat meat eat very small amounts of it. At any rate I do not disagree or agree with your article but the link you sent critiquing “What the Health” was pretty damning.
Exercise is important, I’m a weight lifter and I’ve been eating plant based for quite some time. The amount of protein from one cup of chicken breast is all most people need in a whole day. Yet people are eating a lot more than that and are waisted calories. Now I’m a plant based eater because of what is done to meat before it gets to us and just because an animal is grass fed doesn’t mean they don’t add things later. Unless your raising your own farm animals then you really don’t know which is what it’s like for most people
I’m confused. With all of the vitamins and minerals from plants, how is a plant based diet unhealthy? Sure there are a couple vitamins someone may lack but could still get through other things besides animal products. And why is it that we eat the muscles of vegetarian animals for protein? And why are we the only species to continue to consume the breast milk of another animal into adulthood?
I suggest you re-read the article! Here’s another article on why plant based diets are so ridiculously BAD for health (nearly 4000 words with dozens of citations). https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/what-the-health/
My husband suffered from high blood pressure, and obesity. After he had his gall bladder removed, he discovered that eating grains of any kind, corn starch, corn and peas would bring on dangerous bouts of diarrhea. So much so that his body was depleted of potassium to dangerous levels. We both changed our diets to only real meats(no processed), no potatoes, pasta, Rice’s, breads, cereals etc. We have both lost in the past year a significant amount of weight, and he is no longer on blood pressure meds.
And yet groups within many traditional societies have been vegan for millennia. Think of the Jains, Certain Buddhists, Essenes, Pythagoreans. Those who aspired to be more than animals, to realise our true human unique potential, have always found themselves on this path. But you keep chowing down the meat if you want to because no one doubts that aspiring to these higher ideals is sadly a minority pursuit.
Wow, you have really bought the vegan propaganda hook, line and sinker without researching for yourself, haven’t you? Here’s the truth about vegans historically speaking. A plants-only diet is completely new in human history. Except for a few scattered, tiny enclaves of religious cults over the centuries (and we’ve no idea if they died young or old), veganism as an extended lifestyle and in large population groups has never been done before.
Dr Ornish showed years ago that a plant based diet could reverse coronary heart disease. A whole food plant based diet has been shown to markedly improve type two diabetes. Simply switching to a whole food plant based diet from the usual diet obese people eat leads to weight loss without restricting the quantity one eats. These facts seem pretty compelling to me since coronary disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes are major problems in our society. I put my money on a whole food plant based diet.
Dr. Ornish “showed” no such thing. He cannot even name a single traditional culture that ate this way! ZERO. Why? Because if a traditional society ate plant based they would have ceased to exist in a few short generations. By the way, beware of plant based diet propaganda. All the ancestral societies that are cited by vegans as “plant eating” actually ate plenty of animal foods!
What exactly are the nutrients that you are lacking on a plant based diet? Also, what amount of meat do you recommend that I eat daily to not become nutritional deficient. Whatever amount of meat I eat I will be replacing a more nutrient dense vegetable for that meat. Since becoming a vegetarian 6 months ago, I have probably eaten more vegetables that I have in the past 10 years.
Here is an article that details the huge nutritional deficiencies that result from a plant based diet. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/what-the-health/
The information out there IS very confusing. I am horribly allergic to ALL grains, cow’s milk and animal products such as heart and liver. I am old, I have tried every WOE and I have to go with what agrees with my digestion…..period.