Prevent & Reverse Disease

It’s remarkable how a WFPB diet helps broadly prevent or alleviate so many chronic diseases. That’s likely because a WFPB diet can quickly and dramatically cut the top risk factors: chronic inflammation, excess oxidation, and toxic levels of fat and sugar. Those risks all shoot up on a “modern” diet high in animal products’ saturated fats, and processed foods.

A WFPB diet can make a big difference in most of today’s top chronic illnesses:

Heart disease (atherosclerosis, clogging and hardening of the arteries)  remains the #1 killer in the US and much of the world. Yet it has well-known dietary risk factors for prevention, and WFPB is the only diet clinically shown to reverse heart disease in the majority of patients, per the pioneering work of Dr. Ornish and Dr. Esselstyn.

Diabetes afflicts almost 10% of the US population, and over 80 million Americans are prediabetic. But for almost a century it’s been known that a plant-based diet can rapidly improve diabetic conditions, and often reverse type 2 diabetes.

Cancer is another dreaded disease that’s all too common, where again nutrition’s role is highly significant, but not generally recognized. Yet there’s already striking evidence that WFPB nutrition can slow or reverse numerous forms of cancer.

Besides the major diseases above, many other chronic diseases such as hypertension or auto-immune disorders can be improved or reversed with a WFPB diet. Which altogether, shouldn’t be too surprising: Food is by far our most extensive and closest contact with the outside world, so once the bad stuff is cut out, and we only eat good stuff, a billion years of bodily survival instincts kick-in to support our health.

Metabolic Health & Constitution

Metabolic health is the absence of metabolic syndrome, and measured by five of the most familiar medical metrics: blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference. Only about 12% of Americans have ideal metabolic health metrics. Plant-based eaters have the best metabolic health on average, and people who switch to WFPB eating can rapidly improve their metabolic health.

Thinking more generally, health is not only the absence of disease, but overall wellness and thriving. To make a general claim that the WFPB diet is the healthiest is difficult because WFPB ingredients and meals vary widely, as do the actual daily lifestyles of those adhering to WFPB. Collecting a wide array of health metrics for a large group of people with many different eating patterns would also be quite expensive (e.g. The China Study), though future technology may enable that.

Still, the combined evidence from the 4 science domains above is unmatched by any other diet category.  Besides the remarkable WFPB disease reversal outcomes from clinical practice and research, epidemiology and longevity studies provide broad backing: plant-based eaters generally have much lower rates of disease, and live longer, with the healthiest average body compositions (lowest average BMI), directly indicating metabolic health. In a smaller well-controlled setting like a workplace, WFPB eating can quickly bring measurably better mood and productivity that easily pays for itself. At the biochemical level, right down to our cells and DNA, diet seems to be the most powerful factor affecting our “biological age” and youthfulness: plant-based diets are best at lengthening our telomeres, the most direct markers of aging.

Lose & Manage Weight Easily

One can lose excess weight in the short-term on a very wide variety of diets, but what matters is keeping the weight off, i.e. long-term, healthy, and ideally easy weight management, where we’d simply eat delicious and nutritious foods until we feel full.

That need for easy long-term weight management  implies meals that are nutrient-dense: delivering all the macro, micro, and phyto nutrients needed for good health, while avoiding excess energy-density, i.e. avoiding calorie-rich foods that are nutrient poor and bypass our natural satiety senses (because they have no fiber), like saturated fats from meat and dairy, oils, processed sugar, etc. From epidemiology and clinical research, plant-based diets best fit those requirements.

Only a diversified whole food plant-based menu fits those requirements of high nutrient density while avoiding excessively high caloric/energy density. Put another way, eating minimally processed, fiber-rich foods best allows our natural satiety signals to work, while also being long-term sustainable because 1) the eating guidelines are very simple to follow, and 2) the meals are fully nourishing.

Eat Freely & Indulge Guilt-Free

When you eat minimally processed whole plant foods, you can generally indulge yourself in a huge variety of delicious AND maximally nutritious foods: thousands of different fruits, vegetables, beans and legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, mushrooms, and many different herbs and spices. The number of ways to prepare, cook, and combine WFPB meals is practically unlimited.

Even without using any sugar, oils, or salt (SOS-free), new techniques and recipes are appearing every day, from scores of cultural backgrounds. Deliciously decadent yet healthy recipes abound, like roasted sweet potato wedges dipped in lemon and tahini topped hummus. Or dark raw cacao raspberry cashew-cream “cheeze” cake. There are far more WFPB options than salads, that you can enjoy guilt-free, because they’re truly good for you, and you can rely on your body to signal when it’s had enough.

Improve Attractiveness: Skin, Scent, & Sexual Health

Besides the sciences discussed so far, there’s a science of attractiveness — and the effect of plant-based diets on attractiveness confirm evolutionary predictions: healthy mates can be seen and smelled as such.

Skin is our body’s largest organ, so it’s small surprise that eating more fruits and vegetables shows up as a healthy skin tone and fewer wrinkles. The abundant antioxidants in plant foods fights off the continuous oxidation stress on skin: externally from the sun, and internally from chronic inflammation (from processed or animal foods) and decreased blood flow (typically from atherosclerosis from saturated fats and cholesterol). Acne is a particularly common problem often reflecting poor diet, and often responsive to cutting dairy and going on a WFPB diet.

Another powerful attractiveness factor is body scent (or odor). Whether from increased nutrients, improved digestion, and/or less toxic load on the body, many people report improved body scent from eating more plant-foods — and at least one controlled experiment confirmed that women found the scent of men on a plant-based diet “signifcantly more attractive, more pleasant, and less intense.”

As for going past appearances: for men, erectile dysfunction is a reliable and serious warning sign of atherosclerosis, because the smaller arteries of the penis clog up sooner than the larger arteries of the heart. Fortunately men and women alike can improve their sexual performance on a plant-based diet.

Increase Energy

Despite “energy” being a fundamental physical concept like space and time, it’s not easy to measure directly in the human body. Yet every day we all have a subjective sense of our energy levels, which impacts every aspect of life, from mood to alertness to productivity.

Our food choices obviously play a primary role in our energy, and unlike air, we have choices. Assuming enough calories, a plant-based diet can easily lead to a sense of increased energy, in all timeframes:

After a meal, during digestion, we all know the sluggish feeling from high-fat meals. But a low/moderate-fat plant-based meal is high in complex carbohydrates with a low glycemic index that keeps blood sugar levels, i.e. energy levels, more stable, while mitochondria (chemical power centers in our cells) activity can directly increase. Without excess saturated fat being dumped into your blood, circulation works efficiently; without endotoxins from meat and dairy taxing your gut and immune system, digestion proceeds efficiently.

In the longer run, on a WFPB diet you have plenty of glycogen stored in your muscles and liver to keep you going; your blood is less sticky/thick so circulates better through cleaner arteries; abundant plant antioxidants clean up the inevitable free radicals throughout your body (especially in your brain); and there’s little or no chronic inflammation that taxes your system.

When a clean, pure, whole food plant-based diet fuels the body so well, is it any wonder you feel good and energized?

Improve Mind & Mood

Your brain consumes about a quarter of all energy in the body — producing an inevitable firestorm of oxidation and free radicals between the ears. Plant-based diets can provide the abundant antioxidants that clean up the brain’s waste products.

Looking beyond the cellular level, WFPB diets have been found to improve mood and lessen depression, to produce measurable improvements in productivity, and to lessen risks, or slow the progression of, the most common form of dementia: Alzheimer’s disease.

The exact mechanisms by which WFPB diets can strengthen our minds and improve our moods are being heavily researched, including cleaning up the brain’s arteries for better bloodflow; or having plant phytonutrients quickly improving our thinking.

Sleep Better

There are many reports and comments from WFPB newcomers that their sleep duration and quality improve on a plant-based diet. Not only does good sleep provide immediate daily benefits, but it can also help lower long-term disease risks, e.g. for heart disease and dementia.

The early science so far suggests that sleep and diet significantly influence one another. Many possible factors could be contributing: e.g. general improved mood and body comfort (such as reduced joint pain) from reducing or eliminating chronic inflammation; or easier breathing from reducing or eliminating mucus-inducing foods like dairy; or keeping our microbiome happy and healthy; or eating plant foods rich in sleep-improving nutrients like isoflavone, tryptophan, and melantonin.

While some of us can wait for careful nutrition and lab studies to untangle the myriad benefits of plant foods on sleep, most of us are happy to simply enjoy another major benefit of plant-based eating.

Boost Athletic Performance

It’s a thing: more and more world-class, elite-level athletes are using plant-based diets to help their performance and recovery. Science is discovering and confirming what some incredible athletes have known for a while: you need the best fuel for powerhouse performance.

Some top WFPB athletic benefits include 1) leaner body mass and composition which boosts metabolism and endurance; 2) easier glycogen/energy storage from plant foods rich in complex carbohydrates; 3) better blood circulation and oxygenation; 4) reduced oxidation stress; 5) reduced inflammation.

Certain foods can also directly boost athletic performance, in very surprising ways, like beet juice, and nitrate-rich leafy green vegetables that provide an even better package-deal of nitrates with vitamin C. With many thousands more plant foods out there, science may well find many more winning ingredients.

Longevity

The evidence from Blue Zones diets being 95-100% WFPB, and epidemiology studies with large plant-based groups living disease-free longer, makes the high-level case for greater longevity from WFPB eating (on average).

The detailed, molecular-level case for WFPB boosting longevity: It’s the diet best able to increase telomerase activity and  telomere length, which directly reflects cellular aging. A follow-up study confirmed that diet is the most important factor in boosting telomerase.