The Benefits of a Plant-Based Vegan Diet

The Benefits of a Plant-Based Vegan Diet

The benefits of eating a plant-based vegan diet are numerous and scientifically well documented through medical research studies:

1. A plant-based diet means a longer life span; red meat consumption can be associated with living a significantly shorter life—due to increased cancer mortality, increased heart disease mortality, and increased overall mortality.
2. A plant-based diet reduces the risk of cancer. Research shows that 30-40% of all cancers are linked to diet. Cancer is lowest in countries and communities that eat a plant-based diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, and high in fiber. Eating less or no meat and dairy has a protective benefit according to National Cancer Institute Studies. Eating meat is associated with increased rates of cancer. The American Cancer Society recommends eating a diet emphasizing plant foods.
3. A plant-based diet may also help in averting or slowing certain cancers like breast cancer, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, and colon cancer.
4. A plant-based diet contains anti-aging, anti-cancer antioxidants—64 times more than animal foods, as well as contains protective phytochemicals.
5. A plant-based diet lowers the risk of being overweight and obese—nearly 70% of Americans today are considered overweight or obese. Plant-based diets provide lower overall calories and fat. Plus, there is a known relationship between obesity and many cancers.
6. A plant-based diet cuts your odds of getting heart disease. Research shows eating a plant-based diet can actually arrest and reverse heart disease. Heart disease is almost non-existent in populations with diets centered around whole plant foods.
7. A plant-based diet reduces the risk of having high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Research shows that people who consume a diet of mainly vegetables or are vegetarian, have no increase of hypertension as they age.
8. A plant-based diet is better for your intestinal tract and reduces the risk of colon cancer. Eating meat can cause a bacteria in the GI tract that can cause clogged arteries and atherosclerosis.
9. A plant-based diet can lengthen your lifespan because it cuts the risk of chronic diseases by nearly 80%. Research shows it also plays a role in preventing 15 leading causes of death.
10. A plant-based diet can protect against metabolic syndrome.
11. A plant-based diet is known to be the safest treatment for multiple sclerosis, and the most effective treatment.
12. A plant-based diet can prevent and treat Parkinson’s disease.
13. A plant-based diet can prevent and treat rheumatoid arthritis.
14. A plant-based diet reduces your exposure to antibiotics given to meat animals in their feed, as well as reduces the exposure to industrial toxins that concentrate in animal fat, contributing to several diseases.
15. A plant-based diet reduces your exposure to mercury and other toxic heavy metals including cadmium found in seafood and organ meats (and some studies show eggs and cheese). Eating plants can reduce exposure to these chemicals and also protect you against further damage.
16. A plant-based diet can detoxify the body of industrial pollutants found in our food supply, primarily in fish, eggs, dairy and meat.
17. A plant-based diet, contrary to popular belief, leads to healthier bones, than an animal-based diet. People who eat a plant-based diet are at lower risk for osteoporosis because they eat little or no animal protein.
18. A plant-based diet provides higher blood protein levels than an animal-based diet, despite the belief that there’s more protein in meat.
19. A plant-based diet significantly reduces greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide, and air pollution. Research shows that animal food production is now the world’s leading cause of climate change and the greatest source of greenhouse gasses, surpassing the transportation industry and electricity generation.
20. A plant-based diet reduces the further destruction of land, natural habitats and rainforests. It takes five times more land to produce animal protein than equal amounts of plant protein. Two acres of rainforest are cleared every minute to raise cattle or crops to feed them.
21. A plant-based diet is more moral and ethical for billions of animals. Animals living on industrial factory farms have zero protection from cruel and inhumane treatment and are exempt from humane laws. It is legal to torture, mutilate, maim, maliciously treat, intentionally harm and cause suffering to farm animals.
22. A plant-based diet can mean all the grain that is grown and used to feed meat animals (some 70% of all grain grown is to feed meat animals), can instead be used to feed people. It takes roughly 15 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef/5 pounds of grain to produce one pound of chicken.
23. A plant-based diet doesn’t destroy American rivers, waterways, lakes, streams, and oceans. 35,000 miles of American rivers are polluted with animal waste.
24. A plant-based diet can reduce and transition government subsidies to small farmers growing plants from current federal subsidies of $38 billion every year to subsidize the powerful and enormous meat and dairy corporations that control nearly all animal farming. Currently only .04% of that $38 billion is used to subsidize fruits and vegetables.
25. A plant-based diet is better for local economies, instead the billions of dollars the government subsidizes to support big industrial animal farming corporations that support the growth of polluting industrial factory farms and the vast inhumane treatment of animals.
26. A plant-based diet is less destructive to declining fish species and the ocean’s rapidly declining fish populations. Factory fishing has exploited and destroyed one-third of the planet’s commercially fished species. Factory fishing also is responsible for killing and discarding over 200 million pounds of non-target species or by-catch—every single day.
27. A plant-based diet is more humane to fish and is less polluting and toxic. Fish farming is like factory farming for animals, where fish are concentrated in highly confined spaces, causing gene degradation with wild populations, stress, and disease. Fish are fed an unnatural diet of subsidized crops including soy, corn, and grains that they cannot digest and process (just like corn, soy and grains fed to ruminant animals who cannot digest it), causing high levels of waste and chemicals polluting our oceans, and gene degradation. Fish farming is considered one of the most harmful aquaculture production systems producing farm waste, chemicals, disease and parasites into our ocean’s waters. Farmed fish are given vaccines, antibiotics and pesticides to control disease, which people consume and these all cause harm to wild fish species.

Photo Credit: Image by Juraj Varga on Pixabay, www.pixabay.com