How does eating a plant based diet over a traditional diet decrease your risk of heart disease and other health related risks?
In: Biology
It doesn’t.
The studies you’re likely referring to aren’t comparing similar groups. Rather, they’re comparing a group of people who pays close attention to their diet (vegans/vegetarians) to a group of people who frequently don’t pay much attention to their diet at all (‘traditional’ eaters). It should come as no shock that the people who down 5 cheeseburgers before finishing off an entire apple pie aren’t going to have particularly good health outcomes.
However, there’s an easy way to understand why vegan/vegetarian diets are across-the-board less healthy than traditional diets when you remove that bias: every vegan/vegetarian diet is also a traditional diet while the reverse is not true. That means the best outcome from a vegan/vegeterian diet cannot possibly better than the best outcome from a traditional diet.
In practice, vegan/vegetarian diets are fine for young adults. However, both young children and older adults tend to have a great deal of difficulty maintaining a healthy diet without the inclusion of meat and dairy.
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