What Is a Plant-Primarily based Diet regime, Exactly?

The phrase “plant-dependent eating plan” is currently being tossed about a whole lot these days. The Skeptical Cardiologist never ever appreciates what individuals imply when they use it and so must suppose that most of the globe is also puzzled by this stylish term.

For some, a “plant-based food plan” is what vegans take in. Veganism brings together a diet plan free of charge of animal products and solutions with a ethical philosophy that rejects the “commodity status of animals.”

Vegans are the strictest of vegetarians, eschewing milk, fish, and eggs.

A single plant-primarily based eating plan advocate in the introduction to a unique problem of the Journal of Geriatric Cardiology wrote that “a plant-based eating plan is composed of all minimally processed fruits, greens, entire grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, herbs, and spices and excludes all animal items, such as crimson meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products and solutions.”

You will detect that this cardiologist “excludes all animal solutions” and that the qualifying phrase “minimally processed” crept into the definition.

Complete-Meals Variation

The so-known as documentary “Forks More than Knives” introduced the phrase “complete food stuff, plant-primarily based food plan” to nationwide prominence. The film centered on the diet programs espoused by Caldwell Esselstyn and T. Colin Campbell. Given that its release in 2011, a entire market based on the Forks In excess of Knives (FON) brand name has been introduced. FON takes advantage of the adhering to definition:

“A total-food items, plant-based diet is centered on full, unrefined, or minimally refined vegetation. It is a diet program based on fruits, greens, tubers, total grains, and legumes and it excludes or minimizes meat (together with hen and fish), dairy products, and eggs, as properly as really refined meals like bleached flour, refined sugar, and oil.” [emphasis added]

I have prepared in depth posts on the Esselstyn diet plan below and right here. I feel it is needlessly restrictive and not supported by scientific evidence. (Esselstyn’s website and ebook state unequivocally “you might not try to eat nearly anything with a mom or a confront” and “you cannot eat dairy products,” which differs from the FON definition.)

The critical new phrases to observe in the FON strategy are:

  • Total food stuff, outlined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “foodstuff that has been processed or refined as very little as achievable and is free from additives or other synthetic substances.”
  • Unrefined or minimally refined, with refined outlined by that dictionary as “impurities or unwelcome aspects getting been taken off by processing.”

The FON definition for a plant-dependent diet program then is very similar to our to start with definition — minimally processed vegan — but lets (at least theoretically) negligible meat, dairy and eggs. The FON Esselstyn/Campbell diets select to outline vegetable oil, together with olive oil, as remarkably-refined food items and do not make it possible for any oils.

Diet Rating Definition

U.S. Information and Planet Report publishes an annual rating of meal plans primarily based on the feeling of a panel of nationally-regarded experts in food plan, diet, weight problems, meals psychology, diabetes and heart sickness.

That publication defines a plant-centered diet as “an method that emphasizes minimally processed foodstuff from plants, with modest amounts of fish, lean meat and minimal-unwanted fat dairy, and pink meat only sparingly.”

This plant-primarily based diet plan definition is radically unique from the 1st two I described. Discover now that you can have “modest quantities” of meat and dairy, foodstuff that are anathema to vegans. Also, take note that “reduced-excess fat dairy” is staying proposed, which involves processing and adulterating what are in my viewpoint healthier normal dairy fat foodstuff, generating it highly processed. Lean meat is chosen, and red meat averted.

I was happy to see that, for the 1st time, the Mediterranean diet program ranked as U.S. News’ finest diet regime over-all but stunned to obtain that the Mediterranean food plan came out on best of the checklist of “Ideal Plant-Based mostly Meal plans.”

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Readers will acknowledge that this is the diet plan I propose and comply with (with slight modifications). On this diet regime, I routinely eat hamburgers, steak, fish, full-fat yogurt and entire egg omelettes.

The plant-primarily based diet regime of vegans or of “Forks More than Knives” is greatly different from the Mediterranean diet program.

For instance, olive oil usage is emphasised in the Mediterranean diet regime, whilst the Esselstyn diet program highlighted in FON forbids any oil use.

The FON/Esselstyn diet plans are quite very low in any fats, commonly <10%, whereas the Mediterranean diet is typically 30% to 35% fat.

Esselstyn really doesn’t want you to eat nuts and avocados, because he thinks the oil in them is bad for you. This is nuts! I’m handing out nuts to my patients just as they were given to the participants in the PREDIMED randomized trial showing the benefits of the Med diet.

The Ornish Diet

I have critiqued in detail Dean Ornish’s claims to have scientific proof that his diet/exercise/meditation program “reverses heart disease” here. The bottom line is that these claims are not supported, and that is why his program is not recommended by the American Heart Association or the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

I was pleased to see that the Ornish diet has slipped from third to fourth place in the U.S. News and World Report overall best diet recommendations for 2020. However, the Ornish diet seems to have risen to #1 for “heart-healthy diets,” something I strongly disagree with.

The blurb associated with Ornish states it is “ranked highly for heart health again this year due to its holistic and evidence-based approach shown to help prevent and even reverse heart disease.”

It is not evidence-based, although it is holistic in the sense that a regular exercise plan and stress mediation is part of the program, something that should be part of any lifestyle approach to heart disease.

My Plant-Based Diet

Since the term “plant-based diet” apparently means whatever a writer would like it to mean, I have come up with my own definition.

With the Dr. P Plant-Based Diet©, your primary focus in meal planning is to make sure that you are regularly consuming a large and diverse amount of healthy foods that come from plants.

If you don’t make it your focus, it is too easy to succumb to all the cookies, donuts, pies, cakes, pretzels, chips, french fries, breakfast bars, and other calorie-dense but nutrient-light products that are cheap and readily available.

In Dr. P’s Plant-Based Diet©, meat, eggs, and full-fat dairy are on the table. They are consumed in moderation and they don’t come from plants (i.e., factory farms).

I, like the plant-based diet definers of yore, have taken the liberty of including many vague terms in my definition. Let me see if I can be more precise:

  • Regularly: at least daily
  • Large amount: three to four servings daily
  • Healthy: a highly contentious term that, like “plant-based,” one can twist to mean whatever one likes

My take on “healthy” can be seen on this blog. I’m not a fan of plant-based margarines. Added sugar, whether from a plant or not, should be avoided, and the best way to avoid added sugar is to avoid ultra-processed foods.

Ultra-processed foods, by the NOVA definition are formulations of several ingredients which, besides salt, sugar, oils and fats, include food substances not used in culinary preparations, in particular, flavors, colors, sweeteners, emulsifiers and other additives used to imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product.

Ultra-processed foods account for 58% of all calories in the U.S. diet and contribute nearly 90% of all added sugars.

I do like the food writer Michael Pollan’s simple rules to “Eat Food. Mostly Plants. Not Too Much.” and this New York Times piece summarizes much of what is in his short, funny, and helpful “Food Rules” book:

“[Y]ou’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.”

On Dr. P’s Plant-Based Diet© you can add butter to your leeks and green onions. You can add eggs (with yolks!) to your sautéed onions, tomatoes, and peppers. And you can eat salads full of lots of cool different plants for lunch.

To answer my titular question: If you are using Dr. P’s definition of a plant-based diet, then you definitely should be on one.

Anthony C. Pearson, MD, is a noninvasive cardiologist and professor of medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He blogs on nutrition, cardiac testing, quackery, and other things worthy of skepticism at The Skeptical Cardiologist, where a version of this post first appeared.

Last Updated December 11, 2020