On this page you can find healthy eating guidelines and learn how to prevent heart disease, cancer, and diabetes with plant-based whole foods!

Healthy Eating Guidelines

If you want to add more healthy years to your life and stay agile and youthful for as long as possible, the right dietary choices are key to prevent disease in the first place, rather than fighting symptoms with invasive medicine treatments later! Many diseases are directly linked to diets heavy in animal protein and on this page you will find out why a whole foods plant-based diet can offer the best options for a heart healthy diet, reduce or prevent high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess hormones, and many other symptoms that are typical leading causes for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. By cutting out animal-based foods and choosing plant-based foods instead, you can do more good for your health than all medications combined!

Healthy diets consist of essential nutrients that our body cannot create itself, and therefore has to obtain through food. Plant-based foods are naturally low in saturated fat, have no cholesterol, are high in fiber, and are full of vitamins, minerals, and cancer-fighting antioxidants.

But now you may ask: What Is Wrong With Eating Meat?

For decades, healthy eating guidelines recommended consuming meat products in order to get our daily protein, iron, calcium, and B vitamins. It is true that meat contains these nutrients, but unfortunately it also contains dietary cholesterol and large amounts of saturated fats and hormones, that do more harm than good. On top of that, over 90% of meat in industrialized countries comes from factory farms, which means the meat is loaded with antibiotics and many chemical substances that the farmed animals ingest with their food.

Prevent Diseases Directly Linked to Animal-based Diets

Prevent Heart Disease

Courtesy of Forks Over Knives: Drs Colin Campbell and Caldwell Esselstyn show that it's possible to figh disease with food choices

• Studies have shown that a low-fat, high-fiber, plant--based diet combined with non-smoking and regular exercise can actually shrink the blockage in coronary arteries and lower high cholesterol. So called "heart healthy foods" that include lean meat, dairy, and chicken are much less effective in preventing heart disease, as they just show a slowing of artery hardening, but never reversion (1).
• A heathy vegetarian diet can decrease the heart disease risk by 50%. Vegans can virtually prevent heart disease, strokes, and heart attacks altogether, due to their even lower intake of saturated fats (2).
• The four major risk factors for heart disease are high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, and a sedentary lifestyle. The first two risk factors of these can be reduced or fully eliminated with healthy eating plans for a vegetarian diet.
• Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn established the value of a whole foods plant-based diet with a report of 198 cardiac patients. 89% were compliant with a whole foods plan-based diet (WFPBD) and 21% were not. Only 1 in 177 compliant patients had a stroke (0.6%) and 13 out of 21 non-compliant patients had adverse coronary events (62%).

You don't need dangerous medications or follow a special diabetes or heart healthy diet. Just start cutting out animal products and start eating fiber-reach legumes and vegetables daily, and you will avoid high cholesterol and most saturated fat. You will also notice more energy and likely lose weight as well!

Prevent Cancer

The China Study - Dr. Colin Campbell explains how to prevent cancer and other diseases with healthy eating guidelines

• Large studies in Europe have shown that vegetarians and vegans have a 40% lower risk to develop cancer compared to meat-eaters (3).
• Cancer is prevalent in developed countries and a higher cancer risk has been linked to processed and red meats.
• Breast and ovarian cancers are receptive to the hormone estrogen, and this level is increased through high fat diets. The typical western diet contains tons of saturated fats consumed through animal products, dairy included.
• Breast cancer rates appear dramatically lower in countries that consume less dairy products. See the video above for more information about the China Study by Dr Colin Campbell (4).
• The colon and prostate cancer risk was found to increase 300-fold through regular meat consumption (5), and it also increases the pancreatic cancer risk.
• When blood from vegans and omnivores is tested for cancer cells in a petri dish, suppression of cancer growth is eight times higher in vegans. The production of IGF-1 (Insulin growth factor 1), a promoter of cancer growth, is decreased by a whole foods plant-based (WFPBD).

The current US government's healthy eating guidelines recommend lean meat and fish as healthy food choices, but these are not nearly enough to prevent heart disease or fight high cholesterol.

Prevent Diabetes

• Diets based on whole plant foods not only maximize protective foods, but they also exclude key animal-based foods that tend to promote insulin resistance, particularly processed and unprocessed red meat.(9)
• Whole foods plant-based diets low in fat and high in fiber can control or prevent non-insulin-dependent diabetes much better, as it allows the insulin to work more effectively (6).
• While a healthy vegetarian diet may not always fully eliminate the need for insulin in people with type 1 diabetes, it can often reduce the amounts of insulin used (6).
• Some scientists believe that insulin-dependent diabetes may be caused by an auto-immune reaction to dairy proteins (6). By preventing dairy products, healthy eating diabetes guidelines could lead to better resistance.
• Analysis of data from 4.1 million person-years of follow up revealed that those most adherent to the healthful plant-based dietary index had a 34% lower risk of developing diabetes compared with those least adherent. These associations were independent of body mass index and other diabetes risk factors. (9)

What Studies Found About Healthy Vegetarian Diets

Many studies show that healthy vegetarian diets have remarkable health benefits and simply eliminate many reasons for diseases, if those healthy eating guidelines are followed. The primary killers of the western world - heart disease, stroke, and cancer - can be prevented or even reversed and healed with a balanced whole foods plant-based diet.

• Studies have shown that vegetarians and vegans can live from six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters (7).
• The average cholesterol level of a vegan is 133 - compared to 210 for meat-eaters. There are no documented heart attacks in people with cholesterol below 150 (8).
• As per Dr. Colin Campbell, nutritional researcher at Cornell University: "The vast majority of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerated illness can be prevented simply by adopting a vegetarian diet."
• The American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, high cholesterol, cancer, obesity, and other health problems. They also found that healthy eating and vegetarian diets can be used as diabetes guidelines.
• Scientists also found that vegetarians have a stronger immune system when compared to meat-eaters, if they eat a good healthy diet.
• Vegetarians are generally slimmer than their meat-eating counterparts. Vegans weigh on average 20 pounds less than meat-eaters while consuming the same number of calories! The reason is that vegan diets that use heart healthy foods are low in fat and high in fiber.

Sources

(1,5,6,7) - PCRM - Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine about healthy eating guidelines (2,3) Elizabeth Somer, "Eating Meat: A Little Doesn't Hurt," WebMD, 1999; Dr Neal Bernard, M.D., The Power of Your Plate, Book Publishing Co.: Summertown, Tenn., 1990) (4) Dr T.Colin Campbell and Thomas M.Campbell II, "The China Study", Publishing Co.: Benbella Books, Texas, 2006) (8) Dr Caldwell Esselsteyn in the American Journal of Cardiology (9) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466941/