Plant-Based Diets - YLAM240032

SPEAKER 1 This program presents ways to optimise health and well-being. When considering lifestyle changes, please consult with your healthcare provider to ensure they are suitable for you. Hello and welcome, I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Plant-based diets are becoming increasingly popular around the world. Within the last decade, diets based almost or entirely on plants have seen incredible growth in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom and many other countries. Why are these diets becoming more popular and are they a worthwhile choice? Stay with us to find out more. This is yous Lifestyle As Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia Television. On this program we explore ways that you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. Today we will be talking about the benefits of plant-based diets for our health and well-being. We have a very special guest joining us to discuss this, Dr. Winston Craig, who is an adjunct professor of public health at Loma Linda University. He is the author of several health and nutrition books, dozens of articles and has over 40 years of experience in the area of nutrition and well-being. Welcome to the program, Winston. We are so glad you can join us today and share with us on this interesting topic. SPEAKER 2 Thank you. Glad to be here. SPEAKER 1 Yes. Now, Winston, I understand that you've spent most of your career in the United States, but you were not born there, were you? You were from the Aussie soil, is that right? SPEAKER 2 Yeah, I'm from the most livable city in the world. SPEAKER 1 Okay. SPEAKER 2 Melbourne. SPEAKER 1 Melbourne. SPEAKER 2 From surveys, Melbourne continually comes out at the top, so I guess. SPEAKER 1 There you go. There you go. SPEAKER 2 But I was raised largely in Sydney. SPEAKER 1 Okay. SPEAKER 2 Newcastle area where I did most of my schooling. SPEAKER 1 Interesting, right. And so I'm really interested because you've obviously spent a lot, almost all of your career, looking into nutrition, well-being, all of these topics. What was the spark that got you interested in that direction? SPEAKER 2 As a teenager, I was, my dad, my family were kind of interested in practised health of a vegetarian. I read a book, a couple of health books, Ministry of Healing and CounciLs on Diet and Food, which are classics in the health area. They inspired me and I just said, I'd like to research in this area someday. That's like find out the background behind all these comments. If that's so important, why aren't more people practising them? In 1984, 74 when I was in the States, an opportunity came for me to go to Loma Linda University and study a Master's degree in Public Health Nutrition. And so that was blew my mind away and opened up the opportunity to look deeply into these things. And it just the more I read, the more excited I became. That's how it began. It was teenage interest to early adulthood opportunity. SPEAKER 1 Wow. And you've stuck with it all this time. I mean, what do you love the most about being in this space with nutrition research? SPEAKER 2 Well, I started out as a chemist. My PhD is in chemistry, but you don't have the interaction with people. I did research for a number of years, getting into nutrition, everybody wants to eat healthfully and know more about calcium and protein and plant-based diets and to see people's faces light up and to have students, 19-year-olds, sitting in front of you and you see the lights turn on when you share stuff enthusiastic and passionately about healthful living. Just as I did this past three months teaching in Wallawar, having a class, just to see them, their eyes open to the joy and advantage of living healthfully and changing their habits to practice more healthful things that will help them in their studies and in their general life. It stimulates me, it drives me, it creates a desire to continue that pathway because you get tremendous feedback. Yes. It's meaningful, it's very rich to see people's lives affected by what you say and do. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely, and with your position, you're reaching people at such a young age, they're at the start of their life, you can be impacting them for the rest of their lives, really, can't you? SPEAKER 2 Exactly, that's the exciting part, is talking in community groups with middle-aged elderly people is nice, but there's nothing to compare with young people and they think, you know, we're immortal. We can do what we want to and you know, nothing's going to happen. But when they see that there's a cause and effect relationship and that the choices they make have a big impact on their physical and mental health, then it's exciting to see them change to actually enjoy those benefits. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely. Yeah, wow, I can see already, like the passion coming out from you sharing just now, which is wonderful. So we're talking today about plant-based diets, which is something that you've spent a lot of time researching in and looking into. And I'm wondering what are plant-based diets in terms of the definition, and also why are they becoming so popular today? SPEAKER 2 Okay, what they are is basically eliminating animal products from your diet, and so you have a whole spectrum Some people even call themselves vegetarian and they still eat fish. You know, there's a special name, pesco-vegetarian. One who uses milk and egg as a lacto-ovo-vegetarian. The true plant food eater is a vegan or a total vegetarian. Then you have what's very popular today is the flexitarian. A lot of people, particularly in the younger age group, want to protect the environment and eat foods that are more, what we call, sustainable, but don't do as much damage to the environment in terms of water and fossil fuel and pesticides and so forth. So they make a very good choice, but they don't want to give up their meat and dairy, but they know they want to go the other direction, so they kind of straddle the bridge and have kind of the best of both worlds. The good, high concentrated nutrition, but are more healthful. approach. So in the past we've been very focused on health and the advantages are definitely all there. There are a number of people who get frustrated by the way chickens are raised and cows are put in pens and so forth and it's kind of like forced feeding rather than open range. SPEAKER 1 So. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, there's a whole variety of reasons. Some are concerned about bacterial contamination, which is much more prevalent in animal food, salmonella, listeria, and all of those things are much more common. They grow more easily in animal tissue. So there's a whole host of reasons, but I think today the idea of a more healthful, vibrant lifestyle, they feel better, they think better, their body weight is more manageable. This is a big thing. You know, I noticed on my website that we have more hits from Hollywood and Beverly Hills than some of the other places where conservative Christians live. So, you know, people are interested for losing weight and keeping nice and trim and vegetarian plant-based diet is definitely a positive thing. So, you know, there's a whole host of reasons. and that we have to provide opportunity for dietary choices to satisfy all those people and their needs. SPEAKER 1 That's so interesting, especially because I guess the broad rationales for why you would do it, it just means that, I guess, plant-based eating has so much going for it. It's not just only because of a health reason. It could be environmental or acute health risk. there's such a variety there, which is very interesting. SPEAKER 2 Exactly. And then you have the things like the mad cow disease that exploded in Britain some years ago, and a lot of people became vegetarian because of that. They said, you know, the risk is too high to be eating beef. And so they just went, you know, cold turkey, so to speak, and went straight to plant-based. So there's a lot of general things, but then there are some specific outbreaks or episodes like that that can trigger people and once they start and realise how good they feel, guess what? They stick with us. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? And so tell me a little bit more about plant-based diets in general and, you know, I guess the health benefits for them, why we would want to go down that track of having that kind of a diet. SPEAKER 2 Well, it's a general principle that as you start removing animal products from the diet. You have many health advantages such as blood pressure is lower, your body weight is lower, risk of heart disease is lower, risk of diabetes is lower, risk of cancer is lower. I mean, you know, you've got all these benefits so that all that benefit translates into a lower mortality. So people live longer. You know, they may live five to ten years longer by following that plant-based diet. So probably the undergirding, one of the undergirding things of all of this, well, two things. One is inflammation and one is body weight. Heart disease and diabetes and high blood pressure and cancer. all have an overweight component. People who are overweight are at higher risk of all those major chronic diseases. So if your weight is lighter, it's generally like a vegetarian is about seven kilos lighter than an omnivore, and a total vegetarian is about 14 kilograms lighter. So that means a lower body weight means lower risk of all those chronic diseases. So that's one major thing. The other thing is meat products. SPEAKER 1 Are. SPEAKER 2 Associated with pro-inflammatory processes in the body. And plant foods are anti-inflammatory because of the phytochemicals that they contain. And so what happens when people are eating a lot of plant foods, the inflammatory processes suppressed and those chronic diseases that I mentioned, they all have this inflammatory undergirding that fires up and triggers all of them. So plant foods are rich in fiber and fiber fills your stomach, gives you the satiety feeling, so you're not as hungry as much and so you eat less. and plant foods are also very rich in phytochemicals. So you have that double blessing. Plant foods are rich in fibre and phytochemicals and because of that they help with controlling inflammation and they help you maintain a more ideal body weight. So it's a win-win. SPEAKER 1 That's very much a win-win. All the diseases you mentioned, they're some of the number one killers, certainly in Australia, but in the US as well, I believe. SPEAKER 2 They're in the top seven killers, all those that we've mentioned. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, so this has a powerful impact on helping to reduce that mortality from those conditions in these countries, and getting to the root cause, it sounds, like you're describing the inflammatory process. It seems like the plant-based diets have the right ingredients to address those underlying causes. SPEAKER 2 Right, and the audience probably is aware of the Blue Zones study. And if you look at those half a dozen Blue Zones, they eat largely a plant-based diet, not totally. SPEAKER 1 Interesting. SPEAKER 2 And it's not that a little bit of meat ruins one's health, it's just that we know that the transition from a meat-based to a plant-based diet accumulates all these benefits. But these blue zones typically are eating a lot of fruit and vegetables, and that's the key. Fruit and vegetables are rich in things that protect us. SPEAKER 1 That's fascinating, because to me it sounds like it's not so important to worry about, oh, do you eat meat or don't you eat meat? It's more important to notice how much of these fruits and vegetables and whole plant foods you're actually eating. Like that's the key thing that you would really take on board, isn't it? SPEAKER 2 The dietary guidelines all over the world in different countries in the last decade or two have all been pushing people to eat more plant-based foods. Because the evidence is just overwhelming. It's not like it's disputable or ambiguous. It's like everybody sees it and knows that it's just you have to deal with culture. You have to deal with taste preference, and people for so long have enjoyed the dairy and the meat flavours and textures that to just switch quickly is, you know, that's why flexitarian is so popular, because it enables them to have a little bit of this, but yet benefit the health as well as benefit the planet by eating foods that are more sustainable. sustainable. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of helping people transition along and add more of those plant foods in their diet. SPEAKER 2 I like the word transition, because that's the key. Yes. It's not swinging everybody off the bridge and dumping them into the ocean. It's transitioning across the bridge. And each person decides where they want to be. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 Do they want to be close to their roots, or do they want to reach out and be adventuresome cross over closer to the other side. That's the choice that we have. How far across the bridge do we want to go? Because the further we go, the more benefits we get. But if we're not willing to give up the past, then we only get partial benefits. SPEAKER 1 I guess that's a good point, because change is a very personal thing, and everyone has a different pace. Everyone has a different idea of how much they want to do it once or they can do it once circumstantially. And so I think it's really important to see this all as a journey that everyone can go on as they want to. Like the choice factor is really important. SPEAKER 2 Right, and family has a big part to play. You know, if a child, a teenager, or a mum or dad or somebody has a conviction, you know, their progress is hampered if the rest of the family family doesn't want to move with them. So that's the, you use the word pace, which I like. We have to choose our own pace. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 And it depends on our family environment, our culture. Some cultures are more riveted and makes it difficult to change. Others are more adventuresome or willing to explore new flavours and textures and stuff. So, yeah, there's a lot of factors. Eating is at the very heart of human beings. Yes. And so to change it is not easy. SPEAKER 1 That's so true. SPEAKER 2 It's very complicated. You've got economics, you've got politics, you've got family dynamics. You've got many things that are overlapping and makes change a challenge. A different level of challenge for different people. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, no, very important to have that big picture in mind about this whole process. Now a question that people often have when they're thinking about plant-based diets is the idea of nutritional sufficiency. And many people, you know, might be worried about things like, oh, will I get enough protein? I'm not having meat, or I'm not having the dairy anymore. What about calcium? Or there's questions about iron or these things. How nutritionally adequate is a plant-based diet? diet? SPEAKER 2 Well, this is a super question. This is kind of like the $64 million question that skeptics always ask. SPEAKER 1 Yes, yes. SPEAKER 2 You know, and the dairy industry is very strong and the meat industry is very strong at pointing to all the deficiencies and so forth. Fortunately in Australia, we live in a society where fortified plant foods are very abundant and common and priced well. For example, a soy-based fortified beverage is just over $2 a litre. I mean, that's not expensive at all. Plant proteins, we'll start with proteins first of all. Plant proteins, most of them aren't of the same quality as dairy and meat. But the body combines all the foods that we eat and you arrive at the final protein mix based on everything you've eaten. And nobody eats a single food. So while lentils or rice may not have a high quality protein, when you mix the beans on the rice or the peanut butter on the bread, legume with a grain, you get a high quality protein. There's only one protein plant-based that achieves that same magic status that animal protein has, and that's soya bean. Soya bean has the complete balance. It's the balance. All the plant foods have the amino acids, but they aren't in the correct balance as the body needs them to to do its maintenance and growth and everything. But as I said, if you eat a variety of foods throughout the day, the body doesn't know any difference. The intestinal tract doesn't say, did this amino acid come from beef or did it come from rice? SPEAKER 1 Okay. SPEAKER 2 You know, it just gets a train of food coming down, which contains carbs and fats and protein with all the amino acids. So while 50 years ago protein was a big issue, the research shows that it's not really an issue anymore. Vegetarians have more than adequate enough protein unless they're living in a socioeconomically deprived environment. And a lot of the past. SPEAKER 1 International. SPEAKER 2 Situations were described, are pointed to, look at these people, in whatever Asian or African country, they're malnourished. But if you look at in a European or Australian or American culture that has adequate resources, you don't find protein deficiency doesn't exist. Calcium is more of a problem. SPEAKER 1 Okay. SPEAKER 2 Because dairy, if you're not using dairy, but there are so many calcium fortified things today. Tofu made with calcium calcium salts and all the plant-based beverages that have calcium added to it. And the biavailability of that calcium is just as good. It might be just marginally different, but really isn't much different from dairy. And the fact is, in some cases you see on the screen here, where some of the vegetables that are low in oxalic acid, that means not the spinach, which is the kale, Chinese cabbage and so forth. The bioavailability is 50%, which is greater than dairy, which is 30%. The dairy is more concentrated, so don't think that eating greens is going to give you everything, because you've got to eat a lot of greens, but the greens, the health and availability is good. if you eat, the point I want to make is if you eat a wide selection of foods during the week, of course, not all at one meal, but during the week, and you use fortified foods like calcium fortified plant-based alternatives, there's no evidence that calcium is a problem. If you are total flat base and don't eat any of those things or eat very few vegetables or none of the fortification, then you'd need to take a supplement. SPEAKER 1 Okay. SPEAKER 2 A supplement's not a whole lot different from fortification. It's just that the pill has been ground up and mixed in the liquid rather than you swallowing a pill. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 I'm not a one for pushing pills because the dietetics approach is you get your nutrition from the supermarket, not from the bottles. Yes. Okay, you get it from real food. Yes. That's where stuff comes naturally to us. Iron, vegetarians and non-vegetarians, the rates of anemia are no different. SPEAKER 1 Okay. SPEAKER 2 We do have, vegetarians do have a lower serum ferritin, which is a measure of iron stores, but we've never shown that that has any clinical significance. So you go down the list and there isn't any major problem. Vitamin D is a problem for everybody because of sunlight. We live our lives indoors and when we go outdoors we plaster with cream and hats and everything so we don't get skin cancer. And elderly people have a lower ability to make vitamin D from the sunlight because it needs to be acted on by the kidney and the liver and those activities are diminished in strength. So the elderly people and those indoors and people who don't go outdoors at all, they all need to be finding a way of getting vitamin D. So that's a problem for everybody. Now there is one problem after we've said all the good things, There's one problem, that's vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 deficiency is real. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 And it's serious and it can be lasting. And so people who don't use any animal products need to take regularly, weekly or daily, depending on the dose, a vitamin B source, because vitamin B does not occur. Calcium, iron, protein, all the other things we've talked about, They're in plants, but B12 is not in plants. So you have to have either fortification or take a pill, one or the other, because it's too important a nutrient and you only need two and a half micrograms a day. SPEAKER 1 Wow. SPEAKER 2 Small, small amounts. It's like iodine. Iodine, you only need 150 micrograms a day. but not getting it is a big deal. Is a big deal, a very big deal. So that's one nutrient that somebody who goes totally plant-based must focus on. They can't mess around with it. They have to have it. And it may show signs of deficiency in two years, three years, 20 years. It just depends on the person. Everybody's metabolisms are different. Their background, their history is different. If you've come from a meat-eating and you turn to plant-based, your liver may have a store. B12 is an unusual B vitamin and that's stored. Most of them are not. B12 the liver stores and when those run out, if you haven't been replenishing it, you're in trouble. So I hope I've made it clear that B12 you need to look out for. That's top of of the list. SPEAKER 1 Okay. SPEAKER 2 But everything else, if you're eating a good balanced variety, fortified foods should be fine. SPEAKER 1 Adequate. Very good. Now, you did mention at the beginning that a lot of people are turning to plant-based diets because of environmental reasons. I'm wondering if you could just touch on that a little bit. Are plant-based diets more environmentally sensitive? Are they a better way to go? What is it like in that space? SPEAKER 2 Yeah, we do have a picture. This picture is on the screen. It shows you that research has been published that shows that an omnivore or non-vegetarian diet uses about three times more water and considerably more energy, fossil fuel, fertilizer, and more pesticides. Wow. And pesticides and fertiliser are often made from fossil fuels. So you see that they are non-renewable resources as compared to solar and hydro energy. So yes, in the next picture you see this comparison that has been made between greenhouse gas emissions, which everybody's familiar with being connected with climate change. And you can see the different volume. This is in pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per person per day. And you can see for a total plant-based diet, you're looking at like 60% reduction in greenhouse gases and even if you look at the green and the red going from a high meat eating to just to a low meat eating, even there you get the benefit of 35%. So that comes back to what you said about shifting slowly or whatever along that scale. So even making some incremental changes does help the environment. It does substantially, statistically reduce greenhouse gases. And, you know, we're facing today terrible storms and bushfires and the bushfire season is longer and the fires are more intense, the tornadoes are more intense and everything is like... Yeah. SPEAKER 1 Thank you for sharing that today. It's, yeah, very interesting to see how much a difference it can make even for the environment. It's really encouraging for us to be able to take that on board as a plant-based diet. So if you have questions or comments about this program or if there's a topic you'd like us to discuss, contact us on [email protected] Remember to shape your lifestyle as medicine. SPEAKER A You've been listening to Your Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television.