Vegan for Life - Jack Norris [69]
Based on these findings, it would seem that vegans should have a lower risk for cancer, but we don’t have enough research to draw any conclusions. And because of conflicting findings, we haven’t yet been able to define the diet that protects against cancer. Cancer experts advise eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, fiber, and phytochemicals from plant foods, while minimizing fat from animal foods. Consequently, it seems like vegans have advantages that may lower their cancer risk.
What about the China Study?
Some readers may wonder why we didn’t cite findings from the China Study in this chapter. The China Study compared the types of food consumed and average disease rates in different counties in China, mostly during the 1980s. The results showed that the more plant products and less animal products consumed in a given county, the lower the rates of most chronic diseases, such as heart disease and many cancers. The China Study was an ecological study, which you may recall from Chapter 2 is a study that compares population groups rather than individuals. Ecological studies can add to our understanding about diet and health, and often give rise to hypotheses that stimulate further research, but they carry less weight than other types of epidemiologic studies.
Additionally, most of the participants in the China Study were neither vegetarian nor vegan, making it difficult to draw specific conclusions about the health benefits of these diets. This is not a criticism of the China Study. It is just to say that it doesn’t provide information for our purpose in this chapter, which is to describe research on the health of vegans.
DISEASE RISK IN VEGANS
Because vegans make up such a small percentage of the population, findings about their disease rates are few. What little data we have suggests that vegans have a lower body weight, lower blood-cholesterol levels, and lower blood pressures, all of which may offer significant protection against chronic disease. But one study also suggested that vegans have a higher rate of bone fracture than meat-eaters, although this occurred only when their calcium intake is low.
These findings may not be very exciting and they may surprise you. But while they aren’t necessarily what we want to see—it’s all the research there is! What we know about typical vegan diets and vegan health parameters tells us that vegans should have a lower risk for many chronic diseases. And that may very well be the case, but we simply don’t have the studies yet to prove it.
However, we do know that choosing more plant foods and fewer animal foods is important for overall health and disease prevention. For those who are making lifestyle changes to manage chronic disease, a vegan diet can be helpful, as we’ll see in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 13
MANAGING WEIGHT, HEART DISEASE, AND DIABETES
We’ve seen that vegans have lower cholesterol levels, less hypertension and diabetes, and a lower rate of obesity than meat-eaters. So it seems logical that a vegan diet is good therapy for the chronic conditions that are all too common among Americans today. And the research suggests that this may very well be the case—that going vegan can be a smart approach to managing high cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure. To put these benefits to work for you and your family, it helps to know just which aspects of a vegan diet are most beneficial.
BENEFITS OF VEGAN DIETS FOR MANAGING CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) refers to conditions that involve narrowed or blocked blood vessels, raising risk for heart attack and stroke. CVD is sometimes used interchangeably with the term “heart disease.”
There has been much discussion of late in the media and among research experts challenging the long-held belief that saturated fats raise