The new talk in the town is all about plant-based diets and vegan diets. We’re damn sure you must have read or heard these terms at least once in the last few months.
The concept of “all plant-based” diet is new to many, and people worldwide are still trying to understand and learn about what it entails!
If you’re still confused, we’ll break it up to give a better and clear idea along with the pros and cons of the diet.
Without wasting any more time, let’s dive straight in…
What is a plant-based diet anyway?
A plant-based diet is a diet that is derived from plants or is indeed plants themselves. In essence, plant-based diets consist of mostly or only foods that come from plants.
People understand the term plant-based diet in different ways. Some interpret plant-based diets like a vegan diet avoiding all animal products. For some, plant-based diets are diets where the main focus is on fruits, vegetables, whole-grains, legumes, but they may consume meat, fish, or dairy products, occasionally.
Whatever the preference may be, the plant-based diet focuses on natural, unprocessed, whole foods to ensure that the body gets as many nutrients as possible from the food.
The whole food Plant-Based diet is another branch of veganism that encourages people to eat foods derived from plants or are indeed plants themselves. This diet plan gives you excellent alternatives to animal processed products like cheese made of soaked cashew or pizza crust made of cauliflower and ground macadamias, to name a few.
Benefits of Plant-Based diets
There are a plethora of benefits of a plant-based diet. It’s not only healthy for us, but it’s also beneficial for the world around us.
Here is a quick review of some of the advantages of adapting to a plant-based diet.
- Plant-based diets help maintain a healthy weight: It’s a no-brainer that excess weight causes inflammation and hormonal imbalance, increasing cancer, diabetes, and innumerable diseases. A plant-based diet helps prevent and even reverse the effect of health diseases, reduce the risk of certain cancers, reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline, and more.
It is proven that people who primarily eat a plant-based diet tend to have lower body mass index, lower rates of diabetes, obesity, and heart diseases compared to those who eat meat.
- Plans are high in fiber: Fiber is present in all unprocessed food and makes up the plant’s structure. Getting access to the plant fiber brings you a whole lot of benefits. Plant fiber helps to improve the gut’s health for the better absorption of nutrients from food and helps in better functioning of the immune system and reduces inflammation. Fiber helps to reduce the cholesterol level and stabilize blood sugar levels and is excellent for bowel management.
- A plant-based diet reduces other risks of diseases too: The benefits of a plant-based diet are not only limited to cancer, but it also helps to reduce the high risk of heart diseases such as strokes, diabetes, and other mental illness.
Cons of Plant-based diet
Just the way every coin has sides, plant-based diets follow some cons as well.
One of the primary considerations of a plant-based diet is the deficiency of nutrients, especially vitamin B12, iron, and vitamin D3, which is found from meat and fish but is easily remedied with supplementation.
In case you’re planning to go for a plant-based diet, our advice would be to visit a nutritionist and get a healthy diet plan for yourself.