It has long been known that a plant-based diet may be protective against diabetes. Studies have shown over and over again that those who eat meat one or more days a week had significantly higher rates of diabetes, and the more frequently they ate meat, the more frequent the disease. And also those who ate plant-based food had only a fraction of the diabetes even though they lived a lot longer (and therefore had more time to develop diabetes) than those who ate meat.
Today, as the Adventist-2 health study’s 89,000 participants show, there is a step by step drop in rates of diabetes as one eats more and more plant-based food down to a 78% lower prevalence of the disease. The protection builds incrementally as one’s diet of daily meat eating migrates to eating meat weekly, to just fish, to no meat, and then to no eggs and dairy either. A plant-based diet has the potential to stem the current diabetes epidemic.
The same is true for high blood pressure and excess body fat. The greater the proportion of plant foods, the lower the rates of hypertension and excess body fat. In fact, the only group that was not overweight, on average, were those eating exclusively plant-based.
But what about eating a really healthy diet with just a little meat? A study of Asians in Taiwan compared Buddhist vegetarians to Buddhist non-vegetarians, eating traditional Asian food. Even the omnivores were eating predominately plant-based diet, with only a little meat and fish – 3-8% of their Western counterparts.
Those men who ate vegetarian had half the incidence of diabetes and the women only had a quarter of the rates of their meat-eating Buddhist compatriots. They wanted to break up their study to look at ovo-lacto and vegan participants like what was done in the Adventist-2 study, but they couldn’t because they had no incidence of diabetes among the vegan group.
The Adventist-2 study is important because it’s not only the biggest study of those eating plant-based diets in North America, but the largest such study anywhere anytime.
So, eat plants, not animals. You’ll have the longest life-span and the best quality of life.
“Grains, fruits, nuts, and vegetables constitute the diet chosen for us by our Creator. These foods, prepared in as simple and natural a manner as possible, are the most healthful and nourishing. They impart a strength, a power of endurance, and a vigor of intellect that are not afforded by a more complex and stimulating diet.” Ministry of Healing, page 296
Nature knows Best!