In a study from St. Michael’s Hospital, scientists found a low-carb vegan diet has the same health effects as a vegetarian diet, but at a much lower cost to the environment.
They found that a low-carbohydrate vegan diet had a significantly lower potential carbon emission value than its high-carbohydrate vegetarian counterpart.
The lower the potential carbon emission value of the diet, the larger the reduction in blood cholesterol.
At a time when people across the world are feeling the varying effects of climate change, the study shows the role of diet in both lowering carbon emissions and improving health outcomes.
In the study, the team put people on two different types of plant-based diets: one was a low-carbohydrate vegan diet with no meat, dairy, or eggs, supplemented with canola-oil enriched bread and high-protein vegan meat alternatives.
This diet tried to reproduce the popular low-carb diets that are traditionally high in meat and animal fats—but using plant ingredients.
The second diet was a vegetarian version of the clinical standard diet for lowering blood pressure, known as the Dietary Approaches to Stopping Hypertension diet or “DASH” diet, which included egg whites and low-fat dairy, but no meat.
The diet is prescribed for the treatment of high blood pressure, diabetes, and other cardiovascular diseases.
The diet participants of this study followed differed from the one that is normally prescribed as it cut out cholesterol sources.
The researchers then compared the effects of the diets on their subjects’ health as well as the carbon emission potential of each diet.
At the end of the three-month study period, the team found that the two diets were similar in their effects on weight loss, reducing blood pressure, and blood cholesterol.
Study participants on the vegan diet lost 5.9 kilos and those on the vegetarian diet lost 5.2 kilos. Both groups also saw a reduction in hemoglobin A1c, a marker of blood sugar control.
The team says the study participants reduced their hemoglobin A1c by about one percent, which is the type of reduction most drugs will produce. This means that the diets had a drug-like effect.
The findings also suggest that three months is a sufficient amount of time for metabolism to adapt to what the body is consuming.
If you care about nutrition, please read studies that drinking black tea could help lower blood pressure, and eating whole eggs is bad for your heart.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies that coconut oil may help improve cognitive function in Alzheimer’s disease, and results showing this diet could improve heart health, even with red meat.
The study was conducted by Dr. David Jenkins et al and published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Copyright © 2022 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
