Switching to Plant-Based Diet from Animal-Based Food
October 2019 (Wall Street International)* — The World Health Organization (WHO), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and others have been issuing dietary guidelines for decades1-4. The first guidelines were issued in 1916 by the USDA4.
The initial goals were to improve public health by preventing deficiencies in nutrients that are essential for good health4. That is, a lack of these nutrients can cause malnutrition and/or non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
However, there are other healthy dietary substances like polyphenols and dietary fiber that are not considered to be nutrients. Even though they have many healthy properties, a deficiency of them does not directly result in specific diseases5. Other issues affect the risk of becoming obese.
They include highly processed foods, sweetened beverages, alcohol and environmental toxins, as well as the timing of meals and fasting. So, the goals of this two-part article are to describe the problem of obesity, compare and contrast dietary guidelines from different countries, and then to illuminate some of the issues that are not discussed in them. This first part will describe the problem of obesity.
Facts and Statistics
According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, hunger in the world has increased from 777 million people in 2015 to 821 million in 2017. In the meantime, 1.9 billion people were overweight, of whom 672 million were obese6. The WHO estimated that 52% of the preventable deaths in 2012 could be attributed to NCDs5,7.
A group of scientists and physicians from 195 countries systematically collected data on the diets of adults over 25 years of age to assess the global burden of NCDs caused by poor diet8.
They estimated that in 2017, 11 million deaths occurred and 255 million disability-adjusted life years (DALY) were lost primarily due to dietary risk factors. The major risk factors were high intake of sodium, low intake of whole grains and low intake of fruits.
The leading causes of diet-related deaths were cardiovascular disease, cancer and type-2 diabetes. Suboptimal diets were responsible for more deaths than any other single cause, including smoking tobacco7.
In addition, switching to a primarily plant-based diet from a diet that includes unhealthy animal-based food (red meat and processed meat) is good for your health and for the environment8,9. Note that seaweed and algae like Spirulina are called plant-based foods by many (and are quite nutritious), even though biologists realize that they are actually protists.
In addition, obesity and being overweight are major risk factors for premature deaths and DALY10. In 2010, being obese and/or overweight caused about 3.4 million deaths, 3.9% of years lost and 3.8% of DALYs worldwide. The proportion of men and women who were obese increased from 28.8 to 36.9% in men and from 29.8 to 38.0% in women from 1980 to 201310.
