Plant-Based Diet Cuts Risk of Early Death by 23%
Eating a plant-based diet is not only good for the planet, but could help save your life, a new study suggests.
In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission created a diet that would be both healthy for humans and good for the planet. This "planetary health diet" contains a lot of fruit, vegetables, grains and plant-based proteins, but only a small amount of meat and dairy products.
Reducing meat and dairy is known to be good for the planet, because raising animals for food uses a lot of land, causes water pollution, and produces a lot of methane — a greenhouse gas.
However, researchers at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health wanted to know more about how this diet would affect human health.
They looked at data on the diets of over 200,000 Americans who took part in long-term health studies. None of the participants had serious health problems when the studies began, but during the study period 31,000 women and 23,000 men died.
Every four years for up to 34 years, the participants answered questions about their diet. The researchers then analyzed this data to see how close each participant's diet was to the planetary health diet.
They found that people whose diets were closest to the planetary health diet were 23% less likely to die an early death.
Among both men and women whose diets were closest to the planetary health diet, there was less risk of dying from cancer, heart disease, respiratory diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
Women whose diets were closer to the planetary health diet were also less likely to die from infectious diseases.
Speaking to CNN, one of the study's authors, Walter Willett, said, "For every major cause of death we looked at, there was a lower risk in people with better adherence to the planetary health diet."
"Changing how we eat can help slow climate change, and fortunately what's healthiest for the planet is also best for us," said Willett.
