Veganism: Is it a better option? By Rivi Lock-Phillips There are millions of vegans all over the world trying to persuade us to take up a vegan diet. What I want to know is; is veganism really better than any other diet? There are so many vegan celebrities such as Zac Efron, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Paul McCartney who believe that veganism is better for us and/or the planet. I have heard this several times, but I have never seen any actual evidence, so I decided to investigate it, to see if veganism really is better than a vegetarian or omnivorous diet.
Obviously, there is more than one factor to finding out how much better a vegan diet is than what we are used to. The factors I have researched are how veganism affects our physical health, the environment, and its natural resources. A Harvard study has reached the conclusion that a healthy meal should consist of ¼ healthy protein-fish, poultry, beans, or nuts-, ¼ whole grains- brown bread, brown rice, or whole grain pasta-, 1/3 pasta and 1/6 fruits. The article states clearly that potatoes are not counted as vegetables. Harvard recommends drinking water, tea, or coffee, with a limited amount of dairy.
Firstly, to decide what diet is the best choice, you need to understand the differences between different diets. A traditional omnivorous diet is what most people are exposed to from a young age. This is a diet that includes meat, dairy, eggs, and other animal products. The most common vegetarian does not eat meat or fish but can eat other animal products. There are 3 different types of vegetarians: lacto-ovo-vegetarians (who don’t eat meat, fish or shellfish but can eat eggs and dairy), lactovegetarians (who don’t eat meat, shellfish, fish or eggs but still consume dairy products), and ovovegetarians (who don’t eat meat, shellfish, fish or dairy but still eat eggs). People often get vegetarians confused with pescatarian, who can eat fish. Another common diet is flexitarianism, which is when a person is ‘semi-vegetarian’, and goes long periods of time without eating meat, but still eats it on some occasions. Lastly, veganism is when a person cannot eat meat, fish, dairy or any other animal products. This has been seen as extreme in the past but is a growing concept.
Dr Ambika Satija led an investigation, published in 2017, in which she had followed the dietary data of more than 200,000 adults, of which 43,000 were male. Her team of researchers looked at the heart disease risk presented by 3 different categories of plant-based diets: A healthy plant-based diet, consisting of almost 100% healthy plant foods such as grains, fruits, vegetables and nuts, reducing consumption of less healthy plant foods and animal products; an unhealthy plant based diet consisting of less-healthy plant based options such as fruit juices, refined grains, potatoes and sweetened drinks; an overall plant-based diet which ‘emphasized consumption of all healthy plant foods’ and avoided animal products. As expected, the people following the healthy plantbased diet had the lowest risk of heart disease. They were also the fittest and most active group. However, those following an unhealthy plant-based diet may have actually had a higher 14
