Whole Food Plant Based Diets

Harvard Study Shows Plant Protein Consumption Reduces Mortality

There are thousands of medical and scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals showing that a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diets are optimal for our health and are also the best for the environment and for the animals we share the earth with.

A number of these studies are documented on this website.

There are many more studies purporting that eggs, dairy, chocolate and even red meat are healthy and even essential for health.

When a comparison is made between two or more groups of people, showing that healthy WFPB are detrimental, be mindful of the nature of the comparison group.
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9 March 2021
Lessons from The China Study

Colin Campbell was a nutritional biochemist at Cornell University. In the 1960s, he was involved in nutritional programs in the Philippines to help families provide for their critically undernourished children. Peanuts were one of their preferred sources of protein. It is a legume— great for improving the soil, easy to grow, and is nutritious and tasty.

At the same time, children younger than 10, were dying at alarming rates from liver cancer. Normally liver cancer is an adult disease— and the children dying from the disease were from the most affluent suburbs in Manila. These are the families that could afford the best housing and the best food.

Whilst in the Philippines, he read a paper in an obscure medical journal. Rats were fed aflatoxin— one of the deadliest carcinogens known. One group of rats was given a diet of 20% protein —and they all died of liver cancer. The second group was given a diet of 5% protein— and they all lived. 100% deaths compared to zero deaths. They were all fed aflatoxin— but only those rats that had a high protein diet died.

A 20% diet of wheat protein, gluten, or pea protein did not result in liver cancer deaths whereas casein, which comprises of 80% of the protein found in cow’s milk, and albumin, which is found in egg white, did result in liver cancer deaths. Plant-based diets are often considered to be lysine deficient. However, adding the amino acid lysine to the wheat protein to match the level found in casein also resulted in cancer deaths.

Significantly, peanuts and corn in the Philippines were often contaminated by aflatoxin— and the wealthy ate Western-style diets, one rich in protein.
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1 March 2021
Japanese Diet, Cuisine and Health

Japan is at the top of the list for life expectancy and health. There are strong regional variations although the diet in recent decades has become more westernised and the variations in diet are becoming less distinct throughout Japan.

A wide variety of dipping sauces accompany most meals. Udon is a thick wheat flour noodle and yakisoba is a buckwheat noodle. Soba is the Japanese name for buckwheat.

Despite the increase in dairy, egg and meat consumption in recent decades, Japan (according to the National Health and Nutrition Surveys) still consumes a predominately plant-based diet.

Hookaido had the lowest percentage of plant-based foods at 74.5% in 1980 and 82.2% in 2012. In 1980, Kanto II had the highest percentage at 78.2% with Hokuriku topping the list in 2012 with 84.5%.

Australia and the US consume approximately 30% of their diet from plant-based sources.
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18 August 2020
Ancel Keys and the Mediterranean Diet

In 1951, Keys was working at Oxford when the Food and Agriculture Organization asked him to chair their first conference on nutrition in Rome. Keys stated, “The conferees talked only about nutritional deficiencies”.

When he asked about the new epidemic of coronary heart disease, Gino Bergami, Professor of Physiology at the University of Naples, said , “Coronary heart disease was no problem in Naples”.

In 1952, Keys and his wife Margaret visited Naples. Margaret measured serum cholesterol concentrations and found them to be very low except among members of the Rotary Club. Heart attacks were rare except amongst the rich whose diet included daily servings of meat. He obtained similar results in studies in Madrid.

Ancel Keys and colleagues posed the hypothesis that differences among populations in the frequency of heart attacks and stroke would occur as a result of physical characteristics and lifestyle and diet. Surveys were carried out between 1958 - 1970 in populations of men aged 40-59, in sixteen areas of seven countries. Follow-up surveys were continued until the 1990s. Most of the areas were stable and rural and had wide contrasts in habitual diet.
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23 May 2020
Gut Health and Robert Beson

Australian Traditional Medicine Society FUNCTIONAL GI SYMPOSIUM 2019 was held in Sydney on Sunday 15th September.

Robert Beson presented a session Gut Health: Environmental & Internal Profile Consideration.

Unfortunately, there is very little information regarding his proboitic treatments.

Internet search results for "Robert Beson probiotics" or "Robert Beson gut healthy" lead to the Progurt website which sells probiotic supplements.
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30 October 2019
Pink Day Blues

In 1985, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) was created by the American Cancer Society. Funding was provided by Zeneca (later AstraZenca) , a British pharmaceutical company. AstraZenca is still (as at 2018) associated with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. AstraZenca produces Tamoxifen. Tamoxifen is an estrogen antagonist or anti-estrogen drug which works by blocking the effects of estrogen.

Pink Day is one day in October which is designated to create awareness of breast cancer and to raise money for research.

Lifetime exposure to estrogen is 2.5-3 times higher in Western women than rural Chinese women in the 1980s. China women reach menarche later, menopause earlier and have reduced levels of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone during their reproductive years.

There is much evidence that increased levels of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are associated with a significant increase in breast cancer as well as evidence that low-fat, high carbohydrate diet reduces the level of these hormones.
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27 January 2019
Ancel Keys and the High-Fat Diet “Experts”

Popular commentators frequently accuse Keys of manipulating data in his 1953 paper, Atherosclerosis, A Problem in Newer Public Health.

This study is sometimes referred as the Six Countries Study. A number of popular commentators think this is the Seven Countries Study— they count England and Wales as two countries.

This paper was presented in Amsterdam in 1952 and in January 1953 in New York.

Far too much attention is paid to one page of a minor discussion paper written in the early 1950s. Keys writes,

“The fact that the present high rate from degenerative heart disease in the United States is not inevitable is easily shown by the comparison with some other countries.”

This was the purpose of the paper.
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24 July 2018
CSIRO Low-Carb Diets

The CSIRO Low-Carb Diet and CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet were developed in Australia by the CSIRO.

The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet plan "is higher in protein, and lower in high Glycemic Index carbohydrates which supports weight loss, especially fat mass whilst helping with appetite control".

The CSIRO Low Carb Diet is "lower in carbohydrate and higher in healthy fats which may improve blood glucose control and possibly a reduction in need for diabetes medication".

The CSIRO Diets DO NOT improve blood glucose control and DOES NOT reduce the need for diabetes medication.
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4 October 2017
The Pioppi Diet

The Pioppi Diet movie and book by Aseem Malhotra, a London cardiologist and Donal O’Neill, an Irish film-maker that receives a great deal of publicity. A review in the British Journal of General Practice quotes Professor Dame Sue Bailey, the Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, who describes the book as a “must have for every household and a must read for every medical student and doctor”.

Andy Burnham, current (2021) mayor of Greater Manchester and former UK Secretary of State for Health writes,

This book has the power to make millions of people healthier and happier.

Pioppi is a small village on the Tyrrhenian Sea which is located on the west coast of Italy. It is approximately 150 km (90 miles) south of Naples. Ancel and Margaret Keys resided here for over 25 years. Martii Karvonen of Finland and Jerimiah Stamler of the USA are other well-known medical researchers who resided in the village.

Malhotra is a keen high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet advocate and is desperately trying (unsuccessfully) to merge his opinion into a distorted view of the Mediterranean diet.
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3 October 2017
The Ketogenic Disadvantage

Several studies have been published comparing low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diets with low-fat diets, mostly regarding the treatment of diabetes in overweight and obese participants. Prominent researchers in this field are Richard Feinman, Stephen Phinney, Mary Vernon, Jeff Volek, Eric Westman, and William Yancy—all supporters of low-carbohydrate dietary regimes.

Ketosis occurs during starvation. It is not a normal, healthy condition. No animal species or human society normally lives in a state of ketosis. Ketosis occurs when fat in the body is utilized to obtain energy in the absence of glucose. Glucose is normally obtained from the digestion of carbohydrates. Ketosis results in the production of ketones—acetone being one of the three types of ketones produced during ketosis. Blood acidity rises with an increase in ketones.

During pregnancy, ketosis has been linked to adverse outcomes for the unborn child.

Ketogenic diet trials almost invariably compare a ketogenic diet with a mislabeled “low-fat, high-carbohydrate” diet. Both the control diet and the ketogenic diet are not healthy diets—the participants are far from healthy at the start of the trial or at the conclusion.

The ketogenic trials appear to assume that the only criteria for a healthy diet is the ratio of fat, carbohydrate, and protein. Many other components are important for health such as fiber, refined sugars, phytonutrients, and protein sources.
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10 January 2017