People concerned with climate and environment would like to encourage you to switch to a plant-based diet. This is because it is extremely difficult to produce meat in an environmentally friendly way. However, many people are concerned that this switch will lead them to a nutritional disadvantage. But is it true?
Scientists at the University of Helsinki found that there are nutritional advantages and disadvantages of a plant-based diet.
No meat in this picture, but will you become malnourished eating like that? Image credit: miikkahoo via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)
You don’t really have to make a full switch. However, including more plant-based food in your diet may be beneficial for you and the environment. But what if you made a bigger shift – won’t your body start lacking some of the most important nutrients?
Back in 2017 scientists asked 136 healthy adult volunteers to follow one of three study diets for 12 weeks. One group consumed a lot of animal proteins, the other two replaces varying portions of animal proteins with plant-based food, such as legumes, nuts, seeds and cereal products. Researchers examined the nutritional value of each diet, collected blood and urine samples and made some interesting findings.
Switching to a plant-based diet, as this study showed, resulted in an increase in folate and iron intake. This is quite interesting, because many people believe that they will start lacking iron if they consume too little meat. Iron is important because it is used to make haemoglobin. Meanwhile folat (Vitamin B9) is important for red blood cell formation and for healthy cell growth and function.
On the other hand, this switch also resulted in decrease in vitamin B12 and iodine intake. In fact, the concentration of active vitamin B12 in the blood was significantly lower in the most plant-based diet group. But this effect may be avoided in a real life setting. In fact, it is usually avoided by people who turn vegan or at least vegetarian.
Tiina Pellinen, one of the authors of the study, explained: “When switching to a more plant-based diet, it’s important to ensure sufficient intake of vitamin B12 and iodine. Today, iodine and vitamin B12 have been added to most plant-based products designed to replace milk. Had we used supplemented products in this study too, we might have obtained different results in terms of these nutrients”.
Vitamin B12 is needed to form red blood cells and DNA, while iodine is needed to make thyroid hormones. You need these minerals to stay healthy. This is why if you decide to make significant changes to your diet you should look into what kind of supplements you may need to consume together with your new food.
Switching from meat to a plant-based diet is not going to be easy. It will require a lot of effort in terms of research and organisation. It is definitely possible to do it right, but some nutritional disadvantages need to be kept in mind.
Source: University of Helsinki