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It’s very easy for anyone to eat unhealthy. Sometimes just as much as vegan’s depending on options. But yay for helping the planet and other animals (the real best reason to be vegan)

International scientists, including an Australian, looked at health records for more than 125,000 people in the UK, and found a healthy vegan diet was linked to lower risk of heart disease, cancer and premature death, compared with non-vegan diets. However, vegans who drank more sugary drinks and fruit juices, and ate more snacks, desserts, refined grains and potatoes had a higher risk of these conditions and premature death than non-vegans. Although this type of study cannot show a healthy vegan diet actually caused the improvements in health outcomes, the authors recommend people concerned about chronic disease adopt a plant-based diet that's low in animal products, sugary drinks, snacks and desserts, refined grains, potatoes, and fruit juices.

Hmm so omnivore eating refined grains and sugar probably has the same issues. Not really sure what this has to do with meat consumption.

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So, isn't this just measuring a particular brand of healthy diet against ALL diets containing animal products (healthy and unhealthy)?

Yeah but I wonder if they looked at or had a population that was say only eating animal products without any of the junk food listed above, and if that would have similar risk reductions. I looked at the food intake in the pdf and animal foods were higher in those who ate the most junk food. However they used a plant based health score and didn't make a model where meat could be healthy.

Plant-based diets are considered to be beneficial for planetary health.7,37 In addition, healthful PBDs are largely compatible with dietary recommendations for the prevention of chronic diseases across the globe,38 including those for a planetary health diet by the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health.39 Our results provide further evidence to substantiate that PBD quality may be essential for individual health—that is, that PBDs are not beneficial per se and can even be detrimental to health depending on their composition. Interestingly, although we observed that the hPDI was associated with a lower risk of mortality, CVD, and cancer, we found no associations with hemorrhagic stroke and fracture. The latter have been reported to be more common among participants in the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Oxford cohort who consumed a vegetarian or vegan diet,40,41 who have otherwise lower cardiometabolic disease risk.42 Our findings suggest that a healthful flexitarian type of PBD including lower amounts of animal foods may protect against such potential adverse effects of vegan or vegetarian diets.

Hard to eat unhealthy on a vegan diet unless you are very devoted to fries, Oreos and impossible burgers.

>Although this type of study cannot show a healthy vegan diet actually caused the improvements in health outcomes, the authors recommend people concerned about chronic disease adopt a plant-based diet that's low in animal products, sugary drinks, snacks and desserts, refined grains, potatoes, and fruit juices.

?

Also a bit of a cheat to compare specifically healthy vegan diets to all other diets, rather than to specifically healthy diets that include animal products, right?

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I get the feeling the research question might have been more like “do the data suggest vegan diets can be healthy compared to the standard american diet/common diets?” rather than “are vegan diets superior to other diets?” since a lot of people are still convinced it’s impossible for vegans to be healthy.

Edit: I went to the original study linked within the link and the stated purpose was “To examine whether healthful vs unhealthful plant-based dietary patterns are associated with mortality and major chronic diseases among UK adults.” So it’s just healthy vegan vs unhealthy vegan, not healthy vegan vs all other diets. Seems…a bit…redundant, but okay.

Precisely. Biased samples.

Hmm thanks for the context. The healthy vs. unhealthy vegan diet and "can a vegan diet be healthy at all?" questions do actually seem like worthwhile ones to me.

It's just confusing that the post title and the authors' recommendation of vegan over non-vegan diets point to that comparison of vegan vs. non vegan, which is completely different. They (authors and OP) really shouldn't do that.

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search 'healthy user bias' - that's all this is. epidemiology is very weak evidence of anything

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There are a lot of vegan snacks and sodas aswell.

Observational study shows positive association between eating healthy vegan food and health and negative association between unhealthy vegan food and health. The authors of the study then suggest that a healthy vegan diet may be healthy and good for the planet.

The study is not about whether animal products contribute to health.

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I would much rather see a study comparing a 100% plant-based diet to a wholefood diet which includes all food groups. Americans eat 57% ultra-processed foods, so almost any diet will be healthier than that. One exception being a vegan diet with the same amount of ultra-processed foods - as this study confirms..

> However, vegans who drank more sugary drinks and fruit juices, and ate more snacks, desserts, refined grains and potatoes had a higher risk of these conditions and premature death than non-vegans.

So better to be a unhealthy non-vegan than a unhealthy vegan?

> Hard to eat unhealthy on a vegan diet unless you are very devoted to fries, Oreos and impossible burgers.

I guess this means you have never visited r/vegan? There are surprisingly many vegans that brag about their unhealthy diet. They keep repeating that they are not vegan for their health but for the animals.

Sounds like they lumped all non-vegan diets together there, so looking at the average healthiness non-vegan diet.

I took a closer look and they say:

"The findings of this cohort study of 126 394 middle-aged adults from the UK suggest that a healthful PBD was associated with lower risks of CVD, cancer, and total mortality. On the contrary, a plant-based dietary pattern characterized by higher intakes of sugary drinks, snacks and desserts, refined grains, potatoes, and fruit juices was associated with higher risk." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2802814

So they seem to conclude that a healthy vegan diet is healthier than the average British diet. But a unhealthy vegan diet is less healthy than the average British diet. But Brits in general eat a very unhealthy diet, so this is not saying much in my opinion. Other than if you choose to eat a unhealthy diet, being 100% plant-based is probably a very bad idea..

I bet if you’re eating an unhealthy vegan diet you are probably not paying adequate attention to vitamin B12 and essential amino acids, so probably so.

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You can take my immense amount of fakin' nuggies from my cold dead hands

How do you see healthy user bias playing a part in this specific study?

vegans are more likely to be 'rule followers' and engage in other lifestyle behaviors that are considered healthy (e.g., more walks, exercise, less processed foods, generally taking care of oneself). their positive health outcomes may or may not be related to their diet.

it has been shown repeatedly that you cannot control for these confounding lifestyle factors - hence why epidemiology should be step 1, and then you use randomized controlled trials to actually test for only changes in diet (which is obviously very hard to do at any sort of scale over any long time horizon - can't really lock people away for decades).

additionally, comparing a vegan diet consisting of whole, fresh foods to the standard american diet isn't really telling. anything is better than that!

No surprise here. A whole-foods, plant-based diet is the way to go. Highly refined foods are the enemy. Eating Oreos and potato chips is vegan but not healthy. Vegan nuggies are delicious but not healthy. Eat a wide variety of whole foods for health, and avoid processed crap and soft drinks.

Someone was really out to prove their chipgan and french-fry-tarian friends' claims of healthy diets wrong (I guess).

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