- A new study supports a vegan diet as a means of losing weight.
- In the study, the researchers compared two groups eating vegan (plant-based) diets and omnivorous (plant and animal sources) diets.
- The researchers also observed that the quality of a plant-based diet matters for weight loss and health in general.
A new study finds that following a plant-based diet is more associated with weight loss for overweight adults than a standard omnivorous diet. It also concludes that the quality of such a diet makes a difference when it comes to how much weight is lost.
Participants who followed a vegan diet lost an average of 5.9 kilograms (13 pounds), irrespective of diet quality.
The study employed a trio of commonly used indices. These allowed researchers to separately assess a healthy plant-based diet (hPDI), an unhealthy plant-based diet (uPDI), and a plant-based diet in general (PDI).
This was a secondary analysis of a
244 overweight adults took part in the trial. The researchers assigned 122 individuals to a vegan-diet group and the remaining 122 to a control group, who were asked to continue eating their normal omnivorous fare. In the end, 223 people completed the 16-week trial.
Participants submitted three-day dietary records to the researchers at baseline and at week 16, and were left to their own choice of foods. They did not receive nutritional guidance.
Participants’ records were re-analyzed, with all plant-based foods receiving positive scores in the PDI index. Only healthy plant-based foods were awarded positive scores in the hPDI index, and only unhealthy foods scored positively in the uPDI index.
As the trial progressed, the numbers of participants belonging to all three plant-based indices rose, and these scores closely aligned with weight loss.
The PDI…
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