From Sustainability to Health: Role of Plant-Based Diets
Plant-based diets have been suggested to promote both human and planetary health. Plant-based diets include dietary patterns higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes, and lower in (or exclusive of) animal-based foods, such as animal meat, fish/seafood, eggs, and dairy. Examples include vegan and vegetarian diets, whole-food/plant-based diets, pescetarian, flexitarian and Mediterranean-style diets. Emerging evidence suggests there may be a protective association between plant-based diets and the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes and improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors. Still, more research is needed to elucidate the mechanisms, and emerging research incorporating ‘omics’ (i.e., genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, etc.) is needed. With the continued popularity of plant-based diets, understanding the health and environmental sustainability of these diets and motivations for following them will help inform communication strategies to support consumers’ move towards following more plant-based diets.
Health professionals promote shifting towards more plant-based diets to ameliorate the long-term health consequences of obesity and related chronic disease, while climate scientists promote plant-based diets for a more sustainable food system. This article collection seeks submissions of articles contributing to the evidence of plant-based diets from sustainability to health, including epidemiological/observational studies, dietary interventions, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses. Areas of interest include:
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Development of dietary indices to capture plant-based dietary patterns.
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Plant-based dietary patterns and prevention or reversal of chronic diseases.
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Plant-based diets and intermediate cardiometabolic risk factors (hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, insulin resistance, adiposity, inflammation, etc.).
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Behaviours and motivations that predict adherence to following plant-based diets.
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Understanding how sustainability, encompassing environmental, economic, social, and health, differs across plant-based diets.
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Mechanistic investigations into plant-based diets and health using ‘omics methodologies or microbiota-related outcomes.
Guest advisors
Prof. Nicola McKeown(Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation, Boston University)
The primary goal of Dr. McKeown’s research is to examine how diet quality is associated with healthy aging and how genetic modification alters diet-disease risk as we age. In addition, her research includes understanding what motivates people to follow popular diets, particularly more plant-based diets.
Dr. Caleigh Sawicki(Brigham and Women’s Hospital | Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health)
Dr. Sawicki is a currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work focuses on plant-based diets and carbohydrate nutrition in relation to cardiometabolic risk and chronic disease, with a special interest in the utilization of new methodologies such as metabolomics to better understand these complex relationships.