Food for thought

Thanks for your well written articles on the bmj.
As you say there are many difficulties with proving food and dietary effects. However many of us feel there is enough convergence of evidence to recommend a whole foods, plant based diet (‘healthy vegan’). For smoking there were around 7000 studies before it was accepted that it caused disease and guidelines changed and it seems the same paradigm with food. Doctors smoked and received tobacco money and slowed the making and guidelines for smoking cessation.
The majority of evidence supports eating mostly (only?) whole plant foods and the only reason to hang onto eating animal flesh and products would appear to be custom, taste and financial interest. Certainly it isn’t in the wider public health or environmental interest to do so, animal agriculture related activities accounting for a major proportion of our carbon emissions.

Many of us have joined the dots and practice ‘plant based’ nutritional medicine to amazing effect, far more than the pills we prescribe in our palliative form of medicine we practice today. Given the right fuel the body tries to heal itself, as seen in Ornish and Esselstyn’s cardiovascular studies, Barnard’s diabetes studies and ornish’s prostate studies showing not just halting but reversal of disease.

From an evolutionary point of view most (all?) of our adaptations are of a frugivore not Omni nor carnivore which gives us a clue to why this diet is so beneficial. Millions of years of trial and error create a close link between organism and benefits of the right food.

I recommend reading the NZ BROAD study if you haven’t. These trials aren’t easy to do but if they work, people stick with them. Roy Swank’s incredibly successful 34 (-50) year MS low sat fat study attests to this. One of most incredible studies in medicine, which most people come out of medical school or practicing are unaware of, as I was.

I look forward to reading more on this in future BMJs and articles , as the public are onto it and bypassing doctors for nutrition advice.

Best wishes
Mark Craig
GP with interest in nutrition and lifestyle medicine, Auckland
On behalf of world wide plant based nutritional practitioners.