A vegan diet helps to reduce body weight in a healthy way. Vegans lose weight much more easily than meat-eaten and even easier than vegetarians, according to a scientific study by the University of South Carolina.
Dr. Gabrielle Turner-McGrievy and her team performed the study on overweight participants aged eighteen to sixty-five.
The subjects were randomly divided into five groups:
The first group was vegan, so they skimmed all animal foods (meat, fish, seafood, milk and dairy, eggs, honey) from their diet.
In the second group, participants ate no meat and no fish, but dairy and eggs. So they were vegetarian.
In the third group, the Pescetarians arrived, who eat no meat, but fish and seafood.
The fourth group united the semi-vegetarians, who only eat meat occasionally.
The fifth group acted as a control group, these participants were "omnivore".
Vegan diet at the top
The participants stayed with their diet for half a year.
Both after two months and at the end of the study, it was the vegans who lost the most weight. In the whole time they lost an average of seven and a half kilograms.
For the other groups, the weight loss was just over three kilograms.
Vegan diet improves blood levels
But whoever thinks of the cliché of the malnourished vegan, is completely wrong. Dr. Gabrielle Turner-McGrievy and her colleagues also checked the participants' blood levels and found that:
The vegan diet provides more nutrients than a diet that includes animal products. Those vegan-fed subjects had better nutrient levels in the blood. At the same time, the blood lipid levels among vegans, which are known to cause negative health consequences, especially with obesity, have dropped. Both risk factors could thus be reduced by the vegan diet.
Vegan diet for losing weight better than low carb
In contrast to many rumors that the best way to lose weight is with the low carb diet, a meta-analysis evaluating the results of a total of 12 randomized controlled dietary trials showed that you can do better with a vegan diet than with all other forms of diet may decrease - even better than with low carb diets.
The results of the meta-analysis were published in June 2015 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The vegan diet, therefore, proved to be significantly more useful than the Atkins Diet, as recommended by the American Diabetes Association and also more useful than diets, including the US National Cholesterol Education Program Cholesterol level) advises.
With the vegan diet, the study participants were able to lose at least 2 kilograms more than with the other diets. Who ate vegetarian (ie with dairy products and eggs) averaged 1.5 kilograms more than those who ate meat.