Photo: Jannis Brandt via StockSnap, public domain.
Plant-based diets bring robust benefits for weight, energy metabolism and inflammation over periods of up to two years, a systematic review by Max Planck scientists finds.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, led by Evelyn Medawar, screened 205 clinical trials and included 32 human intervention studies comparing plant-based diets with conventional diets. The studies covered healthy people, people with obesity and people with type 2 diabetes. The review is published in Translational Psychiatry.
The team also found early evidence that plant-based diets shift the gut microbiome toward a favorable diversity of bacteria. Effects on the brain and mood have hardly been studied yet, and the authors call for new trials to look at them.
On the body, the authors write in the abstract:
We found robust evidence for short- to moderate-term beneficial effects of plant-based diets versus conventional diets (duration ≤ 24 months) on weight status, energy metabolism and systemic inflammation in healthy participants, obese and type-2 diabetes patients.
For anyone thinking of trying plants for a few months, the evidence says the benefits show up quickly.
It fits with last year's trial in which a vegan diet beat a control diet for weight and fat loss in 16 weeks, and with doctors' reports of type 2 diabetes being reversed on a plant-based diet.
Good news for waistlines, good news for metabolism.