Blood Pressure
& Heart Disease

Cancer

Diabetes

Gallstones

Kidney Stones

Osteoporosis

Protein

Calcium

Dairy Products

Asthma

Common Concerns

Vitamin B12

Pregnancy, Infants,
& Children

Mad Cow Disease

The New Four
Food Groups

Further Reading

 

Beating Heart Disease

Vegetarian diets help prevent heart disease.

"The vast majority of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases,
and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented
simply by adopting a plant-based diet."

T. COLIN CAMPBELL, Ph.D.
former Senior Science Advisor to the American Institute for Cancer Research
Director, Cornell-China-Oxford Project on Nutrition, Health and Environment 1983-1990

 

"If you change to a vegan diet, and do it very vigorously,
you have enormous power. You can reverse heart disease.
 You can prevent it. You can, I believe, prevent most cases of
 cancer if you combine dietary changes with avoiding tobacco.
You could prevent probably 70% or 80% of cancers,
just by those steps alone. And, obviously, there’s a whole host
of other diseases
that you would be able to live without."

NEAL BARNARD, M.D.
President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,
author, Turn Off The Fat Genes

Animal products are the main source of saturated fat
and the only source of cholesterol in the diet.
Vegetarians avoid these risky products.

"The first reason why I don’t consume dairy products,
and why I think other people should not, is the fat content.
The fat is saturated fat, and you may as well be eating beef tallow.
The fat in these dairy products encourages heart disease
and numerous other problems.
It’s a risk factor for some forms of cancer as well."

NEAL BARNARD, M.D.
President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,
author, Turn Off The Fat Genes

 

"Animal fats, especially those in milk, butter, cheese and meat,
are highly saturated, and an excess intake of such foods
may be partly responsible for the development of atheroma,
which causes atherosclerosis."

AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
Family Medical Guide

Additionally, fiber helps reduce cholesterol levels,5
and animal products contain no fiber.

One study even demonstrated that a low-fat, high-fiber, vegetarian diet
combined with stress reduction techniques, smoking cessation, and exercise
could actually reverse atherosclerosis—hardening of the arteries.6

"Patients fed a vegan (meat and dairy free) diet
during an intensive 12-day live-in program experienced
an average reduction of 11% in total cholesterol levels.
Most patients also lost weight
and had improved blood pressure levels."

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF NUTRITION, 1995

Heart diets that include animal products are much less effective,
usually only slowing the process of atherosclerosis.

"A low-fat plant-based diet would not only lower
the heart attack rate about 85 percent,
but would lower the cancer rate 60 percent."

WILLIAM CASTELLI, M.D.
Director, Framingham Health Study;
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

 

Blood cholesterol levels of vegetarians
compared to non-vegetarians:
 14% lower

Blood cholesterol levels of vegans
compared to non-vegetarians:
35% lower

Risk of death from heart disease for vegetarians
compared to non-vegetarians:
Half

Chicken has about as much cholesterol as beef.
There is simply no escaping the
correlation
between meat consumption and cholesterol levels.

JOHN ROBBINS
American author,
Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Diet for a New America,
(excerpt from The Food Revolution, Conari Press 2000)

making the transition

plant-based alternatives

sustainable lifestyle

animal exploitation

the environment

reading & videos

'The Spirituality
of Compassion'

great minds

recipes

links

catalog

about gentle world

 home

 

5. Sacks FM, Castelli WP, Donner A, Kass EH. Plasma lipids and lipoproteins in vegetarians and controls. N Engl J Med 1975;292:1148-52.
6. Ornish D, Brown SE, Scherwitz LW. Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary heart disease? Lancet 1990;336:129-33.

 

Blood Pressure
& Heart Disease

Cancer

Diabetes

Gallstones

Kidney Stones

Osteoporosis

Protein

Calcium

Dairy Products

Asthma

Common Concerns

Vitamin B12

Pregnancy, Infants,
& Children

Mad Cow Disease

The New Four
Food Groups

Further Reading

Lowering Blood Pressure

People with high blood pressure are
7 times more likely to suffer a stroke,
4 times more likely to have a heart attack
and
5 times more likely to die of congested heart failure
than people with normal blood pressure.

JOHN ROBBINS
American author,
Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Diet for a New America,
(excerpt from The Food Revolution, Conari Press 2000)

Back in the early 1900s,nutritionists noted
that people who ate no meat had lower blood pressure.7

High blood pressure in meat eaters
compared with vegetarians:
13 times higher

Incidence of high blood pressure
among senior citizens in the U.S.:
More than 50%

Incidence of high blood pressure among senior citizens
in countries eating traditional low-fat plant-based diets:

Virtually none

JOHN ROBBINS
American author,
Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Diet for a New America,
(excerpt from The Food Revolution, Conari Press 2000)

It was also discovered that vegetarian diets could, within two weeks,
significantly reduce a person’s blood pressure.8
These results were evident regardless of the sodium levels in the vegetarian diets.

Patients with high blood pressure
who achieve substantial improvement
by switching to a vegetarian diet:
30–75%

JOHN ROBBINS
American author,
Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Diet for a New America,
(excerpt from The Food Revolution, Conari Press 2000)

making the transition

plant-based alternatives

sustainable lifestyle

animal exploitation

the environment

reading & videos

'The Spirituality
of Compassion'

great minds

recipes

links

catalog

about gentle world

 home

7. Salie F. Influence of vegetarian food on blood pressure. Med Klin 1930;26:929-31.
8. Donaldson AN. The relation of protein foods to hypertension. Calif West Med 1926;24:328-31.