Vegan Diet Better For Weight Loss Than Low Cholesterol Diet

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If you have any vegan friends and notice a bit more bounce in their stride, it may be your friend is losing more weight than you on his or her vegan diet. Then again, it may be due to a recent study indicating a vegan diet is better for weight loss than the National Cholesterol Education Program (the "Heart Healthy Diet").

Yup. It's true. The results of a 2 year study comparing a vegan diet to the National Cholesterol Education Program show the vegan diet induced significantly more weight loss.

What makes this particularly interesting is that excess body fat is directly correlated with cardiovascular disease.

The NCEP program is basically a low-fat diet.

From the Healthy Fitness Perspective, what this illustrates is the impact of processed food. You get more processed food in the NCEP diet than you do a vegan diet.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of a whole foods diet including free range fed animal fats and proteins (which are VERY different from animals fed processed grains and hormones) to a vegan diet.  Our healthy fitness approach allows for high fats and carbs as long as the source is not processed or the animals are not fed processed food.


Reference:
A two-year randomized weight loss trial comparing a vegan diet to a more moderate low-fat diet.

Turner-McGrievy GM, Barnard ND, Scialli AR.