Eating for Your Health

Filling your plate with meat, dairy products, and eggs could be a recipe for heart disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes, and even impotence. Leading health experts agree that going vegan is the single best thing we can do for ourselves and our families.

Healthy vegan diets support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against numerous diseases, including some of our country’s biggest killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics states that vegetarians and vegans enjoy a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes, and lower body mass indexes, as well as lower overall cancer rates. The ADA concludes that vegetarian or vegan diets “are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.

Did You Know? A major 2006 study of 135,000 people found that those who frequently ate grilled skinless chicken had a staggering 52 percent higher risk of bladder cancer than people who never ate it.

Well-planned vegan diets provide us with all the nutrients that we need, minus all the saturated fat, cholesterol, and contaminants found in animal flesh, eggs, and dairy “products”. Scientists have also found that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than their meat-eating friends; this means that they are less susceptible to everyday illnesses such as the flu. Vegetarians and vegans live, on average, six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters.

Did You Know? Meat and dairy consumption have been linked to diabetes.

The good news is that it’s never been easier to go vegetarian. Take PETA’s Pledge to Be Vegan for 3 Weeks and see how great you feel after just one month on a healthy vegan diet.