Plant based diets can address non-communicable diseases prevalence – Experts

In a bid to address the increasing prevalence of preventable lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs), experts have called for the consumption of whole food – plant based diets to potentially reverse the trends.

According to them, research studies have clearly pointed that a diet that minimizes or completely eliminates animal products proved to potentially reverse non- communicable diseases such as obesity and diabetes.

The experts spoke at a recent Nutrition and Wellness Virtual Summit, organized by Healthucate Global with the theme ‘Nutrition and Innovation for a World without Non-communicable Diseases.’

Neal Barnard, an adjunct professor of Medicine at the George Washington University, Washington, United States in his keynote address shared research studies showing reversing results among diabetes and obesity patients who consumed only plant based diets.

Barnard, himself had coordinated a research team that carried out groundbreaking research which led to profiling type2 diabetes as a potentially reversible disease.

He shared the novel Lifestyle Heart Trial research by Dean Ornish in 1990 where he reversed heart diseases with lifestyle interventions including a vegan diet without meat, milk and eggs.

Speaking also, Patrick Ijewere, medical director of the Carib Health Group and the Nutrition and Wellness Hospital, emphasized the importance of supplementing our diets in order to get the nutrients our cells require to function optimally.

“We need to choose our supplements carefully and ideally from plant-based sources,” he said.

He explained that all supplements or vitamin tablets are not equal, and that synthetic micronutrients are not absorbed in the same way as micronutrients gotten from plants.

In a panel discussion on ‘Nutrition Care in Hospitals for the Prevention and Reversal of Disease’ Motunrayo Oduneye, a registered dietician, and the assistant chief dietician at the dietetics department of the University College Hospital said that UCH is doing so much to promote nutrition care in the management of various cases.

She shared her experiences in helping patients recover from ailments and diseases.

In the second panel discussion, Yami Carzlola-Lancaster, a plant-based paediatrician based in Washington, DC talked on issues around child nutrition and how prevention begins in the womb in addition to the impact of pediatric nutrition on the development of cardiovascular diseases.

She shared a lot of valuable points on how to raise children who love to eat healthily.