The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet

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Buxton searched for the answers to these questions: is a plant-based diet better for your health? Will it save the planet? Who is pushing the plant-based diet and why? And how should we eat?

The Great Plant-Based Con by Jayne Buxton review — the case

Buxton has a good approach to writing this. She has explained why she's choosing the word con and at the end she doesn't vilify plant based eating, just how much effort you'd need to put in. For someone who drives a car, ditching the car or driving it less often also constitutes an important contribution. Do both of these things and you could wipe 6.9 tonnes of carbon off your total footprint.

Tim Spector is professor of epidemiology at King’s College London , and the author of Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong. Further reading: Almond milk, for example, is massively water intensive in drought-hit areas, while poorly-managed soy plantations contribute to deforestation. A 2020 study by Nottingham University and the Sustainable Food Trust determined that a kilogram of soya beans produces 13 pints of soy milk – but up to 150 pints of dairy milk if fed to a cow.

4 new books we recommend this week: A biased defense of meat

People are trying to do the right thing. And no wonder it’s hard, because they’re being given confusing messages.” The Great Plant-Based Con by Buxton, A Visible Man by Enninful, Henry “Chips” Channon: The Diaries (Volume 3) edited by Heffer, and Haven by Donoghue.

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However, he and Buxton agree that pasture-fed dairy can not only minimise carbon emissions but they can sequester carbon. “That’s really the holy grail that we should be looking for in the future,” says Buxton. Buying less, flying less and doing less could make a more meaningful impact. “Just generally consume less. That’s not a good message in a capitalist economy, though. People don’t like it. They like this one because it drives the ­economy forward.” Bekieboyd explained: "Why do we call cows milk ‘ordinary milk’? Why did we choose a cow out of all animals to give hormones to make them produce milk for us all the time to drink. It’s not natural. It’s weird. No wonder people are embarrassed to ask for it." Preventable diseases running rampant, Diabetes overwhelming the health systems, a huge proportions of obese people, all thanks to current thinkings 'nutrition wisdom'.

Based Debunking Of The Benefits Of A Plant-Based Diet An Evidence-Based Debunking Of The Benefits Of A Plant-Based Diet

Some believe cutting animal foods out and replacing them with plant-based alternatives does not have much of an impact She refers to studies that have found that by reducing your meat and dairy you can reduce our personal carbon footprint by a maximum of two to six per cent. “Which really isn’t very much. There are far more impactful things you can do.”Buxton wants more people to be aware of how the targeted marketing that we might unwittingly parrot becomes “unquestionable dogma”. Where do we go from here?

The great vegan diet ‘con’ - The Telegraph The great vegan diet ‘con’ - The Telegraph

Buxton, a former management consultant with an MBA, is trained to look at data critically. She began researching the topic of food, health and the environment (specifically, the impact of meat and plant-based diets on human and plan­etary health) and she realised the extent of the ­misinformation around both the health and environmental impact of meat-eating, and that the benefits of plant-only diets were being exaggerated. In part two Buxton considers, inter alia, “the truth about carbon dioxide, methane, and all those cow burps;” draws soil-related biochemical and biological concepts into a comprehensive and comprehensible narrative explaining the benefits of regenerative agriculture and nutrient-rich animal-sourced food; and shows how these strands can be sustainably incorporated into a planet-friendly strategy. The Devenish Lands, Dowth, Co Meath is cited as an example, with “peer-reviewed studies… [showing]… that Dowth currently sequesters 665 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year”. There have been several critiques of the WHO report on cancer (2015), which is responsible for the notion that eating processed meat causes cancer, including one from a member of the committee that produced the report, who felt that it was not evidence based. Part four argues for pasture-fed ruminant farming over industrial systems, why there should be a return to unprocessed real food, and is essentially a welcome appeal for a return to nutritional common sense. Then there is the higher consumption of seed oils, high in omega-6, associated with highly processed foods, such as those we found in the supermarket refrigerator.

An excellent all-encompassing book on the subject, clearly the author has dedicated a lot of time on research. Quoted are some of the most esteemed books of the field, like The Big Fat Surprise, The Vegetarian Myth, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Gary Taubes' books and many more books and Before writing the book, she had always been more of a baked-potato-and-salad person, than a steak person. However, researching her book has made her appreciate meat and its health benefits. She now eats some animal-sourced foods (eggs, meat, cheese) alongside a variety of vegetables every day, including having meat for dinner three or four times a week, and a “nice 4oz steak” about once a week. First off, though, the anti-meat rhetoric has to stop. Encouragingly, diets such as the Keto (high fat and low carb) are growing in popularity for treating an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. In many ways, it and veganism are antithetical.