Is a Vegan Diet Better To Practice And Live By?

Introduction

The purpose of this study was to evaluate adherence and identify predictors of adherence to a raw vegan diet (i.e., uncooked plant foods) following a stay at a raw vegan institute. In this cohort study of guests at a raw vegan institute, subjects completed written questionnaires upon arrival and 12 weeks later. Of 107 eligible guests, 84 participated. Mean age was 54 years, 23 were Male, and 73 White. Fifty-one completed the 12-week follow-up (Zigmond pp. 361). Eight (16%) reported their diet to be ?80% Raw vegan at baseline and 14 (28%) at follow-up. Based on a raw vegan dietary adherence score (range 0-42) created for this study, mean adherence (SD) increased from 15.1 (5.4) to 17.0 (5.8) over 12 weeks (p=0.03). Baseline predictors of adherence included: education (ß=0.95), severity of disease (ß=0.98), and Self-efficacy to adhere (ß=0.72). Future interventions that evaluate this diet should address self-efficacy, an important, potentially remediable predictor of adherence.

Background of the research

Studies have identified a variety of factors associated with dietary change. According to one heuristic framework, the “adherence model,” dietary adherence is affected by numerous Variables, including self-efficacy, perceived control over one's health, perceived severity of the illness, social support, readiness to change, past adherence, and sociodemographic factors (Urban pp. 279). Although considerable information about predictors of relatively modest dietary changes is available, little is known about the factors associated with more extreme dietary changes.

Raw vegan food (uncooked food prepared without any animal products, dairy, or eggs) has become increasingly popular recently. In the ancient world, the Pythagoreans advocated a raw food diet. Germans who settled in Southern California at the turn of the 19th century brought the raw vegan diet to the United States, and in the 1960s, Ann Wigmore, co-founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute, further popularized it. Advocates maintain that the diet benefits both healthy individuals and those with chronic disease (Pierce pp. 282).

There is some evidence that raw food is healthier than cooked food. Cooking food destroys nutrients and enzymes, alters the structure and, thus, digestibility of food, and creates byproducts that may be harmful. For example, cooking Vegetables decreases water-soluble and heat sensitive nutrients, such as carotenoids. The insoluble fiber in vegetables, which helps decrease fecal transit time and increase binding and excretion of carcinogens, decreases as a result of cooking (Lowry pp. 1198). In foods rich in reducing sugars (e.g., glucose and fructose) and amino acids, peptides, or proteins, heat initiates the Maillard reaction, which destroys many essential amino acids, causes proteins to cross-link with reducing sugars, makes the food harder to digest,8 and forms proinflammatory advanced glycation endproducts. Heating pure proteins, peptides, or amino acids also forms compounds that are often mutagenic. Some observational studies suggest that raw food is healthier than cooked food, and a few anecdotal reports describe alteration of chronic disease among patients on a raw vegan diet, but the diet has rarely been studied in clinical trials (Micozzi pp. 182).

Cooking certain types of foods does have some benefits. Heating vegetables decreases the amount of carotenoids, however, it also ...