that automatically mean that you are eating a healthier diet?

A lot of people wonder

because there is such a thing as a junk food vegan.

But overall, how are we doing when we ditch meat

and we ditch dairy?

My guest today

wanted to answer

that very question, so

she and her team of researchers set out to do so.

An incredible new paper has just been published.

Our director of clinical research, Dr.

Hana Kahleova is here to share her findings

with us on The Exam Room.

Dr. Kahleova, thanks so very much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Chuck.

Really interesting topic.

I'm curious about this one because I think as we have seen

this explosion of interest in eating a plant-based diet,

we've also seen this explosion of products in grocery stores,

a lot of which people would say, well,

that's not necessarily healthy.

So what did you guys discover in terms of when people go vegan?

The effect that has on their diet.

You're exactly right.

You know, many people think, well,

the vegan diet is just amazing.

But what guarantee do you have

when you go vegan that your diet will be healthier?

Well, so we looked into

the diet quality on a on a vegan diet.

And let's explore what we found.

Let me share my screen with you.

Got it right there.

Yeah.

So we know that a vegan diet is amazing.

It's great for your health.

It's great for the animals and also for the environment.

And yet, when we talk about the health

aspects, many of the opponents of vegan diet say, well,

but wait a minute,

we cannot recommend to everyone to go vegan

because they will eat a lot of junk food.

So, you know, when

when you go vegan, what guarantee do you have that

that people will

actually eat the healthy diet and not the junk?

So this is something we looked into.

How do you even define the diet quality?

It turns out that there is a trend

that the researchers at Harvard Medical School

invented a tool that may be useful,

which is called the Alternate Healthy Eating Index.

All or the HPI.

And they updated the index.

So the updated version is from from the year 2010.

And the idea is just let's

give positive points to people for eating healthy foods

and negative points for eating unhealthy foods.

And the healthy foods are the fruits and vegetables

and whole grains and legumes and nuts and seeds as sources of

healthy fats

and the unhealthy foods in this particular

index are the red and processed meats, the sodas,

the sources of trans fats, although they have been

gradually eliminated, did come from our diet.

There's still some processed foods that contain them

and also also sources of sodium in our diets,

such as cheese and olives and potato chips.

So these would be the unhealthy foods.

And we

use this particular index when

when, you know, when when people go vegan.

So we conducted a randomized clinical trial

and took 244 overweight adults.

And we assign them randomly to either follow a low

fat vegan diet that consisted of fruits and vegetables

and grains and legumes for 16 weeks

or the other half of the of the participants

stayed on their usual diet for 16 weeks.

And now we measured the diet quality using the alternate

healthy eating index that I just described.

And what did we find out?

What happened to people who went vegan?

What happened to their diet quality?

It turns out that the diet quality

significantly improved on the vegan diet

by seven points, which was more than 10%.

And this is good news, right?

And we the the junk

food was not necessarily forbidden on the vegan diet.

We were encouraging them to eat to make the healthy options,

but they were still allowed

to eat it, eat sugar, for example, and

eat processed foods and eat without any

any attempts to improve their diet quality.

The diet quality actually improved.

This improvement in diet quality was also associated

with their weight loss, their improvement

in body composition because they were losing

most of their weight loss was diet due to fat loss

and also improvements in insulin sensitivity.

So the improvement in diet quality had really implications

for their cardio metabolic health

and their weight management.

Now the second question is when people

switch to a vegan diet, when they start eating fruits

and vegetables and whole grains and legumes,

what out of these foods will tip the scales the most?

That means

which of the foods are most important for weight loss?

Is it the foods that you don't eat

that are the animal foods

on a vegan diet, or is it the foods that you

actually eat on a vegan diet?

Which one?

Which foods are the most important ones?

And we found out there were

two main predictors of weight loss on a vegan diet.

While all of the foods are excellent that you that you eat

on a vegan diet, fruits and grains

and legumes and vegetables, all of them are great,

but some of them

seem to be more important for weight loss than others.

So the number one predictor of weight loss

was not eating any meat.

No meat, no poultry, no fish.

That was the number one predictor of weight loss.

And the second most important

predictor of weight loss was eating your beans,

your beans and lentils and peas and all the legumes.

So both are important,

not only not eating the meat and the junk,

but also eating the healthy stuff, particularly

when it comes to beans that are a superfood.

Based on our research study findings.

That's a really interesting finding here,

and I'm glad that you did this study.

Couple of quick follow up questions for you.

Number one, right away, I noticed that

fruit juices were considered to be unhealthy at the time.

A lot of people would say, well, orange juice.

I drink that every morning with my breakfast.

That's healthy, right?

Why are fruit juices categorized as unhealthy for

the purposes of this study?

That's a great question.

For this particular index, the researchers decided

to group fruit juice among the unhealthy foods.

But we can definitely have a discussion

when you squeeze out their orange juice in the morning.

It's much different from,

you know, sugary drink that has only 12% of orange juice.

So you need to be distinguishing between these.

But generally speaking, there is a controversy.

Another aspect to consider is that

let's say you want to eat

one glass of orange juice every single morning.

One aspect to consider is that many people tend

to overdo it with it with the orange juice.

First of all, they don't usually drink

the orange juice that's freshly squeezed.

They buy it, you know, in a

in a tetra pack. And

that way, the nutrient content

and also the fiber content is not so great.

You would usually most of the fruit juices

that you can buy in a grocery store are devoid of fiber.

And yet you can you can find some brands

that include the pulp.

So those would include the fiber

and would be healthier options.

So there is a variety

among the fruit juice products.

The best ones would be the ones that you make at home,

you know, freshly squeezed

or even a smoothie where you put tofu fruit.