Environmental Nutrition: Debunking dietary deceptions: Is a vegetarian or vegan diet automatically healthy?

By Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN, Environmental Nutrition

With all the praise for plant-based diets, it’s easy to think that a vegan or vegetarian diet guarantees that your diet is healthful and nutritious. But does it? The research in support of plant-based diets is bountiful, which is likely because they include higher levels of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and fiber and lower levels of saturated fat.

However, a limitation of early plant-based research was that it often tended to assume plant-based diets as equal without assessing food quality, even though when people focus on avoiding certain foods, they aren’t necessarily making sure the rest of their diet is nutritionally adequate. Then, in 2017, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that when it come