2024-01-20 13:28:57
by Andrea Ghiselli
To evaluate the impact of the two different dietary approaches, vegan and omnivorous, 22 pairs of homozygous twins were selected
I read about the new documentary series on Netflix regarding vegan and omnivorous nutrition: «You are what you eat: twins compared». Is it scientifically based?
Andrea Ghiselli, director of the first level Master in Food Science and Applied Dietetics, Unitelma Sapienza responds (GO TO THE FORUM)
The series to which he refers is the television transposition of a very well designed study conducted by Stanford University and recently published in the prestigious Jama magazine. To evaluate the impact of two different dietary approaches, vegan and omnivorous, 22 pairs of homozygous twins were selected in which each twin was a control of the other. One was placed on an omnivorous diet for 8 weeks and the other twin on a vegan diet. So not only did the couples have the same age, sex, socio-cultural background, but they were also metabolically identical. At the beginning, middle and end of treatment, some metabolic parameters such as weight and fasting insulin were measured.
Mediterranean diet
The results highlighted that vegan diets lead to slightly greater weight loss, lower levels of LDL cholesterol, fasting insulin and therefore overall better metabolic health. Now, however, beyond the experiment, it is not necessary to follow a vegan diet to improve metabolic parameters: the same results can be achieved with the Mediterranean diet, as long as we know what we are talking about: vast quantity of plant-derived calories and a small amount of animal products, low enough to contribute to health and completeness of the nutritional picture, but not so high as to increase risks. Therefore a diet much closer to vegan than to the classic Western model rich in saturated fatty acids, free sugars, salt and alcohol that characterizes the Western omnivorous model. The Mediterranean diet in fact combines the advantages of both food sources, plant and animal, without bringing with it the disadvantages that both sources have.
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January 20, 2024 (modified January 20, 2024 | 12:28)
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