2023-06-13 10:56:02
The whole of the Netherlands is vegan
Everyone in the Netherlands is going to eat plant-based. Land is no longer used to raise livestock or to grow fodder. What would the organization and health of our country look like then? NEMO Kennislink will consider this in the coming months this thought experiment. In this episode: the consequences of vegan food for public health.
Ellen Kampman sounds rushed when she calls from her car. Today salient news came out about meat consumption, leaving her phone ringing with requests from the press for comment from the Wageningen professor of nutrition and disease. The fuss concerns a report of Wageningen University & Research (WUR), commissioned by the Vegetarian Association and the True Animal Protein Price Coalition. The researchers looked at the relationship between medical costs and eating meat. The finding? A meat tax would not only be good for the environment, but would also reduce health care costs. The researchers calculated that red meat would have to be €7.50 more expensive per kilo in order to compete against the health costs resulting from excessive meat consumption.
In the Netherlands, approximately ten thousand patients with colorectal cancer are diagnosed every year. According to KWF Cancer Control, a quarter of this can be attributed to eating processed and red meat. Epidemiologist Ellen Kampman doubts that number because it is difficult to trace cancer cases to a specific part of the diet. “There are no good figures at the moment,” she says.
Kampman was not involved in the Wageningen report, but red meat and the risk associated with its consumption are her hobbyhorse. In a broader sense, her research focuses on lifestyle for the prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases. This shows that the ‘Western eating pattern’ is not doing too well. Eating a lot of saturated fat, salt and sugar every day and little dietary fiber increases the risk of diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
What if meat and dairy are no longer part of our diet? In a country where every Dutchman plant-based eat, it is not inconceivable that public health would improve. We put the question to Kampman.
Ellen Kampman: “A vegan Netherlands is only possible if the entire population is well informed and makes an effort for what is on the table.”
Would the health of the Dutch improve by eating vegan?
“We cannot yet accurately estimate what it would mean if everyone ate plant-based. It is true that we can prevent quite a lot of colorectal cancer in the Netherlands by stopping eating red meat, such as beef and pork. I would say that we can prevent about half of colon cancer in the Netherlands with a healthy diet and exercise. Less red meat, a maximum of five hundred grams per week, and preferably no processed meat will contribute significantly to this. Eating red meat is associated with the development of colorectal cancer due to heme iron, a natural dye that colors the blood red and may promote the production of cancer-causing nitrosamines. Processed meat, such as sausage and smoked meat, seems to be associated with diabetes in addition to colorectal cancer. Nitrates and nitrites are added to salami and stuff like that for preservation, which can be converted into harmful substances in the body. So with a plant-based diet, we would at least have less colorectal cancer and diabetes.”
Would we rather get rid of meat completely than be rich for public health?
“As the Health Council and Nutrition Center we say that red meat in itself fits into a healthy diet, but you should not exaggerate it. If you keep it to a maximum of three hundred grams per week, you will get enough nutrients that are not so easy to replace, such as B vitamins, iron and proteins. They can be replaced, but then you have to know very well what you are doing. And that’s the point. There are a handful of vegetarians and vegans who know they should eat more legumes and nuts, who combine iron-rich plant foods with vitamin C to help absorb the iron better. A vegan Netherlands is only possible if the entire population is well informed and makes an effort for what is on the table.”
Everything stands or falls with education?
“Education, but it is also a matter of having the opportunity to think about healthy food and prioritize it. The lower educated part of the Netherlands is much less capable of this.”
That is already a problem: a large part of the population does not have the knowledge and opportunities to eat healthily. Whether you eat plant-based or not, you can have a bad eating pattern in both cases.
“Yes that is true. It is mainly the lower educated income groups that are overweight. We also clearly see an educational difference in life expectancy. People with higher education live longer and have a higher quality of life for twenty years longer. That will probably not change if the whole of the Netherlands were to switch to a plant-based diet.”
Kampman is currently researching with colleagues what a vegan diet does with the muscle quality of the elderly.
Will other chronic conditions for colorectal cancer and diabetes take the place of a plant-based diet?
“I think so. For example, we see that young women who menstruate heavily and who are vegetarians are more likely to develop iron deficiency anemia. At least, if they don’t replace meat properly and don’t take iron supplements. For the elderly, too, the question is whether they can eat completely plant-based. Older people start eating less anyway, so they consume less protein. Muscle quality also deteriorates with age. We are currently conducting a study at WUR in which we get elderly people to eat vegan, to see what that does to muscle quality. Your body absorbs the proteins in meat and dairy more easily than the proteins in vegetable products. We don’t have the results yet. Maybe there is nothing wrong with a good vegan diet, but we need to know for sure.”
A common fear of plant-based eating is protein deficiency. While the Dutch eat more protein with 109 grams per day than is necessary for their health and in the meantime they do not consume enough vitamins and fiber.
“That’s right. Only ten percent of the Dutch population consumes those two hundred grams of vegetables and two pieces of fruit per day. We just eat too much on the unhealthy side. By eating more plant-based, you will soon be on the healthier side anyway. But to shoot through to completely plant-based? Then you have to know what you are eating.”
Doctors from the organization Caring Doctors want to introduce plant-based food as the standard hospital menu, following New York’s example. What do you think of these kinds of developments?
“I myself am involved in the Stichting Alliantie Voeding in de Zorg, to make the food supply in hospitals healthier. Firstly, we are very clearly focusing on more dietary fibre. The recommendation is thirty to forty grams of dietary fiber per day. If we get fifteen grams in the Netherlands, that is already a lot. So: white bread, white rice and white pasta and things like that out. More whole grain products in it. Secondly, the share of red and processed meat must be reduced. I personally wouldn’t tinker too much with dairy, it is one of the most important sources of calcium, which we need for our bones and teeth.”
Calcium is also found in green vegetables. And it is added to products such as vegetable milk and soy yogurt. Is that not enough?
“The question is how sustainable that processing step is. It takes a lot of energy to add minerals to products that do not naturally contain that substance. You may be able to obtain calcium more sustainably from dairy than from enriched soy products. But sustainability and health are two different things. You can replace milk and yogurt with nuts and legumes and the like, but that makes healthy eating more difficult for the average Dutch person.”
Is a plant-based diet complete enough for growing children?
“As far as I know, this has not been investigated. You should do an intervention study. One group of young children is fed a vegan diet, the other group is not. Other than that, keep the groups the same. After a certain period of time you look at the results, for example how the muscle quality is doing, as we now do with the elderly. Such a study in children is difficult to get through an ethics committee. We have to make sure that this does not lead to shortages.”
Previously published in the Whole of the Netherlands vegan series:
#eats #plantbased