Research
Mixed
Plant-based diets significantly reduce the risk of chronic diseases (cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers) and have a lower environmental impact (greenhouse gas emissions, land/water use) compared to meat-containing diets.
Adopting a plant-based diet offers significant health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, while also being more environmentally sustainable. This makes it a viable long-term strategy for overall health, even if performance benefits are neutral.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
plant-based diets typically reduce the risk of developing numerous chronic diseases over the lifespan and require fewer natural resources for production compared to meat-containing diets.
Why this rating
Supported by extensive observational data and life cycle assessments cited in the review.
Source
Plant-Based Diets: Considerations for Environmental Impact, Protein Quality, and Exercise Performance
Heidi Lynch et al. · Nutrients · 2018
DOI 10.3390/nu10121841
narrative_reviewCited 265×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Plant-based diets (vegetarian or vegan) do not provide advantages for strength, anaerobic, or aerobic exercise performance compared to omnivorous diets, though they are viable for supporting athletic performance.Moderate
- Vegetarians may have lower muscle creatine and carnosine levels, but this does not negatively impact performance; however, vegetarians may respond more robustly to creatine supplementation.Moderate
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