Tighten your waistline – and your wallet – by going vegan.
Switching to a vegan diet can improve your health, not to mention your savings, finds a new study published in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine randomly assigned participants to try calorie-restricted diets for 16 weeks each, with a four-week “washout” period in between to determine differences between a normal American diet, a Mediterranean diet, and a vegan diet. diet.
They found that a low-fat vegan diet reduced people’s food expenses by 19%, or $1.80 per day, compared to a standard American diet, which is typically filled with meat, dairy and other animal products.
The diet — one that bans animal products and instead focuses on fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes — is even cheaper than other healthy diets.
A Mediterranean diet—plates filled with vegetables, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, nuts, and seeds—costs 60 cents more per day than the average American diet.
So those on that healthy diet who switch to veganism can cut their food costs by 25% or $2.40 a day.
That’s about $900 in savings per year on grocery bills.
The difference comes mainly from the removal of meat, dairy and added fats. The money saved by not buying these products outweighed the increased spending of 50 cents a day on vegetables, 30 cents a day on grains and 50 cents a day on meat alternatives in the vegan diet.
However, there was no significant difference in cost when switching from a standard American diet to a Mediterranean diet.
“With the cost of groceries remaining stubbornly high, consumers should swap meat and dairy products for a low-fat vegan diet based on fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans to potentially save more than $650 a year on their bills their food intake, compared to a standard American diet, and more than $870, compared to the Mediterranean diet,” said Dr. Hana Kahleova, lead author and director of clinical research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said in a statement.
But eating a vegan diet didn’t just benefit people’s wallets.
Cutting out animal products had better results for weight, body composition, insulin sensitivity and cholesterol levels compared to a Mediterranean diet.
“A vegan diet will not only save money; it can save lives by helping to avoid or improve conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease,” Kahleova noted.
Following a vegan diet – even for just two months – has also been found to drastically reduce your biological age, according to a new study.
The scientists found that eating only vegan foods for eight weeks led to reductions in biological age estimates.
The American team conducted a trial involving 21 pairs of adult identical twins.
Their findings, published in the journal BMC Medicine, were based on levels of DNA methylation – a type of chemical modification of DNA that changes gene expression, but not the DNA itself.
Professor Christopher Gardner, of Stanford University, California, said: “We also observed decreases in the heart, hormones, liver and inflammatory and metabolic systems of participants who ate a vegan diet, but not an omnivorous diet, for eight weeks. “
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