The benefits of eating a more plant-based diet

The benefits of eating a more plant-based diet

You might be a meat-lover or maybe not, but either way the benefits of reducing meat consumption are undeniable. Making the change can help lower risk of bowel cancer and heart disease. By replacing meat with plant-based options such as lentils, chickpeas and beans, you also increase your fibre intake, which has numerous benefits in itself, including reducing risk of type 2 diabetes.

I am not necessarily talking about going completely meat-free or vegan, but just reducing how much meat you eat across the week. The beauty of this is that you can then experiment with other meat-free plant-based options.

We do need to think about our planet. Red and processed meats have the single biggest environmental impact of any type of food. Shifting away from meat to plant-based options will help to reduce emissions. High meat eaters are classed as those who eat over 100g meat per day, reducing this to 50 – 99g meat per day would reduce their carbon footprint by 22%. This is only a modest reduction and very achievable.

I know there is a lot of speculation around climate change so have included more information on Sustainable Diet Swaps from the BDA and their One Blue Dot campaign. You can find tasty plant-based recipes on the Diabetes UK Recipe Finder below.

Sustainable Diet Swaps

Diabetes UK Recipe Finder - Plant-based options

Thanks :)

Nicola