It all seems confusing. Depending upon where you look, what you read, or who you talk to it seems as though a different diet is touted as the next best thing- keto, paleo, carnivore, low-fat, low-carb, plant-based. There is not one way of eating that is best for heart disease and another that is best for diabetes and still another for autoimmune disease. There is one that is the best for all these. There is only one that has shown to be the way of eating to actually improve health, reverse disease and is sustainable over time . That is a low-fat plant-based way of eating. This is the way humans were intended to eat.
Study after study has shown that the healthiest and longest lived people in the world eat a primarily plant-based diet. Dan Buettner showed in the Blue Zones in areas such as Okinawa, Sardinia, Greece and even Loma Linda, California that a plant-predominant diet was part of the secret.
For over thirty years the research has been there.
T. Colin Campbell, PhD in The China Study, one of the largest comprehensive nutrition studies ever untaken, was a collaboration between Oxford University and Cornell University. Amongst other things, it clearly showed that animal protein promotes cancer cell growth. Interestingly, he initially thought that more animal protein was going to help the cancer stop growing due to improved weight in the malnourished subjects but he found the opposite.
Dean Ornish, MD way back in 1990 found that you can reverse heart disease symptoms in as little as seven days by eliminating animal products and focusing on whole plant foods.
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. , MD. took a cohort of patients that were essentially told they had six months left to live from debilitating heart disease and 30 years later some of those patients were still going strong by following his program. His radiographic reversal of blocked arteries is some of the most compelling evidence I have ever seen.
Neal Barnard, MD has repeatedly shown that by following a low-fat plant-based diet you can improve diabetes management and even REVERSE it. His studies even allowed plant-based meat substitutes and still achieved these results.
Deirdre Sweeney, Plant-Based Health 