Today when instant gratification is the norm and patience and believing in the process are often interpreted as resignation, nothing indicates health as how much weight one has lost. From drinking a glass of warm water first thing in the morning (in the hope that the warm water will melt away the fat) to spending hours in a steam room (wrongly believing that their fat and weight would leave their body along with the sweat), people try a variety of ways to move the pointer on the weighing scale in their favour. Little wonder when vegan diet started gaining popularity in India, many people adopted it to see if it could help them lose weight.
Vegan diet is defined as a way of living that attempts to exclude all forms of animal foods in the diet, explains Bhakti Samant, chief dietitian, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital Mumbai. “Vegans not only refrain from eating meat, but also choose not to consume any dairy, eggs, or any other products of animal origin. It’s mainly a plant-based diet,” she adds. Globally, the main reason for turning vegan is ethical mainly to do with global warming, sustainability, carbon footprint and cruelty against animals. In India, health reasons as there are potential health benefits of eating a vegan diet or for someone to choose to avoid animal products to limit the environmental impact. Integrative nutritionist and health coach Neha Ranglani says the popularity of the vegan diet has grown significantly in recent years due to many factors like people turning to it as a means to improve their health, environmental concerns, animal welfare and also social media and its influence. “The accessibility and availability of vegan foods in most countries has made it easier for people to try and stick to a vegan lifestyle,” says Ranglani explaining the rise in popularity of veganism.
In Mumbai, environmental campaigner Jalpesh Mehta, 45, decided to give up his beloved paneer and butter because he had tried multiple things but nothing had worked so he decided to give the vegan diet a try. In Bengaluru, cyber security expert Kshitij Sharma, 36, took up a vegan diet because he believed that cutting out dairy products from his daily food would help him lose weight, which he feels would help him run better and close the gap on his wife Simta Sharma, who regularly wins distance running events in India. “A lot of distance runners and endurance athletes have turned to veganism and it has helped them. They are fitter and faster. I feel a vegan diet would not only help me lose weight but also become fitter and more energetic,” he says.
Sharma and Mehta, both vegetarians already, feel that cutting out dairy products such as yogurt, curd, milk tea, milk, milk-based desserts, paneer, ghee, butter and the plethora of milk derivatives that are used in Indian foods across cultures and regions, would help them shed weight just as veganism has helped plenty of fitness enthusiasts globally. For both, to a certain extent, a lower weight translates to being fit. Mehta tried the vegan diet for six months just after the pandemic and lost about 8 kg, he says. “Not having milk in my tea and coffee and cutting out all kinds of dairy helped me. It was difficult switching to a vegan diet initially because I love my paneer. Also, whenever we went out to eat it used to be difficult to explain to the people at restaurants to make me food without ghee, butter and cream,” says Mehta. While Sharma doesn’t disclose how much weight he has lost since going vegan, he says the new diet is working for him and even goes to the extent of picking places that serve vegan pizza whenever he goes out for a meal with his wife or friends.
Mehta and Sharma’s decision to switch to veganism is vindicated by health experts, nutritionists and dieticians. Both Ranglani and Samant point to the multitude of health benefits that come with a vegan diet, including helping people in weight loss. It includes more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds and pulses, says Samant. “This improves the overall fibre and micronutrient content of the diet. The elimination of the animal foods in all forms reduces the saturated fats content in your food,” she adds. These foods also tend to be lower in calorie density compared to animal-based products, points out Ranglani. Other health benefits of a vegan diet include better metabolic profile like improved immunity due to increase in the antioxidant nutrients in the diet, improvement in your cardiac profile due to the reduction in the saturated fats, lower blood sugar levels and improved kidney function. Studies also demonstrate protection against certain cancers as a result of a vegan diet.
The elimination of one or more food groups from your routine diet definitely helps to reduce the calorie intake and hence help with weight loss, says Samant. Multiple studies have demonstrated that vegan diets have been effective in weight loss due to the reduction of total fat in the diet, increased fibre content and complete elimination of the processed foods. “The high fiber content in vegan food promotes feelings of fullness and helps control appetite, making it easier to consume fewer calories overall. Fiber also adds bulk to your meals, making you feel fuller for longer. It slows down digestion and helps regulate blood sugar levels, preventing rapid spikes and crashes in energy. Since meats and dairy are often high in saturated fats and cholesterol, eliminating these foods can significantly reduce your intake of these unhealthy fats, which are linked to weight gain and increased risk of heart disease,” says Ranglani, explaining how a vegan diet aids weight loss.
While the number of vegan restaurants and products have grown exponentially over the last few years in India, it can still be a challenge to walk into regular eateries and restaurants and find vegan food. Since veganism is a choice based on lifestyle or principles, and not something rooted in culture or religion (like vegetarianism) many still don’t understand it fully, especially beyond our urban centres. However, our familiarity with vegetarianism also makes it a much easier and more sustainable diet to follow instead of complicated diets like Keto. “Most of the foods that we consume on a day-to-day basis for example dal, rice, roti, sabji, idli, sambhar, dosa, paratha… are vegan as long as we don't use ghee in it. So, it's easy to sustain a vegan diet, if you choose foods out of the animal category and just replace your ghee with oil,” says Ranglani. She also notes that the internet today is full of vegan recipes to help you cook delicious and healthy food alongside a lot of vegan substitutes in the market that make sure you do not miss your animal products too much.
However, there is always the other side to the coin, the cons to the list of pros. Any diet that eliminates a certain food group from the diet is going to create a nutritional deficiency which if not addressed can have adverse effects, warns Samant. “Some studies have shown that vegans who consume less than 525 mg of calcium per day have an increased risk of bone fractures which could be the case as there is a complete elimination of dairy products. Other studies have demonstrated that those on a vegan diet have an increased risk of vitamin B12 deficiency which can cause fatigue, memory problems and numbness,” she says. Another thing one needs to watch out against is that a lot of products marketed as vegan or plant-based are extremely processed, thus doing more harm than good for the body.
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