Half of Americans recognise the health benefits of a vegan diet, but they need reassurance from their primary care doctors to eat more plants.
While a majority of Americans say they are happy to eat more plant-based food and know it’s good for them, a lack of guidance from healthcare professionals keeps them at bay, according to a new survey.
In the 2,200-person poll, Morning Consult and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) found that half of the respondents believe vegan diets can improve their health, while only about a third think otherwise. Another 17%, meanwhile, are unsure.
“What’s missing is support and guidance from health care professionals,” contended Xavier Toledo, a registered dietitian with the PCRM. “This represents a huge missed opportunity to turn interest into action – and to reduce the risk of chronic diseases that affect millions.”
Doctors can be a force of dietary change
The survey revealed that only 1% of Americans follow a vegan diet, and another 1% are lacto-ovo vegetarians. In fact, 91% of respondents said they eat meat at least once a week, and 88% said the same for dairy. On the other hand, over a quarter (28%) say they rarely or never eat seafood.
Among those who believe plant-based food can improve health and reduce chronic diseases, the sentiment was most popular with Gen Zers and millennials, those with a college degree, high-income households, non-white Americans, urban residents, and Democrats.
Only one in five survey respondents have had their primary care doctor speak to them about the benefits of a vegan diet, with these consumers skewing young, male, Black or Hispanic, and urban. Over half (57%) of Americans said their primary care practitioners have not discussed this with them.
This leaves a major gap, as Toledo noted. It’s because when Americans are shown evidence of how plant-based diets can enhance their health, their willingness to try such a diet jumps by 15 percentage points – nearly two-thirds (65%) are open to eating vegan if they’re shown the science.
This sentiment is similar for both men and women, but is more common with younger, college-educated respondents who vote Democrat, earn over $50,000 per year, and are Black or Hispanic. Meanwhile, only a quarter (26%) said this wouldn’t influence their dietary habits.
It highlights the impact of doctors speaking to their patients about how plant-based diets can help them. “The teaching and training of healthcare professionals in general is still based around omnivorous diets when it comes to nutrition,” Dr Shireen Kassam, a consultant haematologist and founding director of medical association Plant-Based Health Professionals UK, told Green Queen last week.
“Nutrition training in most non-nutrition healthcare courses is still lacking, with education on plant-based diets being even less well covered,” she added. She was responding to a recent study showing that only 72% of midwives feel prepared to advise pregnant patients on plant-based nutrition, though her comments covered the broader medical profession.
“It is clear from our own research that health professionals, including dietitians, would benefit from more teaching and training on plant-based and vegan diets, given they are becoming more popular and given that they are recognised as being necessary for their co-benefits for environmental health.”
Health in the spotlight in MAHA era
The poll comes at a time when health is in full focus in the US, thanks in part to the continued post-Covid wave of wellness and nutrition, and Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement.
The US health secretary has taken a stick to ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and what he calls “fake meats”, which have contributed to the ongoing slowdown in sales of plant-based food in the US. Last year, meat alternative sales were down by 7%, and purchases of non-dairy milk by 5%.
At the same time, beef is back to the centre of American plates, driven by the rise of the manosphere, the backlash against UPFs, heightened misinformation around alternative proteins, all going hand-in-hand with shifting politics and culture wars. Novel foods like cultivated meat are now banned in five states, with plenty of others hoping to join that list.
This latest poll shows fathere is an appetite for plant-based food, mirroring another survey by Morning Consult and PCRM, which found that nearly half (48%) of Americans would consider eating vegan food to reduce their climate footprint.
Evidence of health being a primary consumption driver is mounting. Research by the American Heart Association last year found that 77% of Americans would like to eat healthier. Meanwhile, another survey showed that 48% feel plant-based foods are healthier than animal proteins, and 45% want to eat less meat and dairy due to personal health concerns (a 7% rise since 2023).
Among consumers identified as the “addressable market” for plant-based meat, two in five find meat or protein good for health. At the same time, though, 43% say health is a top benefit they seek from both meat and vegan alternatives, and a third of them believe the latter are better for heart health.
That’s a fact confirmed by tons of research, including a recent Harvard study. An 11-country review has also found that plant-based meat and dairy are either on par or better than animal protein in terms of their nutritional profile. And in 2023, a meta-analysis of two million people found that higher adherence to plant-based diets is linked to significantly lower risks of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and early death.
Plant proteins were a major talking point in discussions for the upcoming update to the national dietary guidelines, with scientists recommending the US Department of Agriculture prioritise plants over meat.
The post Despite Misinformation, 50% of Americans Still Find Plant-Based Diets Healthy appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.