A Plant-Based Diet: A Key to Cancer Prevention?

Diet plays a significant role in influencing your risk for cancer. Recent research shows plant-based diets rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds significantly help to prevent cancer alongside maintaining a healthy body weight.

A plant-based diet is different from vegetarian or vegan diets. In a plant-based diet, meat can still be consumed but is less emphasized than other meat-eating diets. If you eat a plant-based meal, you should consume 50% plants, 25% whole grains and 25% lean animal protein (fish, poultry or other lean meats). The plant-based meal may also include a small serving of dairy on the side.

Tips for eating more plant-based

Consider adding more fruit, vegetables and nuts to your meals.

• Add berries to your morning cereal or oatmeal.
• Incorporate veggies like chopped onions, peppers and spinach to your omelet.
• Add fruits and nuts to your yogurt.
• Mix ground flaxseed or wheat germ to pancake, muffin or bread batters.
• Add chopped vegetables to pizza.

You can also make healthy swaps to incorporate more plants.

• Swap white pasta for whole grain.
• Replace potato chips with popcorn or whole wheat crackers.
• Try avocado instead of mayo on your sandwich.
• Substitute sweet potato fries for regular fries.

Also, be smart when you’re shopping. Don’t assume all “brown bread” is whole grain. Look for ingredient key words like whole grain, stone-ground, whole-wheat flour or whole oat flour to ensure you are making a healthy purchase.

Shifting to a plant-based diet does not have to happen overnight. Slowly start to add more plants to your diet. Make healthy swaps and even challenge yourself to try one new fruit/vegetable a week.

The USDA has an updated version of the Food Guide Pyramid – now called MyPlate. There you can find helpful visuals of a plant-based diet plate, sample menus/recipes and a tool for tracking food intake.