We all want to eat the kinds of foods that make us feel better, live longer, but there's so

much conflicting information out there, so many nutrition opinions.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host. opinions. is possible. Today we take a close look at the pros and cons of plant-based eating.

Vegetarian diets and lifestyles have been shown to reduce the risk of many chronic diseases, which now accounts for the major global burden of disease.

But the actual direct medical costs had never been quantified before.

Here's what they found. Same amount spent on dental work, but compared

to meat eaters that similarly don't smoke or drink, or compared to the general population,

vegetarians had significantly lower inpatient, outpatient, and total medical care expenditures, suggesting more plant-based eating could be an effective strategy to save on health care costs.

Here's how it broke down.

Significantly lower costs for chronic lifestyle conditions such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

This makes sense.

Those eating plant-based diet centered around whole plant foods

nailed the targets for cholesterol, triglycerides,

and systolic and diastolic blood pressure,

93% of the time, 97% of the time, 88% of the time, and 95% of the time, respectively.

Nearly a 50% drop in medical costs due to depression too, that's interesting, as well as lower costs across the board.

Cerebrovast filler disease is another name for stroke.

Wasn't there that study that showed vegetarians had higher stroke risk? True, but that was before two subsequent

studies found a lower risk of stroke with a vegetarian diet and not just buy a little.

For a schemic stroke, the most common clotting type of stroke,

vegetarians consistently had about 60% lower risk and for bleeding strokes

about 65% lower risk than non-vegetarians,

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