Plant-Based Diet: How to Prevent Occurrence and Development of Most Modern Age Diseases?

New Year – the time when we sum things up, add and subtract. The equation shows us where we have made mistakes in the past year and what we want to change in the upcoming one. Many of us opt for a healthier lifestyle, rejecting old dietary habits and behaviors. Still, we live in a time when there’s plenty of talk about health, but we very often know nothing at all about it. In a torrent of information about what’s healthy – is it the lifestyle that our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, or is the current era providing a multitude of options, while also taking away just as much – we often find ourselves at a crossroads, not knowing where to go next and what to do. There are more and more people who choose a plant-based diet in order to prevent the development of diseases and feel better. That this dilemma is not a product of the modern era is confirmed by an old Chinese proverb “Whatsoever was the father of a disease, an ill diet was the mother”.

– What people notice first is that they have more energy on a plant-based diet and that they feel lighter, there is no heaviness in the stomach after a meal – Dr Jovana Masic, who shifted to plant-based food in 2017 herself, says for eKapija.

As she explains, plant-based food contains all the necessary nutrients, except for vitamin D, which is created by the sunlight, and vitamin B12, which is created by microorganisms. A plant-based diet has numerous benefits for the entire health of the organism, and there’s more and more people who opt for this sort of diet.

– A plant-based diet can prevent 80-90% diseases of the modern age – so, diabetes type 2, cardiovascular diseases, some carcinomas… In some cases, it can even turn around the course of the disease, which has been described in scientific works. There’s only one type of diet that enabled people to turn around the course of heart diseases, and that is the plant-based diet. Considering that every second or third person dies of a heart disease, people should be shouting at the top of their lungs about this type of diet. It also has a beneficial effect when it comes to autoimmune diseases and there are plenty of examples where people practically no longer have symptoms or take any medication at all thanks to an integral plant-based diet – says Dr Masic.

Considering that this type of diet entails eschewing meat and generally products of animal origin, dilemmas about how to compensate for everything that meat provides are frequent.

As Jovana Masic told us, if we are on a full plant-based diet, a vitamin D supplement has to be introduced. The level of said of vitamin does not only depend on the food, but is also a problem of the modern age, because plenty of people spend time in closed spaces, and in the winter, in these areas, there is not enough sunlight for us to take in enough of this vitamin.

– Over the summer, supplementation is not necessary if we expose ourselves to the sunlight for around 15 minutes every day. This also pertains to people with a standard diet. Also, vitamin B12 is a problem of the modern age, because of the way land is treated and water is chlorinated, so vitamin B12 is supplemented even for animals. So, in the end, most people supplement it – she says.

The recommendation, she continues, is for this vitamin to also be supplemented after one turns fifty, regardless of the diet. Everything else can be obtained from a properly balanced plant-based diet.

When asked whether fruit and vegetables grown locally are the healthiest for our organisms, she says that she agrees that it is best to eat locally, but the modern age has made other foodstuffs available to us too, so she sees no reason why we shouldn’t use that.

– Personally, I don’t eat avocado every day, but sometimes I feel like it and I do, even though our walnuts are an excellent source of healthy fats – explains Jovana Masic, who has dedicated five years to researching a plant-based diet.

As the modern era also entails the question of whether the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with various pesticides or are organic, Jovana says that it would be ideal to grow one’s own, but for those who can’t, fruit and vegetables can be washed in zeolite, and salt is also good for removing pesticides.

– However, it has been shown that the power of the antioxidants and phytonutrients in fruit and vegetables is much greater than pesticides. A good example concerns aflatoxin from the famous book “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell, where both the children of the poor families and the children of the rich families were exposed to aflatoxin, but the children of the rich families got liver cancer more frequently. Those children ate more foodstuffs of animal origin, unlike the children from the poor families, whose food was based on plants – Masic illustrates the advantages of a plant-based diet.

What are beginners’ mistakes in switching to a plant-based diet?

If we want to switch to a plant-based diet, the transition can be pretty confusing – from the organization and preparation of meals, to how to combine various ingredients, because we don’t have enough information about what to pay attention to.

– Mistakes do indeed happen, considering that it is a switch to a whole different type of diet than what we’ve been taught our whole lives. The most common mistake is that people do not take in enough calories. For people who want to lose weight, this is not a problem, but for people who want to maintain their weight or gain weight, it could be a problem – Masic says.

As she explains, plant-based food, on average, contains fewer calories than animal-based food, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to gain weight eating a plant-based diet.

– Also, plenty of people only remove meat and milk, without introducing legumes and grains into their diets, instead eating only fruit and vegetables. Legumes are the ones providing calories, proteins and other important nutrients – she explains for eKapija.

We are also noticing that the offer in restaurant menus has been expanded with plant-based dishes, and there are also restaurants that are oriented only toward preparing plant-based food. As confirmed by eKapija’s interviewee, the markets such as big cities like Belgrade and Novi Sad do have potential in that sense, but in smaller areas, it’s not as sustainable.

Jovana Masic finished her medicine studies in 2016, and she summed up her 5 years of thorough research of plant-based food in the book “A Guide Through a Plant-Based Diet”, which features the necessary information for switching to plant food. Each important macro and micro nutrient is explained individually, and it also contains practical advice for how to switch to plant food more easily and an example of a 7-day menu.

For all those who are interested in switching to a plant-based diet and need advice, more information can be found on her website: https://drmasic.rs, and Jovana Masic’s free content and advice can be found on her Instagram, TikTok and YouTube profiles.

As she said for eKapija, a print recipe book is to be published soon, for all those who lack ideas for meal preparation.

S. Maricic

Jovana Mašić

T Colin Campbell

The CHina Study book

A Guide Through a Plant Based Diet book

full plant based diet

lack of vitamin D

vitamin D

prevention of development of diabetes type 2

prevention of cardiovascular diseases

heart diseases

autoimmune diseases

benefits of a plant based diet to the organism

removing meat from the diet

organic fruit

organic vegetables

pesticides in fruit

pesticides in vegetables

zeolite

vegetarian diet