Keto Diet vs Plant-Based Diet: Which is Better for Reducing Cancer Risk?
The keto diet is a diet that has gained an immense amount of popularity over the years and one that has helped a lot of people lose weight and improve their overall health. Plant-based diets tend to be excellent at promoting better health outcomes – something that more and more research continues to show. But which of these two diets is best at reducing cancer risk?
To answer this question, Dr. Neil Iyengar and Dr. Urvi Shah conducted a study that was published in JAMA Oncology in July 2022 comparing the outcomes of patients who followed these two popular diets. Their results were enlightening, and we wanted to take this opportunity to cover what they found.
What Are Keto and Plant-Based Diets?
Before we dive into which of these two diets is best for reducing cancer risk and promoting better long-term health, it might first be helpful to define what each diet is. As the name suggests, plant-based diets are diets where the vast majority of a person’s snacks and meals are entirely plant-based. While vegan and vegetarian diets are certainly versions of a plant-based diet, a plant-based diet does not inherently require you to cut out meat altogether; as long as 80-90% or more of the food that you consume doesn’t contain meat then you can consider your diet plant-based.
A keto diet, on the other hand, is designed to eliminate carbs and sugar and instead promote a diet that is heavy in healthy fats and protein. As you can imagine, this often means eating more meat rather than less.
Despite being near opposites of one another, both of these diets have been proven to help people lose weight – and weight loss in itself can often promote better long-term health outcomes. When it comes specifically to reducing cancer risk, though, one of these diets is a better choice than the other.
What the Research Says
After analyzing data from patients following both keto and plant-based diets, Dr. Iyengar and Dr. Shah found that plant-based diets were more effective at reducing cancer risk than keto diets. Along with exhibiting a reduced cancer risk, patients following plant-based diets who did develop cancer were found to have better overall long-term outcomes.
“Our review of the evidence supports a plant-based diet for reducing cancer risk compared with a ketogenic diet,” Dr. Shah said. “That conclusion is particularly apparent when you look at big populations, such as three large studies conducted in the U.S., U.K., and France. All three found that people eating more plants and less animal protein had less cancer overall. That’s consistent with other large studies and included in the guidelines by the American Institute of Cancer Research and American Cancer Society, which all recommend diets that incorporate high amounts of plant-based food.”
When asked which diet was best for those who have already been diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Shah said, “The majority of breast cancer is curable, but there can be long-term metabolic disorders from cancer treatment. In fact, many people treated for cancer are at increased risk for diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. We know that a plant-based diet can help reduce the risk of these metabolic disorders, which is why I typically recommend this diet to my patients — we don’t want to just cure a person’s cancer; we want to also improve health overall.”
Conclusion
When it comes to weight loss, both keto diets and plant-based diets can be quite effective. When it comes to reducing cancer risk, however, research shows that eating a diet that contains less meat and more unprocessed, plant-based meals is much better for reducing cancer risk and promoting better long-term health.
If you can’t get yourself to commit to a plant-based diet, simply reducing the amount of meat however much you are willing can still help. Having 50% of your meals be plant-based might not qualify as a plant-based diet, but it’s still better when it comes to reducing cancer risk than eating meat for every meal.
