A year ago I wrote that the death rate of people with heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure who get COVID has been found to be up to 10 times greater than the death rate for those that get COVID that don’t have these other health problems. And getting animal products, processed foods, and oils out of our diets eliminates many of these diseases that push up the COVID death rate. So in two steps, we could infer that people eating a low-fat whole food plant-base diet would die less often from COVID.

In the intervening months, a study was done to more directly determine the effects of dietary choices on severity of COVID infection. The results of this study...show the kind of results that we expected. This study¹ found that people who reported following a plant-based diet had 73% lower odds of moderate-to-sever COVID-19 severity compared with participants who did not follow the diet. People who reported eating a low-carbohydrate, high protein diet had 386% greater odds of moderate-to-severe COVID-19 than the plant-based eaters. Your diet choices can make you better able to resist COVID or much less able to resist.

So we have even more evidence of the benefit of eating whole plants. But just because you are eating a plant-base diet doesn't mean that you should avoid other precautions. The study states that no association was observed between self-reported diets and COVID-19 infection or duration. So plant-based eaters can still get infected. They just won't get as sick.

What can we do to avoid suffering from COVID and spreading it to others? Here are five steps that can make a huge difference.

1)   Get a vaccine. While nothing in life is perfectly safe, the evidence is clear that the vaccines are tremendously more safe than not getting the vaccine and risking a COVID infection. Even things like wearing a seatbelt carry some risk, but we wear seatbelts because we know that not wearing them is much riskier. Vaccines are like that, except that with vaccines, you are protecting not only yourself but your loved ones and your community. With a vaccine, your chances of getting infected are reduced by a factor of 20 or so if you get the Moderna or Pfizer versions. That doesn't mean you can't get infected. If you do, your chances of getting a severe infection or dying from it are greatly reduced, but in a small percentage of cases you can still get infected and pass it to others. So even if vaccinated, continue to take other precautions, especially in the presence of those who may not be vaccinated.

2)   Wear masks. Evidence is quite clear that the disease passes through air. When an unvaccinated person that has not yet had COVID is near someone with COVID for a few hours and neither of them are wearing a mask, the previously uninfected person is very likely to catch the disease. The very high infectiousness of this virus is what has caused it to spread so completely around the world. So, whenever you are around people that could have COVID, wear a mask whether you are vaccinated or not. If you have one of the best vaccines, your chance of infection is 20 times lower, but not zero.

3)  Social distance. Stay six feet or more away from people. Outside is better than inside. Shorter exposure times are better than long ones. Avoid the super-spreader events where lots of people are close to each other for long periods of time.

4)  Eat a diet of only low-fat whole-food plants. Not only does this help minimize COVID, but also reverses heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, arthritis, and dozens of other diseases.

If you would like to learn more about avoiding unnecessary death by eating a healthy diet, I invite you to attend one of my upcoming virtual workshops. You can find more information about them, including signup information, here: www.nusci.org/nutrition-science-virtual-workshop. If you are already on board with this way of eating, I urge you to invite your loved ones who aren't on board yet to attend my workshop.

And you can order tasty, life-prolonging whole-food plant-based food from the place where I get most of my meals: www.littlegreenforks.com. You don’t even need to risk going to the grocery store. The healthy food comes to you—delivered right to your door, contact-free.

Please, get a vaccine, hold holiday get togethers only with those who are vaccinated, wear a mask when appropriate, and eat only plants.

Thanks,

John Tanner
11-22-2021

References:

1.  https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/4/1/257, Plant-based diets, pescatarian diets and COVID-19 severity: a population-based case-control study in six countries