Do you have to be a vegetarian, or even vegan, to follow a Whole-Food Plant-Based diet?
While the name Whole-Food and Plant-Based (WFPB) would suggest this is the case, it couldn't be further from the truth.
Unlike many other diets, WFPB diets and nutritional patterns are fashioned around what they can/should include rather than what they must exclude.
Vegans, for example, exclude meat and animal by-products from their diets. The Atkins diet lowers carbs.
WFPB diets are marked by what they include, which are plant-based and whole foods. This implies that plant-based foods are preferable, and perhaps should be the main source of your diet, however, whole foods are the other part of that.
Freshly caught salmon is a whole, nutrient-dense food, and so are eggs. Rather than focusing on the implication of a WFPB diet being that you must exclude meat and animal-based products, take a look at what you can include and decide for yourself.
Different Diets Can be Whole-Food Plant-Based
Pescatarianism, Vegetarianism, the Mediterranean diet and even the Ketogenic Lifestyle are all WFPB diets when done right. Now, before the Vegans and Vegetarians in the room start cringing over that last one, let’s clear something up.
Not all Vegetarian, Mediterranean, Pescatarian, and Ketogenic eating patterns are necessarily WFPB either. Afterall, sodas and bags of deep-fried potato chips carry that vegetarian or vegan stamp. These highly processed foods also contain preservatives, additives and added sugars, so would fall short of the Whole-Food Plant-Based premise.
What Is Whole-Food Plant-Based Eating?
The point of a WFPB diet isn’t to avoid meat. Remember, this isn’t one of those exclusionary diets. The best place to start is to fill your already existing eating pattern with whole, nutrient-dense and plant-based foods. Avoid most refined and processed foods and make substitutions where appropriate. You can take it to a level that is comfortable and sustainable for you. This isn’t a checkbox.
Strawberries are whole foods, they’re nutrient-dense, and they’re plant-based. However, you could also add chicken breasts which are whole nutrient-dense foods. You’re not looking to add or eat only foods which are whole foods AND plant-based.
The WFPB concept is to add more healthy and nutritious foods to your diet. Yes, the words run together to imply a plant-based diet of whole foods, when, in fact, you’re looking for whole foods and plant-based foods. If a food item meets both qualifiers, then that’s great.
Is Whole-Food Plant-Based a High Carb Diet?
One of the major myths running around about WFPB diets is that they’re too carb-heavy. This can be true, but this is also okay. Carbohydrates, especially complex carbs, aren’t necessarily the enemy. The things you want to avoid are the foods laden with simple sugars like sodas and sweets which will cause your blood sugar to skyrocket and then plummet.
This is the sort of thing which has been giving carbohydrates a bad name, but the fact is that your body needs carbs to burn as glucose. There’s nothing wrong with complex carbs.
Now that that’s said, a Ketogenic Lifestyle can be designed around a WFPB option. Most usually are. It’s just that these folks need to burn ketones rather than glucose, or want to, for whatever reason. There are plenty of plant-based options for dietary fat like avocados and olives which meet the Whole-Food requirement.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is that WFPB diets aren’t about which fuel you burn, or whether you eat meat or not. They’re about shoving as many types of foods into your available diet as possible so you can focus on eating nutritious, nutrient-dense, whole and plant-based foods rather than the highly processed foods most of us reach for more often than we should.
T.V. dinners, chocolate bars and other processed foods contain way too many things we don’t need or really want.
They taste great because they’re designed to. That’s doesn’t mean they’re good for you.
So, don't be misled by the Whole-Food Plant-Based name. Stick to healthy, natural, delicious, unprocessed food sources and you're good to go.
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