A study assessing the compliance with dietary guidelines of different dietary groups in the UK concluded that people following plant-based diets showed good compliance with most dietary targets, and their risk for inadequate intakes of certain nutrients can easily be mitigated by improved dietary choices and/or food fortification.
The study, titled “Assessing Performance of Contemporary Plant-Based Diets against the UK Dietary Guidelines: Findings from the Feeding the Future (FEED) Study” was published in April 2024 by Nutrients, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal of human nutrition published semimonthly online by MDPI.
Researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, and Copenhagen established Feeding the Future (FEED), an up-to-date online cohort of UK adults following different plant-based diets and diets containing meat and fish. They recruited 6342 participants aged 18–99 [omnivores (1562), flexitarians (1349), pescatarians (568), vegetarians (1292), and vegans (1571) between February 2022 and December 2023, and measured diet using a food frequency questionnaire and free text.
The study found that most participants met UK dietary recommendations for fruit and vegetables, sodium, and protein, although protein intakes were lowest among vegetarians and vegans. Omnivores did not meet the fibre recommendation and only vegans met the saturated fat recommendation. All diet groups exceeded the free sugars recommendation. Higher proportions of vegetarians and vegans were below the estimated average requirements (EARs) for zinc, iodine, selenium, and, in vegans, vitamins A and B12, whereas calcium intakes were similar across the diet groups.
The issue of B12, Iodine, and selenium as a potential deficit problem for British vegans due to geological idiosyncrasies of the British Islands (British soil is low in selenium) had long been identified, and this is why the Vegan Society created an affordable supplement tablet called Veg1 that contains these three micronutrients, in addition to folic acid and vitamin D.
Take the Vegan Pledge: https://drove.com/.2A4o
