The Cooking Doc
Does Eating a Vegan Diet Make You Healthier? The Twin Study Examined
Does eating a vegan diet make you healthier? The Twin Study Examined
Ever wonder what would happen if you took a set of twins and gave one an omnivore diet and one a vegan diet? Well today we are going to talk about a fascinating study done by the Stanford Twin Registry that looks at the benefits of eating a vegan diet by using 22 sets of twins to measure the outcome.
This study was just featured on the Netflix documentary You Are What You Eat
To start the new year we are going to dive into plant-based eating, so enjoy this video, make sure to subscribe and stay tuned for more.
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Working as a kidney doctor, I found that my patients were often unaware of just how important diet and lifestyle were and how often they felt unsupported by generic advice to “eat healthy”. The home cook in me hated hearing this, so I set out to find a better way.
I began to combine my medical training and love of food, making videos of simple recipes that were based on science and packed with flavor. Instead of just saying “eat healthy” to my patients, I could give them the resources they needed to make a real difference in their health.
Kidney doctor, passionate home cook, and YouTube sensation Dr Blake Shusterman empowers people to proactively manage their health by stepping into the kitchen. The author of several cookbooks with over 100,000 YouTube subscribers, The Cooking Doc® believes anyone, at any age can transform their health with small changes that make a big difference. Based on science and packed with flavor, Dr. Blake’s simple recipes have inspired home cooks everywhere to change their diet, retrain their taste buds, and transform their health.
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Content Chapters:
00:00 – Twin Study on Omnivore versus Vegan Diets
00:57 – How the Stanford Twin Registry Study Worked
01:49 – Duration of the Diet Study
02:20 – Exciting Conclusions from Eating Vegan
03:07 – Red Flags from the Study
05:06 – Conclusion
ever wonder what would happen if you take a set of twins and gave one an omnivore diet and one a vegan diet it's a great way to see which one is healthier and how it would impact the body stay tuned so we're kicking off the New Year talking about all types of plant-based diets and whether or not they're healthier than other types of diets and what better way to start off than talking about one of the most recent studies that came out this one is fascinating I dug deep and we'll talk about whether or not twins get healthier if they were to eat a vegan diet I'm Dr Blake shusman I'm a board certified kidney doctor and I'm also the cooking Doc and everything we talk about here today is just information this is not medical advice thanks so much for watching again make sure you subscribe to my channel like this share it it's a fascinating study so there are a lot of problems with nutrition studies people's genetic makeups are different their lifestyles are different and using twins is a way to get rid of a lot of that variation so the study we're talking about today comes from the Stanford twin registry and it was published in 2023 and it was fascinating what they did here so they took 22 sets of twins so 44 people so each set of twins essentially had a pretty healthy lifestyle to begin with and they had similar Lifestyles similar Health statuses before they went into the trial so it's not like one twin had diabetes and heart failure and the other twin was perfectly healthy these twins all kind of started at the same place so what they did is they randomized the twin ends into getting totally different diets so one twin got a healthy omnivore diet the other twin got a totally vegan diet both diets were kind of devoid of things like high sugars and processed food so both were kind of generally healthy the difference is that one was omnivore and one was vegan so they watched the twins for a total of eight weeks over the first four weeks they were delivered food so one twin was delivered omnivore food healthy food the other twin was delivered meals that are vegan and then over the second four weeks of the trial they relied on the twins to make their own food at home and they used a dietitian to kind of give them guidance and along the way they measured things like metabolic parameters to see if there was a significant difference in the health between the twins with these two diets so the study touted three main findings that they thought showed that the vegan diet was much healthier than the omnivore diet so the exciting conclusions and results that they found regarded the vegan diet showing some improvement in three significant metabolic and health categories so at the end of those eight weeks people who were on the vegan diet those twins had a lower ldlc cholesterol level they had lower fasting insulin levels and they had a lower body weight all three of those things are great markers of health so what it showed was over the course of four weeks you could actually have significant Improvement in your overall metabolic health and your weight by eating a healthy vegan diet compared to eating an omnivore diet that was also healthy so a very exciting study but there are some kind of caveats or red flags in the study that just make you wonder whether or not this is a result that is translatable over the course of a general population for a long period of time so let's talk about them as well the first problem with this study is it was a short study 8 weeks almost anybody can do anything for eight weeks and improve their health the key is keeping it up for a long term making a long-term healthy lifestyle and a diet that will work for you for the long term 8 weeks just doesn't cut it there were also differences in the overall intake between the two populations so the people that were on the omnivore diet had both more total calories and more protein so if you're in the vegan diet maybe you just lost weight because you were eating fewer calories that could be a big reason for that maybe it didn't have to do with just the vegan food other things to look at in this trial this was a healthy population to begin with so both Twins were healthy we didn't start with people that were unhealthy needing to change their diet to really make significant gains in their overall health the vegan diet at the end had a much lower vitamin B12 level and we know that B12 comes from a lot of animal products so vegans often need a B12 supplement in order to keep their levels up last two things this was a short study as we mentioned so only 8 weeks 8 weeks anything can be done is this sustainable for the long term I'm not sure for some people certainly yes but I don't know how generalizable this is to the whole population and lastly and this isn't really a shortcoming but may kind of represent some bias from the author the author himself is a vegan and so sometimes when the author kind of follows one path of life and then it's looking at a study comparing that path of life to other Paths of life there are some kind of subconscious bias that gets into the end of the research so to conclude this is a fabulous study of twins twins are a great population to study and the results are fascinating so over the course of four to eight weeks by eating a vegan diet you are able to lower your cholesterol you are able to low weight and you are able to lower your circulating insulin levels now how this translates into long-term Better Health and sustainable long-term diets really hard to know but I do know that the more plant-based foods you can incorporate into your diet the better you will be and starting off this New Year looking at ways to incorporate more plant-based Foods into your diet is a great way to begin thanks so much for watching today make sure you subscribe to my channel check out my website cooking do.com and check out my book The Cooking docs kidney healthy cooking a modern 10-step guide to preventing and managing kidney disease we're talking about plant-based diets all this month stay tuned for next episode next [Music] week
#Eating #Vegan #Diet #Healthier #Twin #Study #Examined
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If you go vegan for the animals theres no problem staying for the long term.
Going vegan I lost 50lbs and off 12 medications in just one year
Also my sex drive returned in a big way in my 60's…found out my estrogen had quadupled! Awesome side effects I wasnt expecting!!
Thank you for this video!
I’ve been vegan nearly forty years and feel great.
Stop paying freaks to enslave, torture and murder animals!
The Gods remember all unkindness.
I switched from meat to a largely vegetarian diet (not vegan) and feel a health improvement, with lower weight. You need to get protein- try eggs, milk, collagen, yogurt, tofu, wheat germ, sometimes fish. Get a wide variety of vitamins and minerals, without high doses of anything in particular. Keep muscle mass with daily exercise.
If eating meat, it's better to have poultry and go light on red meat.
I doubt that vegan vs vegetarian vs meat , per se, matters as much as the particulars of exactly what and how much you eat, and your daily habits.
The animals that weren’t caged tortured and killed prefer the vegan diet
Thanks for this video! One aspect of the Stanford twin study that deserves more attention is the shift in body composition among the vegan group. Despite consuming fewer calories, they lost more lean muscle mass and gained a higher percentage of body fat compared to their omnivore twins. For aging or elderly individuals, this pattern—loss of muscle and increase in fat—raises concerns, especially given the importance of muscle mass for metabolic health and functional independence.
What’s often overlooked is that the omnivore group also experienced health benefits, including improvements in cholesterol and weight, without the same losses in muscle mass or declines in micronutrient status. It's not as if the omnivorous diet produced deleterious outcomes—yet much of the coverage implied a clear superiority of the vegan approach, which the data don’t fully support.
It's also telling that most participants in the vegan group reported they would not continue the diet long-term (despite the health benefits) citing feelings of social isolation and difficulty sustaining the restrictions.
Sustainable lifestyle change hinges on consistency. A “7 out of 10” diet that someone can maintain over the long haul is far more impactful than a “10 out of 10” diet that only lasts a few weeks. This study highlights not only biological outcomes, but the real-world feasibility of dietary patterns.
Why we never talk that omnivore nutritionists may also have bias in omnivore diets? 😌 Never heard) weird, isn't it?
Does eating a plant based diet make you healthier?sounds more like dumber!!i dont care,more food for me!!😅😅
Thanks for your very excellent session. I'm a die heart vegetarian watching from Papua New Guinea ❤👍🇵🇬🇵🇬
The recent Stanford plant based "experiment" was touted as showing that plant based diets improved health hazards and reduced mortality, but the plant based group ate 10% fewer calories. Their positive effect of plant based foods was LESS than the effect of reducing caloric intake by 10% so it actually supports (if anything) the contention that calorie for calorie, omnivore diets are healthier.
It's the new natural selection! If you're an adult with access to information, and you decide to not give your body and brain a proper diet, you want to die. Veganism is a suicidal diet!
Thank you Dr. Shusterman, I am not a vegan because I still eat fish once or twice a week, my plant based diet is very healthy no junk, process, sugar, alcohol, and all organic, I am also an identical twin, my sister is an omnivore, pretty clean diet too, the only difference is that she has a problem to keep her weight down and she had a bit of bad cholesterol, even if I eat more than her, I am slim and fit, and I never count my calories or macro nutrients, and my blood work is great. About b12, yes I need to take a supplement, but the b12 in animals also come from supplement, the animal is just the middle man! I think everybody is different even twins, and the best choice is a healthy life style that fit with you own needs.
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Meat eaters are also getting a supplemented version of b twelve. It's added to the animals you eat, feed. The natural sources of vitamin b twelve on the earth are depleted. B twelve deficiency started with meat eaters because supplements were Fed to farm animals. Both vegans and Meat eaters are getting a supplemented version of b twelve.
Protein is only three percent of a diet
Speak the truth
No one needs to eat the flesh of the dead to live. And it takes no more work to maintain whole foods, plant-based complete nutrition as a vegan than it does to maintain any other diet. Just as you have to monitor for complete nutrition on any other diet, you should monitor when vegan. Vegans may need to monitor caloric intake, eat six small meals per day instead of three large ones, supplement zinc, iron, D3, C, and B complexes, and add a good pea protein isolate at 60 grams per day in a plant-based shake (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry variation or greens), but that is easy compared to dealing with heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes and myriad other disease processes caused by animal products, not to mention social, environmental, psychological, and spiritual harms from animal products that are, when it comes to "meat", derived solely by unnecessary cycles of violence. Much easier. If you want complete nutrition without participating in a cycle of violence involving animal slaughter, it is there in abundance. All you have to do is look.The alternatives are everywhere on the shelves in every major market. It's not about nutrition anymore, if it ever really was about nutrition. You can get complete nutrition as a vegan if you determine to. Just look for it. There are plant-based omega-3s. There is plant-based D3, and plant-based B12. Seek and you shall find plant-based complete nutrition. Ask and you shall receive vegan versions of anything and everything.
It's about leaving the cycle of violence and having a moral conscience. We, vegans, choose to live a life without violence, without blood, without horror, without the grotesque imposition by those who would force others to eat the bloody dead, accept hacked-to-death animal parts and internal organs for food, suckle from a cow teat, consume slimey ooze from a chicken's or fish's ovaries, and call it pridefully "dominion" when it is truthfully a tragedy of degradation wearing a mask of unawareness moving in a grotesque delusion.
Actually I cut back on plant foods and I heal my gut issues. I used to eat a lot of plant foods but my stomach was always bloated and gassy. I eat more meat now and I feel so much better and I even lose weight. So listen to your body and don’t follow the herd.
I love that you mentioned those red flags regarding this study. Not many would that.
4 to 8 weeks shows nothing. Try 4 to 8 years…
We don’t understand cholesterol well enough to come to any meaningful conclusion.
The day we understand every single one of our gut biomes bacteria, virus, fungi & the last one I can’t remember the name of it.
That will be the day we make any sense at all.
Give it a few thousand years.
Hi doctor.. is okay to eat 2 cups beans a day !? With vegetables !?
How about healthy people over 100 years on vegan.
You were doing good until you stated vegans were low in B12. That is definitely a proven myth.
animal fat is healthy for you its seed oils that are the worst for you.
Thank you, thank youuuu
Vegetarianism started eons ago in the 2 most ancient cultures, China and India, not for the love of egos, the lower physical self, but for the love of all sentient beings. And these 2 ancient cultures are experts in understanding Chi or Prana, the invisible energy field that some Western scientists are still denying or debating its existence. Even ancient dictators/emperors had cleansing rituals of being vegetarians for 2 weeks prior to praying/asking Heaven for weather miracles or material dominances. If people still confuse about how we're all ONE in this energy cosmos, don't look at compartmentalized so called scientific studies, look at the famous Blue Zones study for centenarians. Loma Linda, the only city in North America that is in the Blue Zones (only 5 cities exist globally), are full of Seventh Day Adventists that favor vegetarian life styles. That's a miracle in this materially rich but spiritually self-absorbing USA. To miss the spiritual part is really missing the forest for the tree. To put carnivore on the same scale as vegetarian philosophy is going backward on human's evolution epochs, the next lower rung is cannibalism ! It's spiritual, then mental, then physical, not the other way round. Even saying vegetarianism is good for the environment is leaning too much on the physical side. Vegetarianism does lead to a cleaner environment, but that's the by-products, same as longevity, healthier bodies, cleaner skins, younger looking physiques, are all by-products of biophilia, a segment of Absolute Truth!
If you have to supplement then the diet is flawed. Fact.
I get a lot upset stomach and digestive issues from vegan diet, so I just can’t go there, I’d rather die of heart atttack from eating meat then go through that again
The vegans in the study, lost muscle weight, and put on more fat, despite eating less calories. Vegan diets are deficient in 15 essential nutrients, not just vitamin B 12.
Cholesterol is not a problem. We would die quickly without it. LDL is not a proper measurement. Much more important is the level of both Triglycerides and HDL
Thanks for this. A balanced look at a research study is refreshing.
Two of Rowbear's kidney doctors (MD and ND) both say that the most difficult patients they have are vegetarians. The MD says the kidneys love pork. We eat meat and feel good. Rowbear has stayed at Stage 3 for six years since he was diagnosed when his kidneys, heart, and lungs failed.
I did definitely feel there was bias towards veganism instead of a well rounded pov
This study is horrendous and has so many problems do not listen to the guidance in this study we need heavy fat high protein red meat to reach our best health typical still trying to push the vegan lifestyle it never works folks
Eating for your blood type is a great book that breaks it down according to blood type and race.
Thank you Dr. Shusterman for covering this interesting diet comparison.