Plant-based foods make you feel good.
For reasons that will make you feel great.
Countless scientific studies show the many health benefits of a plant-based diet. But the most compelling evidence may be how you and your family feel when avoiding animal foods, sweets, and highly processed foods.
What is a plant-based diet?
It’s simply eating more fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, peas, nuts, and seeds while avoiding—or completely eliminating—meat, dairy, eggs, sugar, and highly processed foods.
Nutrition is medicine.
Eliminating or reducing animal products, sugar, and highly processed foods from your diet can actually reverse and return your body to a healthier condition—without taking medications. The evidence is so conclusive that some leading hospitals in the US are now promoting the preventative health and medicinal benefits of a plant-based diet and lifestyle.
What you eat affects your health.
The evidence is clear—and growing. Numerous studies have proven the health and wellness benefits of a plant-based diet, including weight loss, reduced inflammation, prevention of cardiovascular disease, and the management and even reversal of some chronic conditions.
Eating a plant-based diet:
✔ Can lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar
✔ Reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers
✔ Decreases inflammation in the body
✔ May reduce the need for medications
✔ Can help with weight loss
✔ May slow cognitive decline in older adults
The First Landmark Study
One of the earliest and most famous nutritional studies, known as The China Project, was conducted in the 1980s by nutritional biochemist T. Colin Campbell, PhD of Cornell University, in partnership with researchers at Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. This comprehensive landmark study examined the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, proving the health dangers of a diet high in animal-based protein—and the many ongoing health benefits of a plant-based diet.
This series of studies, conducted in 65 different counties in rural China over seven years, showed that people who ate a plant-based diet, which happened naturally in these regions, had the fewest or no chronic diseases. You can read the details of their findings in The China Study, praised as one of the most important books about diet and health ever written. This bestselling book, by Colin Campbell, PhD and his son Thomas M. Campbell, MD, also covers why so many Americans are misinformed about diet and nutrition, due to actions and messaging by powerful lobbies, government entities, and opportunistic scientists.
The China Project was not only a groundbreaking study when first published, it also has and continues to inspire many cookbooks focused on plant-based recipes you can prepare at home.
Documentaries We Love
Want to feel informed and inspired? Here are a few of our favorite health documentaries, which you can watch online for free. If you’re even considering changing to a plant-based diet, we highly recommend you watch these. They were a catalyst for changing our eating habits—and for starting Leaf & Sage to help others eat healthier and feel better.
A groundbreaking investigative film exposing the collusion and corruption in government and big business that’s costing us trillions of healthcare dollars and keeping us sick. Surprising, shocking, and funny!
A critically acclaimed film that explores the idea of food as medicine—and examines the notion that most chronic diseases can be controlled or even reversed by rejecting animal-based and processed foods.
Follow an elite Special Forces trainer as he travels the world on a quest to uncover the optimal diet for human performance. What he discovers permanently changes his understanding of food. Directed by an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker.
Want to do a deep dive into the many benefits and impact on health?
Check out PlantBasedResearch.org, an online database with links to dozens of articles focused on the specific health benefits of plant-based nutrition.
Explore this collection of studies supporting plant-based nutrition for overall health—many highlight the power of plant-based diets to treat or reverse chronic diseases.
See what The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) says about the power of a plant-based diet to lower your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer as well as to improve brain health and weight loss.
