It is very difficult to say which diet is healthier than another because there are a lot of individual genetic differences and other factors that influence someone’s diet decisions. Most experts would agree that a diet high in processed foods and hydrogenated vegetable oils with a lot of sugar and fat is probably the most unhealthy diet you can follow.
Most people call this the standard American diet, and yes, it is a very sad diet. We can work from this point and you can see that nearly any diet that is popular today is healthier than the standard American diet, so no matter which one you pick, you are probably going to be moving in the right direction whether it be primal, vegetarian, vegan, keto, carnivore, etc. You’re most likely going to be improving your health on these diets.
The really tricky part comes when you try to decide which of these diets is healthier than the other. All of the diets mentioned above have anecdotal evidence of someone doing really well following the protocols described in each specific diet. Every advocate for each of those diets believes that they are following the healthiest diet, so how do we decipher which of them is actually the healthiest?
It is a very difficult question, but I believe that you can find a big piece of the puzzle by looking at which diet requires the most supplementation in order to get complete amino and fatty acid profiles that human beings require. For instance, a vegan needs to supplement with B12 in order to prevent a detrimental deficiency.
I would still say that a vegan diet is healthier than the standard American diet, but without supplementation, it won’t work in the long term.
I would put all these diets on a spectrum, with vegans needing the highest amount of supplementation in order to meet all the requirements of a proper human diet. Another factor that you can look at is how easy is it to eat processed junk food on the specific diet in question.
Once again, it is very easy to eat highly processed junk food on a vegan diet. Just because something is vegan, it doesn’t make it automatically healthy. Most bread, french fries, doughnuts, and sweets count as vegan, and I don’t think anyone would agree that only eating french fries, doughnuts, sweets, and bread would count as a healthy diet in anyone’s opinion, but you can be vegan and eat all of those things.
This is where a carnivore has the biggest advantage because most processed foods are plant-based, and carnivore requires you to cut out all plants. There are very few processed foods that fall under the carnivore umbrella, making it easier to stick to whole-food sources.
Yes, a properly constructed vegan diet can be healthier than the standard American diet but it can also be a low-protein standard American diet lacking in essential nutrients, and this can mislead some people into thinking that they are being healthy just because they cut out animal products. All of the popular diets today have their own spectrum of health like the example I just mentioned. It will make a big difference in how healthy that diet is.
No matter which diet you decide to go with, make sure that you get good advice from the experts and the advocates of each specific diet and remember that no diet has to be permanent, so don’t be afraid to experiment when you feel like you could be getting more from the food you eat.