Extensive research on healthy living has often stressed the need to consider regulating an individual’s diet. For instance, body weight, body fat levels, protein levels, among others, need regulation, and this can be achieved through nutritional means.
There’re two diet trends currently trending and similarly creating confusion as many people are undecided on which is the best. These diet trends include plant-based diets and keto diets. Make yourself aware of plant-based vs keto diet so that you’ll determine which one is the best for you.
Plant-Based Diet
This is a nutritional program solely focused on the consumption of foods mostly or entirely obtained from plants. These individuals often consume more foods from plant sources while minimizing animal-based food products or ultimately avoiding them.
These variations have hence resulted in several categories of plant-based diets. For instance;
Veganism – This is a plant-based diet form solely focused on consuming pure plant products with completely nothing from animal sources.
Vegetarianism – This, on the other hand, deals with people who consume plant-based food products with some limited animal products. However, the diet strictly excludes the consumption of meat altogether.
Semi-Vegetarianism – This, however, is a midway with individuals practicing this diet engaging majorly on plant products while occasionally eating any and all animal source products like meat and eggs.
Health benefits associated with plant-based diets
- It helps in losing weight
- They are also environmentally friendly
- Manages and reduces the risks of diabetes
- It reduces the risks of cancer development
- Aids in heart disease conditions regulation
- Helps slow down cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease progression
Ketogenic Diet
A ketogenic diet is one with very low carbohydrate concentrations and high-fat content. Its mechanism thus relies on drastically reducing the intake of carbs and replacing it with fats.
Typically, the body breaks down carbohydrates for energy; however, in this case, minimal carbs in the body will result in the state of ketosis where the body will metabolically break down fats and some proteins into ketone bodies as energy sources to fuel body functions.
Ketogenic diets are also of several varieties, and they include;
Standard Ketogenic Diet – This entails very low carbs, about 5%, moderate proteins of about 20%, and a high-fat intake of about 75%.
Cyclical Ketogenic Diet – this involves periods of high carbohydrate reefed like five days of constant keto diet followed by two of high carbohydrate diet.
Targeted Ketogenic Diet – This diet allows for the occasional use of carbohydrates during exercises.
High-Protein Ketogenic Diet – This has a high-fat content of about 60%, followed by an increased protein of about 35% and a minimal-carb diet of 5%.
The health benefits associated with keto diets:
- They also aid during brain injuries
- They are efficient in rapid weight loss
- Efficient in heart disease management and prevention
- They help in the regulation of diabetes and pre-diabetes
Helps in the management of specific cancer types, Alzheimer’s disease, Epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, polycystic ovary syndrome among others
Conclusion
Both diet plans have tremendous health benefits to an individual, and thus they encourage healthy living.
Nevertheless, keto diets are not for everybody since, in essence, they do not provide for a balanced diet as it is in the case of plant-based diets. They are therefore majorly recommended for specific groups of people more so those in need of weight control or suffering from certain health conditions only managed by keto diets.
Plant-based diets, on the other hand, are recommended for all groups of people since they guarantee a long term healthy living due to the numerous and vast benefits both to an individual’s health and to the planet.