It is probably one of the most common medical excuse for eating animals.

There is just one problem.

Anaemia does not create a medical requirement to eat animals.

Anaemia means there is not enough haemoglobin, or not enough healthy red blood cells carrying it. Iron deficiency is one possible cause, but so are deficiencies of B12 or folate, blood loss, inflammation, chronic disease, pregnancy and several other conditions.

The World Health Organization specifically warns against treating “anaemia” and “iron-deficiency anaemia” as though they mean the same thing. At no point does an animal become an essential nutrient.

People Eating Plant-Based Can Get Plenty of Iron

Iron is not an animal product.

Beans, lentils, peas, nuts, vegetables, wholemeal foods and fortified cereals can all provide iron. The NHS explicitly lists pulses, wholemeal bread and flour, fortified breakfast cereals, dark leafy vegetables, nuts and dried fruit as good iron sources for people eating fully plant-based. But there is an even more interesting piece of evidence.

The British EPIC-Oxford study looked at more than 65,000 people, including 2,596 vegans, alongside meat eaters, fish eaters and vegetarians.

Who consumed the most iron?

The vegans.

The fully plant-based group had the highest average iron intake of all four dietary groups. And this was not some one-off anomaly. A later EPIC-Oxford analysis again found that vegans had the highest iron intake, alongside the highest intakes of fibre, vitamin C, vitamin E, folate, magnesium and copper.

So the idea that somebody has to eat animals because they “need iron” falls apart rather quickly.

They need iron.

Plants contain iron.

“But Plant Iron Isn’t Absorbed As Well”

Plant foods contain non-haem iron. Animal flesh contains haem iron as well as non-haem iron. Non-haem iron is more affected by the rest of what you eat. Vitamin C improves its absorption, while tea and coffee consumed around meals can reduce it.

The NHS therefore recommends eating vitamin-C-rich foods alongside iron-rich plant foods and avoiding tea or coffee during or after main meals.

Lentils with tomatoes.

Beans with peppers.

Tofu with broccoli.

Fortified cereal with fruit.

This isn’t some impossible nutritional balancing act. It is lunch.

It’s also why so many traditional meals around the world combine legumes and grains for protein and minerals, and vegetables for vitamins. In the modern world we have somehow created a standard where learning one basic fact about nutrition is treated as evidence that plant-based eating is dangerously complicated. Meanwhile, someone can eat animals, know absolutely nothing about nutrition, develop iron deficiency anyway, and nobody declares their entire diet medically impossible.

People Who Eat Animals Get Anaemia Too

Of course they do.

The NHS lists heavy periods and pregnancy as very common causes of iron-deficiency anaemia. Bleeding from the stomach or intestines can also cause it, including bleeding associated with ulcers, bowel inflammation, some medicines and gastrointestinal cancers.

WHO goes further, listing nutritional deficiencies, infections, inflammation, chronic disease, gynaecological and obstetric conditions and inherited red-blood-cell disorders among the possible causes of anaemia.

You can eat animal flesh every day and still become iron deficient if you are losing iron faster than you replace it.

So if someone is anaemic, the useful question is:

Why are they anaemic?

Not:

When did they last eat a cow?

Everybody Needs B12

B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia.

But let’s stop talking about B12 as though it is some special vegan requirement.

Everybody needs a reliable source of B12.

B12 is produced by microorganisms, not magically manufactured by cows, pigs or chickens. In animal agriculture, supplementation is already part of the system. Vitamin B12 is widely used in feed for animals including pigs, poultry and calves. Ruminants such as cows and sheep can instead rely on microorganisms in their rumen to produce B12, but those microorganisms need sufficient cobalt, which can itself be supplied through supplemented feed.

So there are two basic options.

We can obtain B12 directly through fortified foods or a supplement.

Or we can feed B12, or the ingredients needed to make it, to another animal and then obtain some of that B12 by eating their body or secretions.

Why is the second route supposedly more “natural”?

People eating fully plant-based simply cut out the middle animal. Again, notice what the human body actually requires.

B12. Not beef. Not milk. Not eggs. B12.

Taking the nutrient directly is not evidence that plant-based eating is nutritionally inadequate. It is evidence that we understand nutrition well enough to obtain the nutrient without exploiting an animal.

Anaemia Is a Reason to Investigate Anaemia

WHO describes anaemia as an indicator of an underlying health or nutritional problem and says treatment depends on its cause. That is the medically relevant point. If someone has iron-deficiency anaemia because they are not consuming enough iron, increase their iron. If they need supplementation, supplement it. If they have B12 deficiency, correct their B12. If they are losing blood, find out why.

What you should not do is turn a medical condition with numerous possible causes into evidence that humans biologically require animal products. Especially when one of Britain’s largest dietary studies found that the people eating no animal products whatsoever consumed the most iron. Anaemia is a reason to find the cause and treat it. It is not a reason to eat an animal.

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A new survey of 1,102 US men found that just 20% knew milk and other dairy products had been associated with increased prostate cancer risk. Only 20% had ever received information from a healthcare professional about the relationship between nutrition and prostate cancer. When men were actually told about the association, 66% said they would be likely to avoid dairy products. People cannot make informed choices about what they eat if nobody tells them what the evidence says. And the evidence cited by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is not based on one isolated study.

A meta-analysis of 32 studies found evidence linking higher dairy consumption with increased prostate cancer risk. One study found that consuming at least one serving of skimmed or low-fat milk each day was associated with a 19% higher risk compared with rarely drinking it. Another study followed 3,612 men for between eight and ten years. Those consuming the most low-fat dairy, around three servings per day, were more than twice as likely to develop prostate cancer as those consuming less than one serving per day. The concern does not end with diagnosis. A meta-analysis involving more than 700,000 participants found that men consuming the most whole milk had a risk of death from prostate cancer as much as 50% higher than those consuming the least. Meanwhile, plant-based eating patterns have been associated with substantially better outcomes. The Adventist Health Study-2 found that men following a vegan diet had a 35% lower risk of prostate cancer compared with men following several other dietary patterns. Among more than 2,000 men already diagnosed with prostate cancer, those eating the most plant-based foods had a 56% lower risk of progression and a 59% lower risk of recurrence compared with those eating the fewest.

So why are men not being told?

More than three-quarters of those surveyed supported warning labels on dairy products informing consumers about prostate cancer risk. If a food is repeatedly associated with increased cancer risk, people deserve to know before they buy it. Especially when so many say that information would change what they choose to eat.

TAKE ACTION

If people deserve clear warnings about foods linked to cancer risk, processed meat should not get a free pass either.

Processed meat is classified by the World Health Organization as a Group 1 carcinogen, yet there is still no cancer warning on the packet. Our petition is calling on the UK Government to require clear cancer warnings on processed meat products so people can make informed choices.

SIGN THE PETITION: PUT CANCER WARNINGS ON PROCESSED MEAT

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Eating more fruit and vegetables could make you look more attractive, smell better and potentially help you achieve your desired body shape. Yes, really.

A scientific review has pulled together more than 30 studies looking at the relationship between food and physical attractiveness. And while it absolutely does not prove that every vegan is hotter than every meat-eater, the evidence suggests that what you put on your plate can change how other people perceive you. Sometimes within weeks.

Researchers David Goldman and Matthew Nagra looked at 3 major ingredients of human attractiveness: our faces, our body odour and our body composition.

The face evidence is particularly striking.

Fruit and vegetables contain carotenoids, the natural yellow, orange and red pigments found in foods such as carrots, tomatoes and leafy greens.

When we eat them, those pigments can accumulate in our skin. And apparently humans are into that. In experiments where researchers altered photographs of faces, people repeatedly preferred skin with stronger carotenoid colouring.

In one series of studies, carotenoid-enhanced faces beat the alternatives in 75.9% of comparisons. Researchers have also watched people’s skin actually change after they started eating more fruit and vegetables.

One six-week study found that increased consumption changed both skin yellowness and redness. Researchers calculated that eating around 2.9 extra portions of fruit and vegetables per day was enough to make people look healthier. Around 3.3 extra portions was enough to produce a change judged more attractive.

In other words, your mother telling you to eat your vegetables may have undersold the benefits.

Then we get to sweat.

In one controlled experiment, 17 men ate either a meat-rich diet or a non-meat diet for 2 weeks. Women then smelled samples of their armpit odour.

The sweat produced while the men were eating the non-meat diet was rated as more attractive, more pleasant and less intense. Another study found that men whose diets were associated with higher fruit and vegetable intake produced sweat described as more floral, fruity and sweet. Lower fruit and vegetable intake was associated with smells described as animal-like, meaty and oily.

And then there is garlic. Garlic is treated as the food most likely to destroy your chances of romance. It may deserve an apology. Experiments found that men eating larger amounts of garlic produced body odour that women rated as more attractive, more pleasant and less intense. Researchers suggested garlic’s antioxidant and antibacterial properties might alter the compounds and microbes responsible for body odour.

There is, admittedly, a limit to how confidently we can declare garlic an aphrodisiac for your armpits. The evidence comes from one publication containing 3 experiments, and the review authors themselves say more research is needed.

Then comes body shape.

Plant-based eating patterns have been associated with lower BMI and greater reductions in body fat compared with omnivorous diets, while separate research has found that body fat influences attractiveness ratings.

But this is where we need a cold shower.

Nobody has yet shown directly that switching to a plant-based diet changes someone’s body composition and therefore causes other people to rate them as more attractive. The researchers themselves call that connection indirect. And some attractiveness findings are downright uncomfortable. Research cited in the review found that the body-fat level rated most attractive for women could fall below the physiologically healthy range. So turning this into “lose weight and become hotter” would not just be scientifically sloppy. It could be harmful.

The researchers instead think the more interesting opportunity lies in visible changes such as skin glow up.

Because public health has a problem.

“Eat more vegetables because it might reduce your disease risk in 30 years” is sensible advice. It is not necessarily exciting advice.

“Eat more vegetables and you might look better in a few weeks” has rather more immediate appeal to our short term brains. And there is evidence that vanity works. In one randomised trial, people shown personalised images of how eating more fruit and vegetables could change their appearance significantly increased their intake for 10 weeks.

People given ordinary information did not. Another study involving 802 people found that 57% were motivated after seeing a demonstration of diet-related skin colour changes.

This research mostly concerns plant-forward diets, meaning diets rich in plant foods that may still contain some animal products. It is also a narrative review rather than a systematic review, and the authors acknowledge a risk that the studies selected could favour their hypothesis. But the basic finding is difficult to ignore. Eat more plants and your skin can change. Your smell can change. People may notice.

Perhaps vegetables just needed the marketing budget that animal flesh has.

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Vegans have heard it approximately seventeen billion times. The assumption behind the question is usually obvious: animal products are the serious protein sources, while tofu, beans and lentils are somehow nutritional consolation prizes.

A paper published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems makes that assumption look increasingly ridiculous.

Researchers introduced the BPI Score, a system designed to compare 20 high-protein foods across more than nutrition alone. Instead, it asks a much more useful question: which protein sources actually perform best when we consider their impact on people and the planet?

The answer was tofu.

Protein Is More Than Protein

The BPI Score divides its assessment into two categories.

The Planet Score looks at greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, land use and freshwater use. The People Score considers sodium, saturated fat, cholesterol, whether the food contains all nine essential amino acids, affordability and availability.

Tofu scored 36 points, the highest overall. Cheddar cheese came last with just 13. And this was not some freak tofu victory. Every protein source in the top 20% was plant-based: tofu, chia seeds, beans and quinoa. Every protein source in the bottom 20% was animal-based: mozzarella, lamb, beef and cheddar.

So much for plants being the inferior option. Tofu also destroys one of the favourite nutritional objections. It contains all 9 essential amino acids and therefore qualifies as a complete protein. Meanwhile, every plant protein examined contained zero cholesterol.

Then there is the environmental cost.

Producing 100g of protein from tofu required just 2.16 square metres of land, compared with 211.38 square metres for beef. The paper also reports 0.61kg of greenhouse gas emissions for tofu compared with 64.19kg for beef.

And Animals Were Not Even Included in the Score

Perhaps the most striking part is what the scoring system leaves out. The researchers acknowledge that ethical considerations were not included in this first version. They argue that including them would likely widen the divide between plant and animal proteins. Because protein does not magically appear as a steak, cheese slice or chicken breast. There is someone on the other side of that product.

So when tofu beats animal products on environmental impact, performs strongly on health, remains accessible, and provides complete protein, what exactly is left of the argument that we need to exploit and kill animals for protein?

We don’t. We simply have better choices.

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End of discussion.

Except science has an inconvenient habit of carrying on after internet arguments have declared a subject settled. A new review of 31 studies has found that nutritionally sound vegan and vegetarian plantbased foods are generally well digested by both dogs and cats, with digestibility broadly comparable to conventional meat-based foods. That does not mean every homemade bowl of lentils is suddenly appropriate for every cat. It does mean one of the most confidently repeated objections to plant-based companion animal food is looking increasingly shaky.

Dogs And Cats Can Digest Plant Proteins

Andrew Knight, a veterinary professor affiliated with several universities, reviewed research examining complete meat-free diets as well as individual plant and fermentation-derived ingredients. Of the 31 studies included, 22 were specific to dogs, two to cats and seven applicable to both species.

Across the 5 studies measuring apparent total tract digestibility of complete vegan or vegetarian diets, digestibility exceeded 80% for dry matter, 85% for organic matter, 80% for crude protein, 89% for fat, 88% for nitrogen-free extract and 86% for energy. Researchers also found dogs and cats could digest proteins derived from soy, other legumes, pulses, grains and microbial fermentation. Were plant ingredients always more digestible than animal ingredients? No.

Sometimes they performed better. Sometimes animal ingredients did. Sometimes there was no significant difference at all. But that is rather different from the claim that dogs and cats cannot properly digest plant protein. Even where individual plant proteins showed lower digestibility for particular nutrients, overall digestibility generally remained high.

One study comparing two vegan dog foods with a chicken-based food found all three highly digestible. Fat digestibility was actually slightly higher in both plant-based foods, while organic matter digestibility was slightly higher in the chicken food. There were no significant differences in dry matter, crude protein or energy digestibility.

Another real-world trial involved 61 companion dogs eating either a plant-based kibble or chicken-based kibble for 12 weeks. Digestibility exceeded 80% for dry matter, 85% for protein and 97% for fat in both groups, with no significant differences between them.

Not exactly the digestive catastrophe we are frequently warned about.

Nutrients Matter More Than Marketing Categories

There is an important distinction. Digestibility is not nutritional completeness. The review itself stresses this. Vitamins, minerals and other nutrients have to be considered separately, and the research focused largely on macronutrients rather than micronutrients. That is why the conclusion is not “feed your cat whatever plants happen to be in the fridge”. It is that nutritionally sound, properly formulated plant-based foods can be well digested. But notice how strangely one-sided this conversation often becomes. Plant-based companion animal foods are expected to prove themselves nutrient by nutrient before some people will even entertain the possibility that they can work. Conventional foods, meanwhile, frequently receive the benefit of the doubt simply because they contain animal flesh. The scientific question is not whether an ingredient sounds suitably carnivorous to us. It is whether the finished food supplies what the animal requires in a form they can use. And the evidence reviewed here challenges the assumption that plant ingredients inherently fail that test.

There are still gaps. Most of the research concerns adult dogs, not puppies, kittens, senior animals or individuals with impaired digestive function. Cat-specific evidence is particularly limited, and more in-home research would be valuable. The review was also not systematic, something the author explicitly acknowledges. Those are reasons for more research. They are not evidence that the existing research says the opposite of what it actually says.

Then There Are The Animals Being Fed To Them

This conversation becomes much bigger once we stop looking only at the animal standing beside the food bowl.

Dogs and cats are estimated to consume around 9% of farmed animals used for food globally, rising to around 20% in the United States. And the environmental cost is substantial.

A separate study examined 31 commercially available dry dog foods in the UK, comparing plant-based, poultry-based, red-meat-based and veterinary renal foods. Plant-based foods had the lowest environmental impact across every category assessed. For every 1,000 calories of food, beef-based diets were estimated to require 102.15 square metres of land. Plant-based diets required 2.73. Beef-based foods produced an estimated 31.47 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent per 1,000 calories. Plant-based foods produced 2.82.

Another review found that ingredients themselves account for around 70% of companion animal food’s carbon impact. Packaging and transport are not the main story here. What goes into the food is. And then there is the comforting idea that conventional companion animal foods merely make use of slaughterhouse “waste”. The environmental review challenges that too. Animal byproducts are commodities with economic value. Other industries buy them. In the figures cited by the researchers, such materials generate around 11% of beef revenue and 7.5% of pork revenue. Calling them waste makes their economic role disappear.

Some lower-quality animal ingredients may also require more animal bodies to provide equivalent nutrition. Estimates cited in the review suggest around 1.4 times more carcasses may be required for dogs and 1.9 times more for cats compared with higher-quality animal flesh. So the ethical question cannot simply be: Is my dog okay?

What about the chickens?

The cows?

The pigs?

The fishes?

Their interests do not disappear because their bodies arrive ground up inside a bag with a smiling Labrador printed on it.

The Debate Has Moved On

None of this proves that every plant-based product is nutritionally sound. It certainly does not prove that every plant-based food is suitable for every dog or cat. But that was never the serious claim. The relevant question is whether appropriately formulated plant-based foods certified by veterinarians can meet companion animals’ needs.

The evidence increasingly suggests they can, particularly for dogs, while the research base for cats continues to develop. At the same time, the environmental advantage appears enormous. We can keep repeating that dogs and cats “need meat” as though saying it confidently enough settles the issue. Or we can ask the more useful question. What nutrients do they actually need, and can we provide those nutrients without breeding and killing billions of other animals to do it?

Increasingly, science is giving us an answer worth listening to.

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Hot flushes. Weight gain. Rising blood pressure. Increasing cardiovascular risk. A collection of symptoms and health problems presented as an unavoidable consequence of ageing. But growing evidence suggests diet may have a surprisingly large influence on several of these problems at once.

One long-term study has found that postmenopausal women whose diets most closely resembled a plant-forward Planetary Health Diet had around a 28% lower risk of cardiovascular disease than women whose diets were furthest from it. Another clinical trial found that a low-fat plant-based diet containing soy reduced moderate-to-severe hot flushes by 88%, while women also lost weight. And a major analysis involving more than 309,000 people has linked eating more legumes and soy with substantially lower rates of high blood pressure. These are different studies examining different outcomes. But they keep pointing in the same direction.

More beans. More lentils. More soy. More whole plant foods. Fewer animal products.

Heart Disease Risk Falls After Menopause

Cardiovascular disease becomes increasingly important as women age, with risk tending to rise after menopause. Researchers examining data from the Women’s Health Initiative followed 66,892 women for around 20 years. The women were approximately 63 years old when they entered the study and none had cardiovascular disease at the beginning. Researchers compared their diets using the Planetary Health Diet Index. The dietary pattern emphasises fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and unsaturated fats while limiting animal products, refined grains, added sugars and saturated fats. Women with the highest adherence had approximately 28% less cardiovascular disease than those with the lowest adherence. They also had lower rates of coronary heart disease, stroke and heart failure. Importantly, this was not an all-or-nothing effect. Each 10-point improvement in the diet score was associated with further reductions in risk. Dietary discussions are frequently sabotaged by the idea that unless somebody completely transforms everything they eat overnight, there is little point changing anything. The evidence suggests otherwise. Eating more plants appears beneficial even before somebody reaches the most plant-rich end of the spectrum.

This study was observational, so it cannot prove that diet directly caused the difference. Researchers did, however, adjust their analysis for factors including age, smoking, alcohol intake, physical activity, body mass index, income and calorie intake. And this is far from the only research pointing towards cardiovascular benefits from plant-based eating.

Protein Is Not Just Protein

Another study looked specifically at postmenopausal women and challenged another remarkably persistent nutrition myth: that protein is basically interchangeable regardless of where it comes from. Researchers followed 84 postmenopausal women over 12 weeks. One group ate a low-fat plant-based diet supplemented with soybeans while the control group continued eating an omnivorous diet. Among women eating plant-based, animal protein intake fell by 23.3 grams per day while plant protein increased by 22.1 grams.

Total protein barely changed.

Their body weight did.

The shift from animal to plant protein was associated with significant weight loss, independent of calorie intake. Researchers calculated that replacing roughly 16 grams of animal protein with around 13 grams of plant protein corresponded with approximately one kilogram of weight loss. One possible explanation involves methionine, an amino acid found at higher concentrations in many animal products. Lower methionine intake was significantly associated with reductions in BMI, although researchers stress that the mechanisms involved still require investigation. The more immediate point is much simpler. Women did not need more protein. Changing where their protein came from was associated with a measurable difference.

Soy And Hot Flushes

In the wider clinical trial, moderate-to-severe hot flushes fell by an extraordinary 88% among women eating the low-fat plant-based diet with daily soybeans. Women also lost an average of eight pounds over 12 weeks. Soy isoflavones are thought to play a role because they have previously been shown to reduce vasomotor symptoms.

Public understanding remains poor.

A poll by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found that only 43% of women knew diet could influence the number and intensity of hot flushes. This is despite around three-quarters of women experiencing hot flushes during menopause. Some respondents even believed women going through menopause should avoid soy. The evidence presented here suggests almost the opposite. Soy may be one of the foods women should be hearing considerably more about. And no, the benefits apparently disappear the moment somebody drinks soya milk or eats a plant-based burger.

Further analysis of the clinical trial found benefits even when diets included plant-based foods classified as ultra-processed. Nutrition is considerably more complicated than the increasingly fashionable claim that everything labelled “ultra-processed” belongs in one giant nutritional dustbin.

Beans Could Protect Blood Pressure Too

Legumes may also help tackle another major cardiovascular risk factor. A meta-analysis of 12 prospective studies involving more than 309,000 participants found that people eating larger quantities of legumes had a 16% lower risk of developing hypertension.

For soy, the reduction was 19%.

The relationship became even more striking when researchers examined quantities. Eating around 170 grams of legumes per day was associated with a 30% reduction in hypertension risk. For soy foods such as tofu, tempeh, edamame and miso, benefits appeared to peak at around 60 to 80 grams per day, corresponding with roughly a 28 to 29% reduction. Researchers rated a causal relationship between both food groups and hypertension as “probable”.

But average legume consumption across Europe and the UK sits at only around 8 to 15 grams per day. We have managed to construct a food culture in which some of the cheapest, most nutritious foods available barely appear on many plates.

Plants Are Not A Miracle Cure

None of this means eating plants makes ageing disappear. Menopause is not a disease. Plant-based eating is not a magical cure for every symptom or health condition. Observational research must not be presented as proof of causation, and individual medical circumstances differ. But neither should we shrug at evidence simply because nutrition cannot promise miracles.

Postmenopausal women face increasing cardiovascular risk. Most experience hot flushes. Weight changes are common. High blood pressure remains a major health problem. And across multiple lines of research, foods such as beans, lentils, chickpeas, peas, tofu, tempeh and other soy foods are associated with better outcomes. Meanwhile, animal products remain so deeply embedded in our idea of a “normal” diet that reducing them is still treated as the unusual option. We have that backwards.

You do not need animals to get protein.

You do not need cows for calcium or chickens for breakfast.

Women should not have to reach menopause before discovering that some of the foods society taught them were essential may be the very foods worth replacing.

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New research has found that industrial chicken farming is accelerating the spread and evolution of campylobacter, the most common bacterial cause of diarrhoea in the world. Campylobacter already causes more than 3 times as many cases of gastroenteritis in the UK each year as all other monitored foodborne bacteria combined. An estimated 60 to 80% of human campylobacter infections are caught from raw chicken. And we are creating increasingly favourable conditions for the bacteria responsible.

We Created This Problem

Before chickens were domesticated around 5,000 years ago, different strains of campylobacter tended to remain associated with individual bird species. Cross-infection was relatively uncommon. Then humans changed the ecosystem. Researchers analysed nearly 2,800 bacterial genomes collected from chickens and wild birds across 30 countries between 1979 and 2024. They estimated that movements of campylobacter strains between chickens and wild birds have increased around 100-fold since 1900 compared with before domestication.

Since the 1960s, the global chicken population has increased seven-fold to around 27 billion birds. Chickens now account for approximately 70% of all bird biomass on Earth. Human demand for chicken flesh has become so enormous that the overwhelming majority of bird biomass on this planet is now made up of one species we selectively breed, confine and kill.

The average person now eats around 6 times more chicken than they did in 1961, and bacteria are taking advantage of the artificial ecosystem we created.

Professor Sam Sheppard, one of the researchers behind the campylobacter study, described chickens as becoming a “cauldron of bacterial evolution”.

When billions of genetically similar birds are continually bred, transported and confined in enormous populations, bacteria have countless opportunities to circulate, encounter different strains and acquire new traits. Apparently turning the planet into one enormous chicken factory has consequences.

Who knew?

Five Weeks From Birth To Death

Modern chicken production is built around speed. Some chickens have been selectively bred to grow so rapidly that they can reach slaughter weight at around 5 weeks old. Their bodies have not evolved to grow like this. Humans deliberately engineered these birds around one economic objective: producing as much flesh as possible, as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Conventional European systems examined in another study could house around 20.7 birds per square metre, with approximately 90,000 chickens housed on a single farm. Disease spreading under those conditions should surprise absolutely nobody. Neither should the industry’s reliance on antibiotics.

The campylobacter researchers identified genetic changes associated with adaptation to chicken farming, including genes linked to antimicrobial resistance. Campylobacter infection occasionally requires antibiotic treatment. As resistance increases, drugs that once worked can become ineffective. The system is therefore capable of creating both the disease risk and conditions that make some infections more difficult to treat.

The Antibiotics Tell Their Own Story

We already have evidence that less intensive production reduces antibiotic use dramatically. Research comparing conventional chickens with slower-growing birds raised under European Chicken Commitment standards found that slower growth and lower stocking densities could reduce antibiotic use by as much as 85%.

In the Netherlands in 2024, 96% of slower-growing flocks received no antibiotics at all, compared with 77% of fast-growing flocks. The enormous antibiotic use associated with intensive farming is not some unavoidable feature of chickens existing. It is connected to how humans breed and confine them.

Slow their growth. Give them more space. Disease pressure falls. Antibiotic use falls. But there is another problem.

Those slower-growing chickens consume more feed and take longer to reach slaughter weight. Producing the same quantity of flesh under European Chicken Commitment standards was associated with greenhouse gas emissions between 6% and 11% higher, depending on the production stage, while land use increased 14% and phosphorus excretion increased 37% per kilogram. So we arrive at the absurd debate animal agriculture creates again and again. Should we breed chickens who suffer more efficiently, or chickens who consume more resources before we kill them? Perhaps there is a third option.

Stop breeding billions of chickens to kill in the first place.

Cheap Chicken Is Not Cheap

The defence of factory farming inevitably comes back to price. We are told intensive farming is necessary because people need affordable food. Except cheap chicken is cheap largely because many of the real costs never appear on the supermarket price label.

A report examining factory farming of pigs and chickens estimated that the system costs UK taxpayers more than £1.2 billion every year. Environmental pollution alone accounted for an estimated £518 million, including £458 million associated with ammonia air pollution and £60 million from river pollution caused by manure. Indirect agricultural subsidies supporting pig and chicken production were estimated at another £269 million. Industrialisation was also estimated to have cost around 14,000 farming jobs compared with a scenario in which the sector had not continued industrialising after 2000.

Then there is public health.

Around two million people in the UK were estimated to live within two kilometres of a megafarm. Higher respiratory disease associated with living near these facilities produced an estimated mortality cost of almost £92 million annually. And even this £1.2 billion estimate did not include antimicrobial resistance, climate change, or healthcare costs associated with excessive meat consumption. Chicken is not cheap. Someone else is simply paying part of the bill. Usually animals, taxpayers, rural communities, ecosystems and future generations.

More Chicken Means More Risk

Global meat supply has risen from around 25kg per person to 47kg over the past 60 years. Chicken consumption has increased particularly dramatically. And this expansion is expected to continue. That means more chickens being bred. More feed being grown. More waste being produced. More enormous sheds. More animals living in conditions where disease can spread. More interactions between industrial chicken populations, bacteria and the wider environment.

Scientists studying campylobacter could hardly have been clearer.

“The scale is what’s bad,” Sheppard said.

But governments continue allowing factory farming to expand while debates about chicken production frequently focus on tinkering with the system.

Give them slightly more space.

Breed them slightly more slowly.

Use fewer antibiotics.

Reduce pollution.

Improve biosecurity.

Every one of those measures may reduce a particular harm. None addresses why we are breeding tens of billions of chickens in the first place.

There is no requirement for humans to consume six times more chicken than previous generations did. This is not an unavoidable natural phenomenon. We created an industrial system based on breeding an unimaginable number of sentient individuals, forcing their bodies to grow at extraordinary speeds and killing them after only weeks of life.

Now we are discovering that turning chickens into biological production units on this scale also creates an extraordinary playground for bacterial evolution. The solution cannot forever be finding increasingly sophisticated ways to manage the consequences of animal exploitation. Sometimes the simplest answer really is the obvious one.

Stop exploiting animals.

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This is not a problem with a few illegal markets. It is not limited to badly regulated traders, poor hygiene or one country. The trade itself creates the contact that allows viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites to move between species. We already know the consequences can be catastrophic. The exploitation and trade of wild animals have been implicated in outbreaks including SARS, Ebola, mpox and COVID-19. But animals continue to be captured, bred, warehoused, transported and sold for food, medicine, fashion, entertainment, tourism and private captivity. We are manufacturing opportunities for disease.

Forty Years Of Evidence

Researchers examined more than 6,000 mammal species, including 2,079 who had been recorded in trade. They combined legal trade records, United States import data, international seizure records and a database of mammal pathogens.

Among traded mammals, 41% shared at least one pathogen with humans. Among mammals not recorded in trade, the figure was just 6.4%. Some of this difference could be explained by other factors. Species living near humans are studied more often. Animals consumed as food may face more direct contact. Closely related species can host similar pathogens.

Geography also matters. The researchers accounted for these influences, including the amount of scientific attention devoted to each species. Even after doing so, traded mammals were still around 1.5 times as likely to share pathogens with humans.

The strongest predictor was not whether an animal was eaten, lived near human settlements or appeared in illegal trade. It was whether that species was traded at all.

Time made the problem worse. On average, a wild mammal species shared one additional pathogen with humans for every decade spent in the global trade.

The longer we exploit a species, the more opportunities we create for pathogen exchange.

Legal Does Not Mean Safe

Politicians often divide the wildlife trade into two neat categories. Legal trade is presented as controlled and responsible. Illegal trade is blamed for cruelty, extinction and disease. The evidence does not support that comforting distinction.

Animals traded alive were 34% more likely to share pathogens with humans than animals traded only as body parts or products. They also shared around 50% more pathogens on average.

Species appearing in illegal trade were not significantly more likely to share at least one pathogen, but they shared 40% more pathogens than species traded only legally. Illegal routes can intensify the danger, but legality does not remove it.

The legal trade still involves capture, breeding, confinement, handling, transport, storage, markets and close contact with humans. Every stage creates another chance for infection to pass between bodies.

A licence does not stop a virus.

The Exotic Animal Trade

The trade in wild companion animals is a major part of this system. An investigation into trafficking from Latin America to Europe identified 2,495 animals across 69 species in just 34 reported seizures between 2017 and 2023. Around 94% were alive. Amphibians made up most of those seized, followed by birds and reptiles. These figures represent only the shipments authorities found and the media reported. Officials believe much larger volumes may move through ordinary air cargo, sometimes using false documents or exemptions intended for zoos.

Europe is not merely a transit route. It is a consumer market.

Rare frogs, songbirds and reptiles are removed from biodiverse regions and transported across continents because European buyers want something unusual in a tank, cage or enclosure. Some animals are hidden in luggage. Birds have been forced into toothpaste boxes. Lizards have been sewn into dolls.

Others enter through apparently legitimate commercial channels.

Only a quarter of the species identified in the European investigation were protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Animals may be protected in the country where they were taken, yet fall into a legal gap when they reach Europe.

Scarcity becomes a sales feature. Endangerment increases prestige. A species can be disappearing in the wild while buyers compete to possess one.

Even people who claim to care about conservation can help drive this demand. In one international survey, most respondents said they preferred captive-bred animals who were common in the wild. But 30% said they would probably buy an animal before a trade ban came into force.

The threat of protection can trigger a buying rush.

Captive-Bred Is Not The Answer

The industry presents captive breeding as the ethical alternative to taking animals from the wild. This ignores both the scale of commercial wild animal farming and the harms built into captivity itself.

Researchers identified at least 487 wild animal species farmed commercially across 90 countries between 2000 and 2020. They estimated that between 936 million and 964 million individual animals were farmed during that period.

The real total is likely far higher. The estimate excluded wild fishes and invertebrates, while government records were incomplete, inconsistent or unavailable. A separate CITES database recorded 1,792 commercially farmed wild species in international trade.

Wild animals are bred for fashion, medicine, luxury food and private captivity. Farming can also increase demand, provide cover for animals taken illegally from the wild and require new animals to replenish breeding stock.

Most importantly, being born in captivity does not turn a wild animal into a domesticated one.

A ball python does not need less space because a breeder produced them for sale. A parrot does not lose the need to fly, socialise and make choices because paperwork describes them as captive-bred.

Captive breeding changes an animal’s birthplace. It does not erase their nature or make confinement justifiable.

The Cost To Animals

Disease risk is only one consequence of the trade.

Animals may be denied suitable food and water, exposed to extreme temperatures, packed into filthy containers, injured during capture and left without treatment. They may spend their lives unable to move properly, hide, fly, climb, swim, forage or interact with members of their own species.

Ball pythons are kept in enclosures too small for them to extend their bodies. African grey parrots are caught using glue. Pangolins are tied inside net sacks. Frogs have their legs cut off while conscious. Sharks have their fins removed before being thrown back into the sea. Young elephants are separated from their mothers and subjected to violent training for tourism.

This is not a collection of isolated abuses. These are predictable consequences of turning living beings into products. The global trade is so poorly monitored that nobody knows how many animals are involved. CITES records counted almost 54 million wild vertebrates and 36.5 million invertebrates traded between 2005 and 2014, but wider estimates suggest billions are exploited every year. The missing data does not show that the problem is small. It shows how little scrutiny the industry faces.

Enforcement Is Not Enough

New technology may help authorities identify some trafficked animals. Researchers in Australia recently trained artificial intelligence to detect shark fins, seahorses and sea cucumbers in 3D X-ray scans, with success rates between 85% and 95%. This could help border staff intercept hidden shipments. It does not address why those shipments exist.

Wild animals and their body parts are openly advertised on mainstream social media. A BBC investigation found tiger teeth, bones, live cubs, pangolin scales, rhino horn, shark fins and dried seahorses offered through Facebook.

A UK supplier posted 15 dead seahorses directly to an investigator with no documentation. Three were pregnant males, each of whom may have been carrying hundreds of young.

Global enforcement operations seize tens of thousands of living animals and tonnes of body parts. Yet every seizure reveals only a fraction of the trade. Algorithms, sniffer dogs, border officers and stronger databases may make trafficking harder, but they cannot make the commercial exploitation of wild animals safe or ethical.

Regulation usually asks whether animals survived the journey, whether the correct form was completed and whether a species can withstand continued extraction. It rarely asks the obvious question.

Why are we trading wild animals at all?

Close The Door

The new study calls for stronger biosurveillance and reforms to international trade rules. Those measures may reduce some immediate risks. The researchers also acknowledge that reducing the number of animals in trade will be necessary to prevent future pathogen emergence.

We should go further.

The wildlife trade harms individual animals, threatens species, destabilises ecosystems and creates routes for diseases that can kill humans on a global scale. These are not unrelated side effects. They all emerge from the same decision to treat wild animals as resources, products and possessions.

The UK should stop importing exotic animals for private captivity, whether they were captured from the wild or bred on commercial farms.

At time of writing more than 6,200 people have already signed the petition calling on the UK Government to ban these imports. Add your name and help close the door on a trade that should never have been normalised. Wild animals belong in their own habitats, living for their own purposes. Not in our homes. Not in our markets. Not in our supply chains.

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Lone star ticks are spreading northwards as rising temperatures make new regions suitable for them. They are already common across parts of the north-eastern United States. Now researchers are warning that Bourbon virus may be more widespread than official figures suggest. There is no vaccine. There is no specific treatment. Doctors may not recognise the symptoms. Reliable clinical testing is limited. This is another warning about what happens when humans destabilise the climate, destroy ecosystems and treat animals as resources without considering what comes next.

What Is Bourbon Virus?

Bourbon virus was first identified in Bourbon County, Kansas, in 2014. The virus can cause fever, exhaustion, vomiting, rashes and body aches. These symptoms overlap with several other illnesses spread by ticks, making Bourbon virus difficult to recognise. The New York patient had severe symptoms and required hospital treatment. Doctors initially diagnosed Lyme disease, but the usual treatment made no difference. Researchers eventually identified Bourbon virus. Three deaths have been linked to the virus, including the first known patient, another person in 2017 and one person in 2026. Cases have been identified in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, but nobody knows how far the virus has already spread. Recorded cases remain rare. That does not necessarily mean infections are rare. It may mean they are being missed.

When symptoms resemble more familiar tick-borne diseases, doctors may treat the wrong infection. When diagnostic testing is unavailable or difficult to access, patients may never receive a definite answer. When many medical professionals have never encountered the virus, it is easy for cases to disappear into broader categories of unexplained illness. A rare diagnosis can conceal a much less rare disease.

The Lone Star Tick Is Moving

The lone star tick was once associated mainly with warmer parts of the south-eastern United States. Not anymore.

These ticks are moving north and west as the climate becomes warmer. They have been reported as far north as New York and Maine, entering regions where winters previously made survival more difficult. Warmer conditions give ticks longer periods in which to feed, reproduce and spread. More people then encounter them while walking, gardening, working outdoors or simply living near fragmented woodland.

The same tick is also associated with alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy that can cause severe reactions to mammal flesh, milk, cheese and other products containing substances taken from mammals. Up to 450,000 people in the United States may already have alpha-gal syndrome. Many experience delayed reactions several hours after eating, making the cause difficult to identify. Some develop hives, nausea or heart palpitations. Others experience life-threatening anaphylaxis.

Now the same expanding tick population is raising concern about Bourbon virus. One bite can leave someone unable to tolerate products taken from mammals. Another can transmit an illness doctors may struggle to diagnose and cannot specifically treat. Humans have created the conditions for both.

Farming Animals Heats the Planet

Humans destroy forests to graze cows and grow crops to feed animals imprisoned on farms. Cows release methane. Industrial farms pollute land and water. Vast quantities of crops, energy and space are used to produce animal flesh and secretions instead of feeding humans directly. The system harms animals at every stage.

It also warms the climate.

As temperatures rise, ticks move into new territory. Diseases and allergies once concentrated in warmer regions follow them. The consequences then arrive in homes and hospitals.

Humans imprison and kill animals for food. The resulting system helps destabilise the climate. That warmer climate allows disease-carrying ticks to spread. Humans are then shocked when unfamiliar illnesses appear in places they were rarely seen before. We call them emerging threats.

Humans Removed the Predators

Climate change is not the only factor helping ticks spread.

Deer populations have increased in many areas after humans destroyed or removed their natural predators. Wolves and other predators were killed partly because farmers and hunters viewed them as competition or threats to animals being raised for profit. Humans altered the ecosystem to protect animal agriculture. The result was more deer, more opportunities for ticks to feed and more chances for ticks to reach people.

At the same time, housing and roads have pushed further into fragmented forests. Humans have broken continuous habitats into smaller patches, bringing people, deer and ticks into closer contact. Then we describe the rising number of tick bites as a natural problem. There is nothing natural about removing predators, fragmenting forests, heating the atmosphere and expanding intensive animal agriculture across enormous areas of land.

No Vaccine, No Specific Treatment

Bourbon virus is especially concerning because medicine has few tools available against it.

There is no vaccine to prevent infection. There is no specific antiviral treatment. Doctors can provide supportive care, but they cannot prescribe a medicine designed to eliminate the virus.

Diagnosis is another obstacle.

Researchers are calling for greater surveillance, improved clinical testing and more awareness among doctors. Without identifying infections, scientists cannot accurately estimate how common the virus is. Without understanding its true prevalence, developing tests and treatments becomes even harder. This creates a dangerous circle. Cases are missed because testing and awareness are limited. The disease then appears too rare to justify urgent investment. Because investment remains limited, more cases continue to be missed. Waiting for a large outbreak before taking the virus seriously would be reckless. But prevention cannot stop at asking people to wear long trousers, check their skin and remove ticks carefully. Those measures may reduce individual risk. They do nothing to address why tick habitats are expanding.

We Create Our Own Threats

Humans often discuss zoonotic diseases and vector-borne infections as attacks from nature.

A virus appears. A tick spreads. A wild animal is blamed. Humans present themselves as innocent victims. But animals and pathogens exist within ecosystems that humans are rapidly changing. We heat the planet. We destroy forests. We remove predators. We force animals into industrial farms. We expand housing into fragmented habitats. We create dense points of contact between humans, other animals and disease-carrying parasites. Then, when the consequences reach us, we act surprised.

Bourbon virus may remain rare. It may already be more common than doctors realise. More infections may appear as lone star ticks continue moving northwards. What is already clear is that the conditions favouring their spread are not accidental.

The same system that confines and kills animals is helping to destabilise the climate and reshape the distribution of disease. Animal agriculture does not only cause suffering behind farm walls. Its consequences move through forests, atmosphere, water, wildlife and human bodies. A tick carrying Bourbon virus in New York is not an isolated warning.

It is part of a pattern.

Humans keep treating animals and ecosystems as though they can be exploited without consequence. The climate is heating. Habitats are breaking apart. Disease risks are shifting.

We are not merely failing to prevent these threats. We are helping to create them.

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Allergies are not rare. Estimates suggest up to 40% of dogs may experience one during their lifetime. Environmental allergies are more common than food allergies, but diet remains one of the simplest things to investigate.

And plant-based food could make that investigation much easier.

Animal Proteins Can Be Allergens

Food allergies in dogs are often reactions to proteins. Chicken flesh is one recognised trigger, alongside other animal-derived ingredients commonly used in commercial dog food.

This creates an obvious problem. Many dog foods contain several animal proteins at once. Chicken, fish, egg, “beef” and vague “animal derivatives” can all appear in the same product. Even foods marketed around one main ingredient may contain others further down the label.

Switching to a nutritionally complete plant-based food removes several common animal proteins in one step.

That does not prove every itchy dog needs plant-based food. Most allergies are environmental, and plant ingredients can also trigger reactions. But when food is suspected, simplifying the diet and removing likely allergens is hardly a radical idea. It is the basic logic behind an elimination diet.

What Does the Research Show?

Research supports diet as part of managing allergic skin disease in dogs, although the evidence specifically testing plant-based diets remains limited.

A UK randomised trial involving dogs with diagnosed adverse food reactions compared two specialist foods. One used hydrolysed protein. The other used egg and rice with added plant compounds. Both maintained similar control of scratching, skin lesions, sleep and other clinical signs.

Another controlled study found that a food enriched with omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants and plant polyphenols produced greater improvements in skin-lesion scores than a control food after 60 days. Guardians also reported a larger reduction in itching, although the difference between the groups was not statistically significant.

These studies do not demonstrate that plant-based food cures allergies. Neither test food was fully plant-based. Both also came with serious caveats, including industry funding, small sample sizes and, in one study, every dog receiving allergy medication.

What they do show is that nutrition can affect itching, inflammation and skin health. They also support the use of ingredients including antioxidants, fatty acids and plant polyphenols as part of a wider treatment plan.

Complete Nutrition Matters

Dogs need nutrients, not slaughterhouse leftovers.

A plant-based food must be nutritionally complete and appropriate for the individual dog. Simply removing animal ingredients from a homemade diet without understanding canine nutrition is not enough.

The British Veterinary Association ended its blanket opposition to meat-free diets for dogs in 2024, recognising that nutritionally sound options can be safe.

Persistent scratching should never be dismissed. Skin infections, fleas, mites and other conditions need to be ruled out. A vet may recommend an elimination trial lasting several weeks, during which treats and other foods must also be controlled.

A Straightforward Option

A plant-based diet will not solve every allergy. No honest person should claim otherwise.

But for dogs reacting to animal proteins, it offers something unusually straightforward: a complete food that removes several common suspects without replacing one slaughtered animal with another.

The dog gets a carefully controlled diet. The guardian gets a clearer picture of what may be causing the reaction. Other animals are not killed to fill the bowl. For some dogs, that change could mean less itching, healthier skin and finally being able to sleep without waking to scratch.

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Eat more protein.

Prioritise protein.

Get enough protein.

And, somewhere underneath all of that, the same assumption keeps appearing: animal protein is the gold standard.

A new study suggests something very different. Researchers looking at postmenopausal women found that replacing animal protein with plant protein was linked to significant weight loss, even when total protein intake stayed roughly the same.

The women were not simply eating less protein. They were changing where that protein came from. Animal protein went down. Plant protein went up. Body weight fell.

In the low-fat plant-based group, animal protein intake dropped by 23.3g per day, while plant protein rose by 22.1g per day. Total protein barely changed. Yet body weight fell by 3.6kg, compared with just 0.2kg in the control group. So perhaps the question was never just “how much protein?” Perhaps it was always “what kind?”

The researchers found that each 1kg of weight loss was associated with a reduction of 16.2g of animal protein per day and an increase of 12.7g of plant protein. The effect was independent of energy intake.

Animal products bring more than protein. They bring cholesterol, saturated fat, and a different amino acid profile. The study points to methionine, an amino acid found in higher concentrations in animal products, as one possible piece of the picture. Lower methionine intake was associated with lower BMI. This does not mean one nutrient explains everything.

It means the usual “protein is protein” line is too crude.

A trial found something else too. Moderate-to-severe hot flashes fell by 88% in the group eating a low-fat plant-based diet with daily soybeans. Half of the women who completed the intervention had no moderate-to-severe hot flashes at all by week 12. Less animal fat. More fibre. More soy. More plant protein. Fewer animal products.

The findings do not prove every individual will get the same result. The study was short, the group was small, and the intervention combined several changes.

But it does challenge a very profitable myth. Animal protein is not special. It is not even helpful.

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The survey, conducted by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and Morning Consult, asked 2,200 US adults what effect different foods have on blood cholesterol. Around half correctly identified beans, whole grains and soy products as cholesterol-reducing foods. Then came the problem.

36% said chicken lowers cholesterol risk. 26% said lean red flesh does the same. 18% said eggs reduce cholesterol risk.

Chicken. Red flesh. Eggs.

Foods from animals being mistaken for foods that protect people from high cholesterol.

This is what happens when decades of industry messaging, diet culture, protein obsession and “lean meat” marketing are allowed to shape public understanding. People are not simply confused by accident. They are confused in a culture that keeps presenting animal products as normal, necessary and healthy.

Chicken flesh has been sold as the “healthy” flesh. Eggs have been rehabilitated over and over again by people desperate to keep them on the plate. Dairy is still pushed into dietary guidance as though no conflict of interest could possibly be involved.

Meanwhile, plant staples are sitting there doing the work.

Beans. Lentils. Whole grains. Soy milk. Foods that do not require animals to be used as commodities. Foods that can support health without pretending exploitation becomes acceptable when the label says “lean.”

One in five respondents did not know there was any link between diet and blood cholesterol at all. Among those who did, many learned from healthcare providers, but plenty also learned from family, friends and social media. So yes, misinformation spreads online. But misinformation also spreads at dinner tables, in adverts, through school meals, on food packaging, and in official-looking guidance shaped by industries with everything to gain.

The encouraging part is that more than half of respondents said they would be willing to try plant-based eating if they had high cholesterol or wanted to reduce their risk.

People have been sold the idea that animal products are normal, necessary and healthy for so long that many now mistake the problem for the solution.

That is not confusion.

That is the system working exactly as intended.

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A new systematic review and meta-analysis published in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health has found that higher intakes of legumes and soy foods are associated with a lower risk of developing hypertension. Not a tiny theoretical difference. A measurable one.

The analysis included 12 prospective cohort studies, covering more than 309,000 participants. People with higher legume intake had a 16% lower risk of developing hypertension compared with those with lower intake. People with higher soy intake had a 19% lower risk.

The dose-response findings are even more useful.

For legumes, including beans, lentils, chickpeas and peas, the benefit appeared to increase up to around 170g a day. At that level, the study found around a 30% lower risk of hypertension. For soy foods, including tofu, tempeh, edamame and miso, the benefit seemed to plateau at around 60 to 80g a day, with a 28 to 29% lower risk.

In plain English: a serving of beans, lentils, chickpeas, peas, tofu or tempeh each day is not fringe health advice. It is exactly the kind of food public health should have been shouting about for years. Instead, people are still being sold the idea that protein means animal flesh, dairy and eggs. That lie has done enormous damage.

Legumes and soy are cheap, accessible, filling and nutrient-dense. They provide fibre, plant protein, potassium, magnesium and bioactive compounds. These are not obscure supplement powders. They are not luxury wellness products with a ridiculous price tag. They are beans. Lentils. Chickpeas. Tofu. Tempeh. Peas. Normal food.

Food that most people in the UK and Europe barely eat.

The study notes that average legume intake across Europe and the UK is only around 8 to 15g a day. That is pathetic. It is a rounding error on a plate. Existing European dietary guidelines already recommend far higher intakes for cardiovascular health, but actual consumption remains nowhere near enough. This is what happens when entire food cultures are built around animal products and then everyone acts shocked when preventable disease becomes normal.

Hypertension affects around 1.4 billion people worldwide. It is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and heart attacks. Its prevalence has risen dramatically over recent decades. This is not a minor issue. This is one of the biggest public health problems on Earth. And part of the answer may be sitting in a tin of beans.

Of course, no single food fixes a broken food system. Nobody should read this as a reason to stop taking prescribed medication or ignore medical advice. But it should make people question why some of the simplest, cheapest dietary changes are still treated as alternative or niche.

There is nothing niche about beans on toast.

There is nothing extreme about chickpea curry.

There is nothing radical about tofu.

What is extreme is a society that normalises eating animals at every meal, then pours endless money into treating the diseases linked to that pattern.

The researchers rated the likelihood of a causal relationship as “probable” for both legumes and soy in relation to reduced hypertension risk. That does not mean every question is settled. The studies varied. The researchers noted heterogeneity. More research is needed on specific foods, preparation methods and different populations. But the direction is clear. More legumes and soy are associated with lower hypertension risk. Current intakes are far too low. These foods are affordable, sustainable and widely available. The public health implications are obvious.

So why are we still acting like the problem is individual confusion?

People are confused because they have been confused on purpose. They are told soy is suspicious while processed animal products are treated as normal. They are told tofu is strange while drinking the breast milk of another species is treated as ordinary. They are told beans are boring while animal flesh is wrapped in masculinity, tradition and convenience.

The result is a population that often eats too little fibre, too few legumes and too much food built around exploitation. This study is not just about blood pressure. It is about how badly society has mislabelled food.

Animal products have been sold as strength, nourishment and tradition. Legumes and soy have been dismissed as side dishes, substitutes or punchlines. But the evidence keeps pointing in the same direction. Plant-based staples are not the weak alternative. They are what health advice should have centred all along.

Beans, lentils, chickpeas, peas, tofu and tempeh are not magic.

They are just food.

And sometimes that is the point.

We do not need another wellness trend. We do not need another overpriced protein bar. We do not need another influencer pretending nutrition began when they discovered supplements.

We need food systems that stop treating animals as commodities and stop treating basic plant-based foods as an afterthought.

A bowl of lentils will not fix everything.

But it might do more for public health than another decade of pretending animal products are the foundation of a healthy diet.

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Not by buying a miracle supplement. Not by following some billionaire longevity routine.

Food.

The study, published in Aging Cell, looked at 104 adults aged 65 to 75. Researchers used 20 biomarkers, including cholesterol, insulin and C-reactive protein, to estimate biological age. That is not the same as chronological age. Chronological age is how many birthdays you have had. Biological age is a measure of how your body is functioning.

The participants were split into four diet groups. Two were omnivorous. Two were “semi-vegetarian”, with 70% of protein coming from plant sources. Each group was also split by fat and carbohydrate intake. After just four weeks, three of the four groups showed reductions in biological age.

The group that did not show significant change was the omnivorous high-fat group. In other words, the group closest to how many participants were already eating. The strongest statistical evidence came from the omnivorous high-carbohydrate, lower-fat group, which got 14% of energy from protein, 28 to 29% from fat and 53% from carbohydrates.

So the picture is not as simple as “plant foods good, animal foods bad” in this particular short trial. But it does fit into a much bigger pattern. Diets higher in plant foods and lower in saturated fat keep showing up in research linked to better health markers.

This study is not proof that anyone can reverse ageing, live longer, or avoid disease by changing food for four weeks. The researchers were clear about that. They called for longer studies to see whether the changes last, whether they reduce disease risk, and whether the same effects occur in other groups.

When people are told to eat more plants, they often act as if they are being asked to do something extreme. Meanwhile, the standard animal-heavy diet is treated as neutral, normal and sensible, even when study after study links better health outcomes with shifting away from it. A four-week change was enough to move biological age markers in older adults.

Imagine what society might gain if it stopped defending animal products like a personality trait.

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A study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, followed 92,849 people for an average of 11 years. Participants were 59 years old on average at the start of the study, and included African American, Japanese American, Latino, Native Hawaiian and white participants. During the study period, 21,478 people developed Alzheimer’s disease or another related dementia.

Researchers looked at three different plant-based dietary patterns.

Not veganism.

Not vegetarianism.

Plant-based dietary patterns.

Veganism is an ethical principle. A justice movement. A rejection of animal exploitation. A person can reject animal use and still eat a healthy diet and a terrible diet, and everywhere in between. The study separated plant-based diets by quality.

They described a healthful plant-based diet included foods such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, vegetable oils, nuts, legumes, tea and coffee, and an unhealthful plant-based diet included added sugars, fruit juices, refined grains and potatoes, especially when eaten as part of fast foods or processed meals.

The results were clear enough to be worth paying attention to, while still needing the usual caution. This was observational. It found associations. The most striking part was the diet change over time. Among 45,065 people who reported their diet again after 10 years, those who moved most towards an unhealthful diet had a 25% higher risk of dementia. Those who moved most away from an unhealthful diet had an 11% lower risk.

So no, “plant-based” is not health magic. A plate of refined, sugary, low-quality food does not become health-promoting because it is free from animal products. But the tired idea that humans need meat, milk, eggs or fish for brain health keeps taking hit after hit.

Whole grains. Beans. Lentils. Vegetables. Fruit. Nuts. Seeds. Tea. Coffee. Ordinary foods.

No animal required.

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Then Katya Gorbacheva turns up eight months after giving birth, after a C-section, after 18 months away from competition, and lifts a 476kg total.

At Moscow Lights, she competed in the women’s 76kg open weight class, won first place, recorded nine good lifts, set a new personal best total, and was named Best Lifter among all raw female competitors.

They were not “good for a vegan.” They were serious numbers.

176kg squat.

105kg bench.

195kg deadlift.

That bench was a 10kg personal record. The deadlift was a 5kg personal record. The total was a competition record.

Pregnancy disrupted her training. Squats and deadlifts were limited because she could not wear a lifting belt. She kept benching heavy, then came back at a lower bodyweight and stronger than before.

“The female body is amazing,” she said. “We can create life only to come back stronger.”

She fuels this with tofu, seitan, grains, vegetables, buckwheat, oats, flax, TVP and other plant foods. Not steak. Not eggs. Not the strange little fantasy people cling to where strength has to come from someone else’s body.

Katya originally changed her diet for health reasons, but the ethics followed. “I wouldn’t eat my dog. Why would I eat a pig? Why would anyone?” Exactly.

Refusing to treat animals as food is not weakness.

The weakness is needing myths to defend exploitation.

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Headlines have turned a 21-year-old woman’s death into a warning about “veganism”, when the actual issue is severe, preventable B12 deficiency.

Veganism is an ethical principle against animal exploitation. A plant-based diet is a dietary pattern. Conflating the two is lazy at the best of times. In this case, it is disgraceful.

B12 deficiency is not a “vegan problem”. It is not even rare. The NHS says around one in 20 people aged 65 to 74 are B12 deficient, rising to around one in 10 people over 75. Severe deficiency is often linked to absorption problems, including pernicious anaemia, and some medications can also interfere with B12 absorption.

Reports say Georgina had followed a plant-based diet for around three years and had not taken B12 supplements for at least six months. But B12 deficiency usually develops slowly. The body can store B12 for years. So pretending this is a simple case of “vegan diet causes suicide” is not public health reporting. It is culture-war rubbish. B12 deficiency can cause serious physical and psychological symptoms. It should be recognised, tested for, and treated with supplements, injections, and fortified foods.

That is the story.

Not “veganism kills”.

B12 deficiency is serious.

Media dishonesty is optional.

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That advice shaped years of my life. It shaped what I ate, how I lived, how often I bled, how often I ended up in hospital, how thin I became, how much pain I thought I had to accept, and how hopeless the future looked.

The logic seemed simple enough: fibre makes the gut work harder, so avoid fibre. Eat low-residue foods. Keep things bland. Stick to white bread. Keep meals easy to digest. Do not irritate the bowel.

So I did what many people do after diagnosis. I listened.

I ate mostly meat, dairy and white bread.

And I suffered for years.

Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are forms of inflammatory bowel disease. They are not a bit of bloating. They are not a sensitive stomach. They are not on the same planet as Irritable bowel syndrome. They are inflammatory conditions that leave people losing blood, losing weight, struggling to absorb nutrients, living with pain, exhaustion, diarrhoea, cramps, hospital admissions, scans, mega doses of corticosteroids, immune suppression, and the constant threat of surgery.

When your bowel is inflamed, ulcerated and damaged, food becomes frightening. Eating becomes a calculation. Leaving the house becomes a calculation. Your own body starts to feel like something you cannot trust.

So when a specialist gives you a rule, you cling to it.

Mine was: avoid fibre.

What I was not told clearly enough was that fibre is not one thing. I was not told that the gut microbiome matters. I was not told that different fibres behave differently. I was not told that blending, soaking, peeling, mashing, boiling, and changing texture can make plant foods easier to tolerate. I was not told that some people may struggle with one bean but tolerate another. I was not told that a narrowed bowel is a different situation from a gut that is inflamed but not obstructed.

I was given a blunt instruction.

My diet became animal products and refined carbohydrates.

The exact kind of diet now increasingly associated with inflammatory disease risk.

For years, I thought I was protecting my bowel by avoiding the very foods that may have helped repair the ecosystem inside it. Then I changed, almost by accident.

At the time, I had been learning more about how destructive the beef and dairy industries are for the environment. I was already facing the possibility of having parts of my bowel removed in the near future, so I reached the point of: what the hell?

I swapped cow’s milk for soya milk. I swapped cow flesh for legume or mushroom-based beef replacement products.

The change was drastic.

That pushed me to read more of the medical literature. The more I read, the more obvious it became that the advice I had been living under was far too simplistic. Eventually, I moved to a fully plant-based diet.

My inflammatory markers improved so much that my specialist was dumbfounded. They were not just better than they had been. They were better than the average person’s.

For the first five years, I was completely symptom-free.

After that, I had a minor flare-up. Over the next five years, I had occasional flare-ups lasting a few weeks. That is not perfection. That is not a miracle cure. That is not a promise to anyone else.

But compared with spending most of my life passing blood several times a day, malnourished, underweight, in agonising pain, and in and out of hospital several times a year, it was a different life.

This is not an article claiming plant-based diets cure Crohn’s disease. Anyone selling certainty around inflammatory bowel disease should be treated with caution. IBD is complicated. People have different disease patterns, different triggers, different levels of bowel damage, different medications, different histories, and different risks. Some people have strictures. Some people need surgery. Some people need biologics. Some people need temporary low-fibre diets during severe flares or narrowing.

But “some people need temporary fibre restriction” is not the same as “fibre is the enemy.”

A large prospective study published in 2025 in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research followed 143,434 UK Biobank participants for an average of 14.5 years. During that period, 1,117 developed inflammatory bowel disease, including 795 cases of ulcerative colitis and 322 cases of Crohn’s disease.

The finding was not that any food with a vegan label protects the gut. It was more specific, and more useful.

A healthy plant-based diet was associated with a reduced risk of IBD. People eating more health-promoting plant foods, including fruit, vegetables and whole grains, had a lower risk of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Fruits and vegetables appeared particularly protective. Inflammatory markers, including C-reactive protein, white blood cells and neutrophils, helped explain the association. In plain English: whole plant foods are best. But the study also found that an unhealthy plant-based diet, high in refined grains and oils, was associated with a higher risk of Crohn’s disease.

Plant-based does not automatically mean healthy.

Chips are plant-based. White bread is plant-based. Sugary drinks can be plant-based. Refined oils are plant-based.

The distinction is whole plant foods versus the standard Western pattern of animal protein, animal fat, refined carbohydrates and highly processed products. And that raises a serious question.

Why are so many patients still being pushed away from fibre as if fibre itself is the problem?

Fibre feeds beneficial gut bacteria. Those bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids, including butyrate, which help maintain the gut barrier and regulate inflammation. A gut deprived of fibre is not being rested in any meaningful long-term sense. It may be being starved of the very material it needs to build a healthier microbial environment.

Of course, this has to be handled carefully. Nobody with IBD should be told to shovel down raw kale during a flare and hope for the best. But nuance is not the same as fear. Cooked carrots are not the same as raw cabbage. Blended lentil soup is not the same as a bowl of hard chickpeas. Smooth nut butter is not the same as whole nuts. Peeled fruit is not the same as fruit skins. White bread is not the same as oats. One bean is not the same as another bean. A person with strictures is not the same as a person without strictures.

This is where proper support matters. A dietitian who understands IBD and plant-based nutrition can help someone test foods carefully, keep nutrition adequate, and avoid reckless restriction. An elimination approach can help identify personal triggers without declaring war on an entire food group. The problem is not caution. The problem is blanket rule cautions. The problem is telling sick people to avoid fibre without properly explaining when, why, for how long, which types, in what form, and what the long-term trade-off may be.

The problem is a medical culture that can be extremely confident about removing parts of someone’s bowel, while being weirdly underpowered when discussing the food passing through that bowel every single day.

There is also the animal agriculture question.

Crohn’s disease has been investigated in relation to Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, known as MAP. MAP causes Johne’s disease in cows, a chronic inflammatory intestinal infection. Research has found MAP more often in people with Crohn’s disease than in people without it, although a direct causal link has not been firmly established. MAP has also been detected in cow’s milk and can survive pasteurisation. That does not prove dairy causes Crohn’s. But it does make the cultural obsession with cow’s milk look even more absurd.

We are told cow’s milk is normal. Necessary. Nourishing. A default food. Something humans should pour onto breakfast and into children because marketing made it sacred. But when you step back, it is a secretion taken from another species, produced after reproductive exploitation, tied to an industry with major environmental costs, and potentially relevant to a disease area where many patients are desperate for answers.

My story is not a prescription.

It is a warning.

When I followed the advice to avoid fibre, I got worse. When I replaced dairy and cow flesh with plant-based alternatives and then moved to a plant-based diet, my life changed. And not every meal is whole food and cooked from scratch, that’s the daily goal, but my kitchen has plenty of vegan junk food for the days when I have either no time, life happens, or have symptoms which means I need concentrated calories.

That does not mean every person with Crohn’s will respond the same way. It does mean the old script deserves serious scrutiny.

Patients with IBD deserve better.

They deserve nuance. They deserve up-to-date evidence. They deserve clinicians who can explain the difference between temporary symptom management and long-term gut health. They deserve help building a diet that supports remission, nutrition, dignity and actual life.

“Just avoid fibre” is not good enough.

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