Health & Fitness Issue 2016: Eve Prang Plews offers some expert advice on veggie-based diets

If you tune into WMNF 88.5 FM, you’ve probably heard her blunt, witty and authoritative commentary on all things health and diet on alternating Monday mornings. But Eve Prang Plews is more than a radio personality. With decades of experience as a licensed nutrition counselor, including 24 years at Full Spectrum Health in Sarasota, Prang Plews has such a breadth and depth of knowledge — and the ability to communicate it in ways easy for anyone to understand — that to say she knows her stuff would be incredibly insufficient. She’s an expert in medical botany (the practice of using plants as medicine) as well as homeopathy, and has traveled the world to deepen her expertise.

We caught up with Prang Plews to get her take on the ups and downs of the vegan diet. While she’s skeptical about people’s ability to adhere to the lifestyle without depriving themselves of key nutrients, she agrees that it can be done successfully if one is diligent.

You’ve been at this for quite some time. Have you seen a noticeable increase in the amount of people who adopt the vegan lifestyle?

Oh, absolutely.

Does it run the gamut in terms of the reasons for doing so? What’s the most common reason?

There’s no question that animal rights are a very big part of the reason. The ecology of the planet is part of the reason and the dangers and hazards of a high-meat content diet are part of the reason.

What do you find are some of the biggest benefits and challenges of going vegan?

My conclusions have come from being in practice for 30 years. And they are that there too many vegans that I see that are protein malnourished. So, my perspective comes from those observances in clinic. It’s certainly not exclusive to individuals that are vegan. There are some vegans that just do an absolutely stellar job as far as their diet is concerned. And there are some people that just take the meat off the plate and they live on carrot juice and granola bars.

Periodically, a study will come out that suggests a vegan diet can prevent one chronic disease or other. Do you think that eliminating animal products can keep us from developing something like type II diabetes or cancer?

We have no evidence that we’re avoiding any health conditions. What we do see in some of the retrospective analysis are vegans and vegetarians having lower rates of some cancers and heart disease. But you have to remember that retrospective studies are based on a person’s memories. And we actually assay what they eat and compare that to what their memory says. They don’t always jive.

So people tend to reflect on themselves in a more positive, less accurate way?

People always reflect themselves in a more positive way. They might have eaten six cookies and they report one. But there is more data on vegetarianism than there is on veganism. I do see people making claims for veganism and vegetarianism in terms of preventing health problems that are simply not documented by science…or they just get exaggerated or overstated.

So that might have been the case when news of a study that suggested the vegan diet can reverse type II diabetes came out a few years back.

Yeah, but veganism isn’t going to reduce type II diabetes if the person is living on ginger ale and granola bars. There’s such a big, wide spread that making that statement, is not a statement that can be proven with any sort of large population.

Yeah, with the astonishing amount of vegan food options, including desserts now, it’s easy to overdo the sugar, unfortunately.

And it’s really eating too much processed food. I don’t want to single out sugar as the only part of it, since in the S.A.D.—the standard American diet, 60 percent of the calories that Americans are eating are processed food. Even if somebody is a meat eater, I’m not someone who endorses 12 percent of their diet coming from plants. I’ve been pushing for a plant-based diet ever since the first day I was in practice.

And by plant-based, you mean having the majority of one’s diet be plant-based, not necessarily all-plants.

Absolutely. Absolutely. We need to eat more plants. Period.

What do you think are the major potential pitfalls one should look out for when going vegan?

First off, they need B-12 in the form of methylcobalamine. And they need Vitamin D-3. Methylcobalamine is the superior form of vitamin B-12. I do not recommend cyanocobalamin. And because humans were designed to be outside but we don’t go outside, the idea that you can live in Florida and just because you live in Florida you’re going to get all the vitamin D you need from the sun is just nonsense. I’ve done hundreds of vitamin D tests and I’ve found hundreds of people who have good ranges. So those are two things that are absolutely required supplementally. But my greatest concern ith vegans is the lack of total amount of protein, the lack of total amount of amino acids. Number one, because they are not meat eaters, there is an amino acid in beans that does not exist much in the plant kingdom, so I believe you can’t be successful as a vegan or a vegetarian unless you have beans in the diet in a goodly amount and on a daily basis.

One can also supplement with amino acids as well, though, right?

Yes, there are amino acid supplements that can be taken.

Any you recommend?

I’m not going to recommend amino acids as a general rule simply because of the fact that it differs so much based on the individual’s diet.

Going back to the B-12. Why is it that supplemental B-12 has to be sublingual—it can’t be absorbed very well in the stomach—but when ingested through one’s diet it can be absorbed in the stomach?

Well, you have something in your stomach called intrinsic factor that allows you to absorb the B-12.

Mock meat products are becoming incredibly sophisticated, and they’re high in protien. Some are even created in a lab and designed to have a similar feel to the meat they’re trying to replicate. What are your thoughts on those kinds of products?

I’m not a fan in any way, shape or form. They’re highly processed foods. And I believe that we need to eat what occurs in nature…and so you can tell me that the constituents are identical, but I don’t believe the body’s going to use them in an identical way. So I’m not a fan of meat analogs at all…But if you’re doing that on an occasional basis, I’m not going to worry about that…What happens in vegan diets—and in vegetarian diets but less often—when people do not get adequate amounts of protein, they do not have enough aminos to make their own neurotransmitters. They don’t have enough aminos to build tissue. They don’t have enough aminos to make their own enzymes.

So, obviously you have concerns about people who want to eliminate all animal products from their diet. But it’s not entirely impossible, assuming, as you said, one supplements correctly and seeks adequate protein.

There are vegans I have that we run a biometric impedence analysis (on)…we’re measuring how much of your body is fat, how much of your body is muscle and how much of your body is water. And we can even measure how much water is inside the cell and how much water is outside the cell. And so we have a measuring tool that can let us know whether you flat-out do not have enough muscle the size your body. So that’s where that data comes from. It doesn’t come from an opinion. It comes from demonstration of the science. So the vegans and vegetarians I have that have good body mass, that have normal blood values, I’m not worried about them. They can be vegans and vegetarians for the rest of their life. They’ll do fine.

This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2016.