Annals of Medicine

Plant-based diets have been suggested to promote both human and planetary health. Plant-based diets include dietary patterns higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes, and lower in (or exclusive of) animal-based foods, such as animal meat, fish/seafood, eggs, and dairy. Examples include vegan and vegetarian diets, whole-food/plant-based diets, pescatarian, flexitarian and Mediterranean-style diets. Emerging evidence suggests a protective association between plant-based diets and the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes and improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors. Still, more research is needed to elucidate the mechanisms, and emerging research incorporating ‘omics’ (i.e., genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, etc.) is needed. With the continued popularity of plant-based diets, understanding the health and environmental sustainability of these diets and motivations for following them will help inform communication strategies to support consumers’ move towards following more plant-based diets.

Health professionals promote shifting towards more plant-based diets to ameliorate the long-term health consequences of obesity and related chronic disease, while climate scientists promote plant-based diets for a more sustainable food system. This article collection seeks submissions of articles contributing to the evidence of plant-based diets from sustainability to health, including epidemiological/observational studies, dietary interventions, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses.

Areas of interest include:

• Development of dietary indices to capture plant-based dietary patterns
• Plant-based dietary patterns and prevention or reversal of chronic diseases
• Plant-based diets and intermediate cardiometabolic risk factors (hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, insulin resistance, adiposity, inflammation, etc.)
• Behaviors and motivations that predict adherence to following plant-based diets
• Understanding how sustainability, encompassing environmental, economic, social, and health, differs across plant-based diets
• Mechanistic investigations into plant-based diets and health using ‘omics methodologies or microbiota-related outcomes

Annals of Medicine accepts the following types of articles:

• Research Article (systematic/meta-analysis reviews and observational studies)
• Review Article
• Clinical Trials
• Protocols
• Case Series
• Commentary

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Dr. Nicola McKeown's primary goal in research is to examine how diet quality is associated with healthy aging and how genetic modification alters diet-disease risk as we age. In addition, her research includes understanding what motivates people to follow popular diets, particularly more plant-based diets.

http://Diet Quality & Healthy Aging Lab (bu.edu)

Dr. Caleigh Sawicki is a currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work focuses on plant-based diets and carbohydrate nutrition in relation to cardiometabolic risk and chronic disease, with a special interest in the utilization of new methodologies such as metabolomics to better understand these complex relationships.

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Disclosure Statement: In the past three years, Dr. McKeown has received research funding from food companies (Danone Inc, General Mills Bell Institute of Health) and consulting support from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She serves as an unpaid scientific advisor on the Whole Grains Council. Dr. Sawicki declares no conflicts of interest regarding this work.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is October 1st, 2024.

When submitting your article, please select the section 'Nutrition', and the Special Issue 'From Sustainability to Health: Role of Plant-Based Diets' from the drop-down menu on the submission system.

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Annals of Medicine is an online, open access, international journal publishing across all areas of medicine and is part of our Elevate Series. This means that you will receive a concierge-level publishing experience, including dedicated support from our expert in-house Editorial team, with guaranteed response times of within 48 hours, an initial decision on whether your article will be peer reviewed within 5 working days, and a first decision on your research within an average of 22 working days.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisors for this collection will not be handling the manuscripts. Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions  prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is October 1st, 2024.

Instructions for AuthorsSubmit an Article