Anyone who's promoting the exact diet that they were in previous years probably isn't keeping up with the latest science, though in general, the balance of evidence has remained remarkably consistent - centering one's diet around whole plant foods.

Eating a varied plant-based diet - and avoiding all meat, fish, chicken and dairy products - may have much to recommend it, but it's certainly not for everyone.

You can be in excellent physical shape, with low cholesterol, a healthy body weight and good overall physical fitness - but that doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy.

Simply switching to a healthy, plant-based diet can lessen stroke risk by reducing cholesterol and blood pressure, flooding your body with antioxidants and improving blood flow.

Mental health can be just as important as physical health - and major depression is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental illnesses.

Ounce for ounce, herbs and spices have more antioxidants than any other food group.

A plant-based diet is like a one-stop shop against chronic diseases.

You can be in excellent physical shape, with low cholesterol, a healthy body weight and good overall physical fitness - but that doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy.

A placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomised trial of boys with autism found that two to three servings of cruciferous vegetables a day improves social interaction, abnormal behaviour and verbal communication - within a matter of weeks.

A good way to adjust to a healthier diet is to think of three meals you enjoy that are largely plant-based. Pasta with tomato sauce can be tweaked to whole-grain pasta with added vegetables.

The typical Western diet is the number-one cause of premature death and the number-one cause of disability. In other words, a long and healthy life is largely a matter of choice.

One of the reasons it's so difficult to study the relationship between diet and disease is because many dietary behaviors are associated with non-dietary behaviors.

After following more than 60,000 people for more than a dozen years, University of Oxford researchers found those who consume a plant-based diet were less likely to develop all forms of cancer combined.

The Iowa Women's Health Study, which has followed more than 35,000 women for decades, found eating more broccoli, cauliflower, kale and other cruciferous vegetables was associated with a lower risk of getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in the first place.

The benefits of a healthier diet are far-reaching because they also equate to fewer animals being bred into inhumane factory farm conditions and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.