Oxford Population Health has launched a major UK study aiming to involve around 100,000 people to investigate the long-term health effects of modern diets, including those containing plant-based meat and dairy alternatives.
Funded by the Medical Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, EPIC-Oxford 2 will collect detailed information on diet, lifestyle and health from adults across the country.
The project builds on the original EPIC-Oxford study, which began in the 1990s and has followed the health of around 65,000 people throughout the UK. Its findings helped establish evidence about differences in disease risk between meat-eaters, pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans.
However, much of that research began before the widespread availability of today’s plant-based meat and dairy alternatives. The new study will investigate dietary patterns that reflect the foods people now have access to, rather than relying entirely on evidence gathered when the market looked substantially different.
“More people in the UK are experimenting with plant-based diets than ever before, but what people are eating today is very different from what they were eating when many of the studies that inform current evidence were conducted,” said Keren Papier, Chief Investigator and Senior Nutritional Epidemiologist at Oxford Population Health.
“Participants in this study will help us to address many important questions about how modern diets affect long-term health; we are very grateful for their input.”
EPIC-Oxford 2 aims to recruit around 80,000 new volunteers alongside participants from the original study. Recruitment is open to all UK residents aged 18 and over, whether they regularly consume meat, fish and dairy products or follow a flexitarian, vegetarian or vegan diet.
The researchers want participation from people with different eating habits to support comparisons across dietary groups. People do not need to be reducing their consumption of animal products to take part.
Oxford said the main objective was to establish the world’s most informative resource for studying the health benefits and risks of modern plant-based diets.
The university identified several developments behind the need for new research, including interest in reducing meat and other animal products for health, environmental and ethical reasons, as well as the expansion in the availability and consumption of plant-based foods.
Public debate about the health effects of ultra-processed foods, including plant-based alternatives, has also added questions about how different products contribute to overall dietary patterns.
For the alternative protein sector, the research addresses an evidence gap surrounding the foods now being sold and consumed. Earlier studies of vegetarian and vegan diets cannot fully reflect a market that has subsequently introduced a much wider range of meat substitutes, dairy alternatives and other plant-based products.
The original EPIC-Oxford study observed differences in the risk of conditions including heart disease, diabetes and some cancers among people following different diets. The new project will investigate possible biological explanations for those differences, combining information about food intake, health and lifestyle with biomarkers.
“With EPIC-Oxford 2, we want to go beyond describing those differences in disease risk and better understand the biological mechanisms that may explain them,” Papier said.
“By combining population-level diet research with molecular studies, we hope to build stronger evidence on how diet affects health and support better disease prevention in the future.”
The combination of dietary information and biological measurements is intended to help researchers examine how eating habits relate to health, as well as identify patterns across the population.
The launch announcement did not report new findings about the health effects of plant-based alternatives. Instead, the project will establish a resource for future investigations into a range of health outcomes, with the information gathered potentially contributing to dietary guidance for the public.
Participants are invited to complete an online questionnaire taking approximately 25 minutes. They can also opt to receive a personalized nutrient report, provide biological samples and complete follow-up questionnaires.
Further information and access to the questionnaire are available through the EPIC-Oxford 2 study website.
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Oxford targets 100,000 participants to investigate modern plant-based diets – Protein Production Technology International
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