Is the future of the human diet green? – a case of vegetarian diet in Croatia

Authors

Marko Gerić¹ , Marijana Vučić Lovrenčić² , Sandra Božićević² , Ivica Rubelj³ , Lucija Nanić³ , Nikolina Škrobot Vidaček³ , Laila Bendix⁴ , Maja Peraica¹ , Dubravka Rašić¹ , Ana-Marija Domijan⁵ , Valentina Gluščić¹ , Jasna Jurasović¹ , Tatjana Orct¹ , Selma Cvijetić Avdagić¹ , Gordana Jurak⁶ , Jasna Bošnir⁶ , Katarina Matković¹ , Luka Kazensky¹ , Vera Garaj Vrhovac¹ , Goran Gajski¹

1. IMROH
2. Merkur Hospital
3. Ruđer Bošković Institute
4. Danish Aging Research Center
5. Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry
6. AŠ Teaching Institute of Public Health

Conference / event

International Symposium on Food Safety and Control, May 2024 (Vienna, Austria)

Poster summary

During the recent few decades, there has been a great deal of discussion about how and to what extent a vegetarian diet might improve human health, animal welfare, and the planet’s sustainability. Available literature review suggests that some beneficial properties from the aspect of oxidative stress, DNA damage, and inflammation might be attributed to the restriction of animal-based food, however, many inconsistencies still remain. Based on our results using a multi-biomarker approach, we observed higher levels of DNA damage in the vegetarian group. This result was supported by lower vitamin B12 important in DNA metabolism, lower Cu, Zn, and glutathione involved in oxidative stress defence, and the presence of two pesticides in the plasma of the vegetarian group. Our further research will focus on different dietary sub-groups with special attention to lifestyle and diet quality assessment in order to provide evidence-based data for healthier nutrition planning.

Keywords

Vegetarian, DNA damage, Oxidative stress, Human biomonitoring, Pesticides

Research areas

Biological Sciences, Toxicology

References

1. Gajski et al. 2018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2018.07.054
2. Gajski et al. 2023 https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2021.1986464

Funding

No data provided

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2024 Gerić et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.