- Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a condition that affects millions of people, and factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity can increase a person’s risk.
- Research has shown that diet and exercise are key to reducing that risk.
- Now, a study has found that the EAT-Lancet diet, designed to be sustainable and largely plant-based, can reduce a person’s risk of developing and help prevent CKD.
A new study, conducted by researchers in China and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, has found that a plant-forward diet is associated with a decreased risk of developing CKD.
“The findings reinforce that multiple plant-forward diets support kidney health, with the EAT–Lancet diet serving as a structured, biologically supported option within this broader dietary framework.”
— Thomas M. Holland, physician-scientist and assistant professor at the RUSH Institute for Healthy Aging, RUSH University, College of Health Sciences, who was not involved in the study.
Holland also pointed out that these findings suggest a healthy diet may help reduce some environmental risk factors for chronic kidney disease.
“A major strength of this study is its integration of dietary patterns with genetic, environmental, and molecular data, offering more insight into how diet influences CKD risk at a biological level. The finding that diet had a stronger protective impact among individuals with less access to green space suggests that healthy eating may partially offset environmental risk factors. Thus, when people lack supportive surroundings for health, what they eat becomes even more important,” he said.
The
It was developed as a healthy reference diet that was also sustainable, staying within “safe planetary boundaries for six environmental processes that together regulate the state of the Earth system, and include climate change, land-system change, freshwater use, biodiversity loss, and interference with the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.”
The researchers used data from the UK Biobank, a database of more than half a million volunteers recruited between 2006 and 2010, when they were 40 to 69 years old, and followed up ever since to record who falls ill and why.
They used 24-hour dietary recall questionnaires to assess the diet of 179,508 participants without CKD at baseline. They then evaluated participants’ adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet and analyzed any associations with CKD.
Researchers followed up participants for a median of 12.1 years, during which time 4,819 people (2.7%) developed CKD.
“Eating more plant foods is definitely beneficial for the kidneys. A new area of research that is emerging examines the diversity of plant foods—that is, how many different plant foods are consumed.
Recent studies in CKD patients have shown this reduces renal acid load and constipation, both beneficial outcomes for these patients.”– Matthew Snelson, Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia, who was not involved in the study.
The higher the participants’ adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet in each of the four analyses, the lower their risk of CKD.
Holland noted that other plant-forward diets had similar benefits:
“From a kidney health perspective, the EAT–Lancet diet does not appear categorically superior to
“However,” he told Medical News Today, “a potential advantage of the EAT–Lancet diet lies in its more explicit quantitative limits on red meat, saturated fat, and added sugars, (similar in theory to the MIND diet) which may confer additional benefit through tighter regulation of inflammatory and metabolic pathways linked to kidney damage.”
The study does have some limitations, though.
“There were notable limitations to the study, including self-reported diet, limited population diversity, and the observational design, which prevents causal conclusions. That being said, the findings reinforce that multiple plant-forward diets support kidney health, with the EAT–Lancet diet serving as a structured, biologically supported option within this broader dietary framework,” Holland told Medical News Today.
Holland explained that plant-forward diets reduce inflammation, improve lipid metabolism, and lower metabolic stress on the kidneys, telling MNT:
“Diets rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and unsaturated fats are associated with higher levels of anti-inflammatory fatty acids and lower levels of inflammatory markers, both of which were shown in this study to partially explain the reduced CKD risk. Chronic inflammation and oxidative stress gradually damage kidney blood vessels and filtering units; this means ongoing low-level irritation slowly wears down the kidneys’ ability to clean the blood.”
Animal vs. plant-based diets
“Diets rich in whole plant foods typically lower sodium intake compared to animal-heavy patterns, helping control blood pressure—a key driver of CKD progression. It’s worth nothing though that some highly processed plant-based meat alternatives can be quite high in sodium.”
— Matthew Snelson, research fellow
Snelson explained further:
“Lower meat consumption in plant-forward diets reduces intake of amino acids like tyrosine and tryptophan, which gut microbiota ferment into p-cresol and indole precursors. The body processes these into p-cresyl sulfate and indoxyl sulfate, which are uremic toxins that damage kidneys by promoting inflammation and fibrosis.”
