Should this article remain a WP:MOSDAB page which prohibits references? If we transition it to MOS:LIST, then we can add references that will aid the reader in understanding the use of the term. -Classicfilms (talk) 16:12, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note the related discussion on Template talk:Veganism and vegetarianism under "Plant-Based" missing?-Classicfilms (talk) 16:17, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Leave as dab page for now. The difficulty is that sources use the term very differently to refer to a vegan, vegetarian or semi-vegetarian diet. There are several physicians and others selling particular "plant-based diets" that they say work miracles because of this or that ingredient, omission or combination, and very few MEDRS-compliant sources offering definitions. There was even someone who tried to trademark the term "plant strong." So I think this should remain a dab page until there are more MEDRS sources, or it should be redirected to semi-vegetarianism or vegetarianism, with a sub-section in one of those articles. Of those two options, I think a dab page would be most helpful to readers. Sarah ^(talk) 16:23, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This reference is an example of scholarship out there that is not "selling" but offering scientific research. A subject that has an article without references does not allow the reader to make up his or her own mind:

• Philip J Tuso, MD; Mohamed H Ismail, MD; Benjamin P Ha, MD; Carole Bartolotto, MA, RD. "Nutritional Update for Physicians: Plant-Based Diets." The Permanente Journal (Kaiser Permanente). 2013 Spring; 17(2):61-66.

-Classicfilms (talk) 16:28, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Are there any other MEDRS-compliant sources, i.e. secondary sources, for example in medical journals? At present we don't even have a working definition. Sarah ^(talk) 16:30, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sarah, as I mentioned in the related discussion, a simple Google Search of the term "Plant Based Diet" led to "About 13,800,000 results":

• https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Plant+Based+diet

The source above offers a perfectly respectable definition and is online. I am sure that if not online, there are many other scholarly sources which I do not have time to explore at this moment. I'd like to wait to hear from other editors on the subject and am signing off for today.-Classicfilms (talk) 16:37, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Can you post some sources here that are MEDRS-compliant? There is no point in looking at Google, because it will only confirm what I'm saying, namely that no one seems to know what it is. So I would want to see some MEDRS sources, sources written by nutritionists, physicians or others, who are not involved in making money out of this, so that we have a definition that is free of commercial interests. If you can produce some of those, that would be a step forward. Sarah ^(talk) 16:40, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sarah, Kaiser Permante's journal is WP:MEDRS as you can see here:

http://www.thepermanentejournal.org/about-us.html

it is worthwhile to add, and a good place to start. I very much doubt that everyone of the millions of links out there are about making money. The point of the Wikipedia is to educate, that is what the goal of this discussion is. And now this really is my last edit for today.-Classicfilms (talk) 16:47, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Please post some MEDRS sources here. Here's a second one. This uses the term to mean semi-vegetarianism: "The health benefits of vegetarian diets are not unique. Prudent plant-based dietary patterns which also allow small intakes of red meat, fish and dairy products have demonstrated significant improvements in health status as well. At this time an optimal dietary intake for health status is unknown. Plant-based diets contain a host of food and nutrients known to have independent health benefits." PMID 22717188 Sarah ^(talk) 16:49, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Great! That is helpful and a reference I would like to see on the subject page. The point of the Wikipedia is to encourage debates exactly like this one - that is why WP:RS is a core principle of the WP. There are two other core principles that I would like to ask we adhere to as well - Wikipedia:Ownership of content and Wikipedia:Consensus. The point of an RFC is to hear from other editors on this topic and that is what I would like to do. That being said, I did type the key words plant based diet into a search on JSTOR and came up with 43,360 Search Results. This will give us plenty of references to choose from. I have pasted two of them below:

• "The Garden of Eden: Plant-Based Diets, the Genetic Drive to Store Fat and Conserve Cholesterol, and Implications for Epidemiology in the 21st Century." David J. A. Jenkins and Cyril W. C. Kendall, Epidemiology Vol. 17, No. 2 (Mar., 2006), pp. 128-130.

• "Biofortified and Bioavailable: The Gold Standard for Plant-Based Diets." Jeeyon Jeong and Mary Lou Guerinot Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 105, No. 6 (Feb. 12, 2008), pp. 1777-1778.

As for the Kaiser reference above, I was simply trying to provide a source that is open and online here. I would also like to reiterate that I personally am not against or opposed to the term "vegan." I'm interested in creating an article on the phrase "plant based" as it is in common use. I have a busy week ahead in Real life so I will check back here in a few days or so. -Classicfilms (talk) 13:23, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just did a quick search - Stanford University School of Medicine's medical journal published this article:

"The Effect of a Plant-Based Diet on Plasma Lipids": http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/plant_based.html

Now I am really done for the day.-Classicfilms (talk) 13:45, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That study is here (it's a primary source; we need secondary sources to give us an overview). I can't see it all, but the part I can read doesn't define "plant-based diet." Sarah ^(talk) 18:04, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• MEDRS-compliant sources have to be secondary sources (review articles and similar). If you go to PubMed, and click on review, it will return the review articles about "plant-based diet". There are 39 that mention it, but most only in passing. What we need to do is extract a definition from those sources.

My concern is that Wikipedia has contributed to the confusion about the meaning of the phrase. I'll try to find the diffs showing how it developed. Sarah ^(talk) 17:41, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• (Answering a bot-made RfC request) IMO the title "Plant-based diet" is a self-evident self-descriptive title: "a diet that is based on plants". Per wikipedia:Verifiability, we don't have to provide references to such self-evident statements. And as such, it is perfectly normal to describe the subject in general terms. We will need a ref only of there are some schools which (a) define the term differently and (b) insist that theirs are one and truly correct definition of the term. The word "-based" specifically implies that the diet is not made exclusively of plants. Therefore it is only natural there may be variations as to the amount of non-plant component in the diet (I am not an expert; are algae plants?) - The previous question is not a confession of my stupidity: I can easily click "algae". It is a rhetorical example which shows that a difference in a diet may be based on different understanding what "plant food" is (Is honey a plant food?) And IMO it is meaningless to disambiguate these minor differences. It will be more useful to have a generic article on the subject. As a matter of gradual progress in its writing, it may start with the list of diet which describe themselves "plant-based". An example (not the best possible; just the first pick) of such common phrase would be "ball game" - basically any game with ball involved is a ball game, and I am sure most expert in sports find the term self-evident and don't bother to write a scholarly text of kind "ball game is a game of balls. Balls may be round, oval, pear-shaped, bull-balls-shaped or even squarely triangular". (buit I may be mistaken :-) Staszek Lem (talk) 16:32, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Staszek Lem is right on the money there! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 23:47, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • My SWIFT code and account number will be emailed to you momentarily :-) Staszek Lem (talk) 00:57, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: Unless someone has some functional reason for a substantial change (such as changing the page to a wikipedia:Portal or wikipedia:Set index) I say leave it as it is. It is in a form that is helpful to the user and non-evaluative. The topic is reasonably coherent and meaningful in terms of cuisine and nutrition. It is one that might well be looked up and it is easy for the user to decide which links to select and explore; he even might glean what he needs to know from a quick scan of the entries in this article. That in itself is adequate justification both for the existence of the article and for its current form. Any argument about matters of opinion concerning the various topics should be left in the link targets. Fine distinctions such as whether algae (or FTM bacteria or fungi) really are plants or not, as Staszek Lem rightly questions, are neither confusing nor relevant here, any more than whether lungfish and herring both are fishes (they are not meaningfully so according to cladistics, but both are eaten as fish). Even the dilemma of whether fungi should be included when they have been cultivated on animal matter is not a show stopper; this is a page on foods, not taxonomy -- not even at the regnum level. Finer distinctions should be left to the target articles. Niggling about such matters is a waste of both editors' and users' time. Niggling about the precise format of entries is clearly dealt with at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Disambiguation pages#When to break Wikipedia rules. JonRichfield (talk) 07:08, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your advice is true both to the spirit of wikipedia and to the point. However "breaking the rules" is a rule prone to be broken just as well :-) In this case people feel that here a more detailed explanation is needed than a disambig page may allow, and stretching MOSDAB rules may reach the point when the page is seamlessly morphing into something new. Not to say that all food-based diets may have a common denominator. That said, I find reasonable @JonRichfield:'s suggestion to leave the page as it is, unless a substantial expansion is provided, which makes the change of the classification of the page self-evident. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:03, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This entire discussion seems to hinge on a faulty premise. A disambiguation page is a page for articles with matching titles (i.e. Mercury, Mercury and Mercury). It is not a list of concepts that are related. Note that, per WP:DABMENTION, we must police and remove any link on this page for which it can not be demonstrated that the subject is referred to by the phrase "Plant-based diet". For example, nowhere in Lacto vegetarianism does it say that "Lacto vegetarianism" is also known as "plant-based diet". Disambiguation page guidelines are very strict about that. If discussion of the subject requires variance from those guidelines, then it is not a disambiguation page, period. bd2412 T 17:31, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

BD2412, the term "plant-based diet" usually means vegan or vegetarian. Recently it has started to refer to diets with low amounts of meat in them too, i.e. semi-vegetarian diets. Personally I would redirect it to Semi-vegetarianism, but a dab page makes sense too. Sarah ^(talk) 19:37, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The point is, that's not what disambiguation is for. If it is possible to refer to the title of the page to cover the topics on the page collectively, then what you have is a topic with subtopics, not an ambiguity. These topics are difficult to write about, but believe me, papering over these difficulties by calling the terms "ambiguous" leads to much greater problems down the road. bd2412 T 20:10, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean, BD2412. The term plant-based diet is ambiguous, so we have a disambiguation page for it. Unfortunately, I think it became ambiguous because of Wikipedia, but I'm in the process of collecting diffs and sources showing how it might have happened, so I can't say that with certainty yet. But regardless of how it happened, it is currently an ambiguous term. Sarah ^(talk) 20:26, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be a collection of terms relating to a range of diets that are based on plants. Am I misreading that? Are there meanings of the term that do not fall into that general description? bd2412 T 20:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, BD2412, I don't understand what you're saying. It's not a collection of terms relating to something. It's a dab page for an ambiguous term, plant-based diet. I don't know how else to put it. Are there other meanings? No. Are there other diets that the term refers to? Not that I'm aware of, though of course lots of diets could be described as semi-vegetarian. Sarah ^(talk) 20:56, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I mean are there any other meanings of "plant-based diet" that do not fall into the general description of a diet based on plants. Let me explain it this way (from the discussion when establishing WP:BROADCONCEPT):

There are some common sense tests that I like to use when examining potential dabconcept situations. One of these is what I call the "I'm an expert" test. It goes like this: could a person reasonably represent themselves as an expert in [term], without having to be an expert in multiple fields of knowledge (i.e. without having degrees from different departments in the typical university)? Although there are many species of tuna that are called "bluefin tuna" person could be an expert in "bluefin tuna" without needing to specify a particular species. Compare that to a person claiming to be an expert on "Mercury", or a "battery" expert. The expert on "Mercury" would need to have both Roman mythology and astronomy in his knowledge base. The expert on "battery" would need both chemical engineering and law, as well as some military history and (depending how significant the subtopic was considered) baseball, too.

Now, if you came across an article that said "John Smith is an expert on Mercury", in order to fix that disambiguation link, you would most likely look to see whether John Smith was an astronomer, or a materials scientist, or a writer on Roman Mythology. If you came across an article that said "John Smith is an expert on plant-based diets", and you saw that John Smith's field was as a dietician, how would you fix that link? bd2412 T 21:09, 7 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

BD2412 is right. This is NOT a dab page. Very easy to see why. A dab page is about articles sharing the same name, or being referred to by the same name, but still having a different meaning. Rugby is a good example. It could refer to a city, a surname, a film, a sport, etcetera. But that's not the case here. If "Plant based diet" would have different interpretations, let's say a diet, a company and a film, then you could make it a dab page. But it is not. It is a kind of concept for a diet, based on plants. And all entries listed on the page fall under that category of diet, but you couldn't refer to any of them unambiguously by just saying 'plant based diet'. So that's why it should be rewritten as a broad concept article, and then you can expand and add all the references you like, just like on any other article. --Midas02 (talk) 01:52, 8 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you BD2412 for the clarification. I am a bit swamped in real life this month but I will try to check in when I can to see the article that you propose. Classicfilms (talk) 02:56, 11 August 2015 (UTC)-[reply]

• BD2412, I think we should wait until the RfC is closed by an uninvolved admin, and wait the full 30 days in case others comment. There is no difference between a plant-based diet and a vegan, vegetarian or semi-vegetarian one. Wikipedia is supposed to clarify confusion created elsewhere, not further it. The RfC question is whether this should be a dab page, a list, or a redirect. Pinging Jytdog. Sarah ^(talk) 17:02, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • First, the belief that there "is no difference between a plant-based diet and a vegan, vegetarian or semi-vegetarian one" has been thoroughly refuted both in the AfD that Jytdog started, and in the article, which now contains reliable sources that specifically distinguish a plant-based diet from the kind of dietary choices that you identify. Second, there is nothing wrong with improving an article while it is being discussed (particularly where that improvement was necessary to stave off deletion). Third, as to the question of whether this is an ambiguous term or a single concept, the sources now in the article state that it as a single concept that happens to encompass those terms, and other matters that are clearly beyond the scope of vegetarianism. We can argue semantics all we want, but we need to use reliable sources to do so. Can you find a source that says "there is no difference between a plant-based diet and a vegan, vegetarian or semi-vegetarian one"? I looked and found none that said that. bd2412 T 17:14, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • BD2412, you're an admin and you ignored an open RfC. You didn't create the article to save it from AfD; it was nominated for AfD because you created it. Please respect our dispute-resolution processes. Any article here is likely to turn into a poorly written POV fork, largely repetitive of the other three articles. Sarah ^(talk) 17:56, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is a concept, and the sources support that. You can call it a Featured article if you want, but that doesn't make it one. Your comments about "Whole Foods" on my talk page make it clear that you have become driven by a personal agenda here, and are ignoring reliable sources to suit your agenda. If you are unable to take a neutral and constructive view of this topic, or this discussion, then I sincerely suggest you step back from it. bd2412 T 18:07, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:DISENGAGE and Wikipedia:Consensus, I have stepped back from this debate and the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion debate. After reading BD2412's post above, and the thread referenced on his talk page - and in line with Wikipedia:Assume good faith, I wanted to post something here since I have worked on the Forks Over Knives article and had this discussion recently on the FOK talk page - and this edit that I made to the Plant -based diet article was removed. I want to start by saying that I have reverted nothing on either page discussed above, nor do I plan to since I do not want to engage in an edit war. It’s really up to the community to decide how this works out. My interest in the Forks Over Knives article (besides the fact that it is a film article and I frequently write on film articles) - indeed any article on the Wikipedia - has been in fulfilling the tenants WP:RS and WP:NPOV. Certainly there may be debate as to the sources we use and I welcome that since working in collaboration as a community is one of the WP’s most important traits. This is an ideological difference, not a commercial one (and while I have said it before I will say it again - I do not know the people involved with Forks Over Knives, the doctors involved - and I am not sure how or why Whole Foods Market came into the conversation). I have worked on many, many film articles during my almost 10 years on the Wikipedia, particularly the Hindi film Lage Raho Munna Bhai, which a few of us brought to FA status. Part of the process of enhancing that article meant working on related articles, such as ones about the actors and the life of Mahatma Gandhi, which I did. The same worked in reverse with the Grendel's mother article which I worked on with a team. I thus became involved in editing related articles such as the the main Beowulf article as well as the articles on various Beowulf films. It has always been my understanding that developing one article on the Wikipedia meant working on related articles. That is why I was interested in a referenced discussion of the term “Plant - Based diet,” as it was related to the content of the film “Forks Over Knives.” That being said, as I wrote above, I will be stepping back from this discussion and will let Wikipedia:Consensus decide what to do.-Classicfilms (talk) 01:15, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• What do you see as the difference between a plant-based diet and a vegan/vegetarian/semi-vegetarian one? Sarah ^(talk) 18:39, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• This has been very well addressed by comments in the AfD. For example:
  • From User:CFCF: "a plant-based diet is distinctly different from vegetarianism or even semi-vegetarianism. Those are both practices rather than diets and much research equates low meat-intake diets with vegetarianism when looking at populations in countries with traditionally low meat consumption such as India or Ethiopia, but they are distinct";
  • From User:AndyTheGrump: "it needs expansion to better cover the significant proportion of the World population who follow a (largely) plant-based diet by necessity rather than choice";
  • From User:WhatamIdoing: "a person who eats sugar cereal for breakfast, egg salad on white bread for lunch, and macaroni and cheese for supper, with chocolate and full-sugar soft drinks in between, would be following a "vegetarian" diet but not a "plant-based" one";
  • From User:Pandeist: "people who eat meat and enjoy eating meat and do not consider themselves vegetarian and do not apply any vegetarian principles are in fact vegetarians? I'm fascinated to see such a source".
• I think these comments fully address the distinction at issue, which is that vegetarianism (or semi-vegetarianism) is a dietary choice, and one that does not necessarily even require that the chooser have a diet that is actually plant-based, whereas having a plant-based diet is a biological incidence that may have nothing to do with the choice of the subject. Consider, for example, a grizzly bear who for some period can't find much meat to eat, and therefore subsists primarily on nuts and leaves and berries for that period. It's obviously not a "vegetarian" bear, nor is it a herbivore, but it is clearly subsisting on a plant-based diet. bd2412 T 20:57, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• BD2412. None of those comments address my question, and some are inaccurate. Semi-vegetarianism needn't be a dietary choice. A semi-vegetarian diet is a plant-based diet that allows eggs, dairy and small amounts of meat or fish. You're confusing calling the bear a "vegetarian" with saying she lives on a vegetarian diet. You're confusing lots of issues, in fact, as does the article, and precision is unlikely to be forthcoming because the medical sources aren't precise either. This is why I oppose creating the article, because it's going to be difficult to create anything decent that doesn't simply repeat what's in one of the other articles. Sarah ^(talk) 21:15, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • So you're saying that semi-vegetarian diet is a type of plant-based diet, aren't you? My primary objection here is that this is not an ambiguous term. You (and Jytdog) seem to think that "Vegetarianism" and "Plant-based diet" are basically the same thing, in which case the solution would not be to have a disambiguation page here, but to merge "plant-based diet" to Vegeterianism, as the primary topic of the term. That, I would have no objection to. The hatnote at Vegetarianism conveniently already says For plant-based diets in non-human animals, see herbivore. bd2412 T 21:29, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• BD2412, what Jytdog says below, that this is a PR/marketing term, is correct. The overwhelming majority of sources (when I last looked) used the term plant-based to refer to a vegan diet – not veganism as a philosophy, but a vegan diet, i.e. one that is entirely plant-based. The term plant-based was popularized by (among others) T. Colin Campbell in The China Study (2005) to refer to a vegan diet. Several celebrity physicians followed suit, selling their own versions of plant-based diets, but they all amounted to "don't eat animals."

  At some point the sources got confused – and I believe Wikipedia contributed to that confusion – and started referring to non-vegan diets as plant-based too. It is now a PR term that is used loosely. It can mean a vegan diet (no animal sources); a vegetarian diet (no animal sources that require killing the animal – so eggs and dairy are okay, but not meat); or a semi-vegetarian diet (meat is included but not much). There is the added advice to minimize junk, but that was always an implicit part of the vegan/vegetarian diet anyway.

  Because of this confusion, it seemed sensible to leave it as a dab page and list all the diets that plant-based can refer to. But a redirect to one of the other articles would work too. Sarah ^(talk) 22:41, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If all the page is doing is to "list all the diets that plant-based can refer to" then it is really a list delineating the contents of an ill-defined set, and not resolving ambiguity. In that case, it should be a list at List of plant-based diets (or List of diets described as plant-based. bd2412 T 18:06, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To put my comment in context: if this article is correct that a plant-based diet includes primarily whole grains, rather than refined starches, then it would also be possible to have a non-plant-based vegan diet. Soy milk and rice milk are processed foods, refined white sugar can be vegan, etc. None of that lives up to the healthful diet described at the top of this page. (Also, I want to know whether mushrooms are "plants" according to proponents of a "plant-based diet".  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:36, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Article should be article describing the various senses in which the term might be used. As the related articles currently stand, a simple disambiguation page is not appropriate. older ≠ wiser 17:34, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I've spent the day reading about this. Here is my takeaway. "plant-based diet" is the following:
  • the latest/greatest way to talk about the the same kind of diet that mainstream medicine has been advising for a very long time - lots of veg, whole foods, little fat (emphasizes what it includes - lots of veg, whole foods) not what it excludes.
  • nondogmatic on purpose. "plant-based" does not exclude eating meat.
  • it very purposefully crafted away from 'scary" words for everyday people, like "vegetarian" or "vegan" but is happy to include those under its umbrella.
  • matches the 2010 US govt dietary recommendations very well, and the first draft of the 2015 update is going to place even more emphasis on eating 1) lots of veg and 2) whole foods (in other words, exactly this)
  • Hard to say what to do with this in WP. It is essentially a public health marketing phrase. It is not a "diet" like South Beach nor an ideology - it is just a way to market current mainsteam (not fad! really - not fad) recommendations about good eating. It would be like having an article called "exercise twenty minutes every day". Jytdog (talk) 20:46, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• I just came to this page and have no understanding of why some are saying that a plant-based diet now includes eating animal corpses. A plant-based diet is just that - plants. Beans, grains, seeds, vegetables, and the other plants of the earth. From "back in the day" this always meant just plants, nothing else. Now it includes "meat"? Strange, to say the least. Randy Kryn 22:40, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Randy, I agree that this is curious. I'm wondering whether Wikipedia responded to the change in meaning or caused it, or whether it was always more fluid than I thought. The earliest reference to plant-based diet I can find on PubMed is T. Colin Campbell from 1986 (PMID 3538052), but I can only see the abstract, so I don't know how he defines it. Sarah ^(talk) 22:53, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• If it caused it that's pretty scary (shivers, me timbers). Full disclosure: I'm not neutral on this issue, and was a very active vegetarian activist, and proud to say that an action myself and a friend took eventually resulted in the idea and tactics of the "Beyond Beef" McDonald's campaign which, itself, has been called the beginning of the 'new' vegetarian movement. So my comments and edits come from a biased editor. Colin Campbell would have based it totally on plants, I'm fairly sure. Randy Kryn 22:58, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Plant-based, to my ears, does not imply an exclusively plant diet. It is a diet based on plants rather than meat or dairy. I think that is how it is most commonly used these days. It perhaps might have been used differently in the past, although with terms like vegan and vegetarian, I don't see how plant-based would also be used as a term of exclusion. older ≠ wiser 23:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• The common meaning of "-based" does not imply exclusivity. I would say the opposite, in fact, that to the layman, a "foo-based diet" sounds like something distinct from a "foo-only diet". By way of example, the Miami Heat are a indisputably "Miami-based" basketball team. Their training facilities are in Miami, and their home arena where their home games are played is in Miami. However, during the season they can be seen playing half their games in other parts of the country, wherever their away games take them. By way of comparison to the topic at hand, many sources refer to a "meat-based diet" or a "flesh-based diet", but none of those suggest that a person who has a "meat-based diet" eats literally nothing but meat, with no plant matter at all. I suppose such a person would have to rely on those KFC bacon "sandwiches" which substitute fried chicken for the buns. bd2412 T 17:57, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

BD2412, this is why there ought not to be an article on this. You're trying to work out what it means, rather than knowing, and if you try to find out how the term is used by consulting the RS, it will be time-consuming and you'll be little the wiser at the end of the process. (I know this because I have tried to do it.) Perhaps we can host an article about it in a few years' time, when the term has settled down to mean X and not Y, but for now it's too much in flux and, as Jytdog said, is mostly a marketing term. Sarah ^(talk) 18:14, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• As @SlimVirgin:, Sarah, mentioned, when the term was first brought to the public via Colin Campbell it may have had a specific meaning (it did, but sources, sources, sources) which was, incidentally, another name for vegetarian. Original research, but it had that meaning when I was aware of it and used it in the late 1980s and throughout the '90s. You had people like John Robbins, Howard Lyman, and, well, all of the other activists using it as another name for vegetarian. To say that it changed into something else (plants plus prepared animal corpses = plant based. Huh?) doesn't take into account the origin, the early and mid- usage, and probably the usage of most people now. Letting Wikipedia's article on plant-based diet meaning literally a plant-based diet, period, as the name both implies and as it existed (nobody back then even thought it could mean anything else), gives the most accurate representation of the term, the job of an encyclopedia. Randy Kryn 18:16, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• If that is the primary meaning then it should redirect to Vegetarianism, with a link out to a list of other meanings with reliable sources showing that the term is used in connection with those meanings. Per MOS:DAB a link can not appear on a disambiguation page unless it at least meets WP:DABMENTION. That is to say, for example, a link to Ovo-lacto vegetarianism can not appear on a disambiguation page for "Plant-based diet" unless there is a reliable source in the article, Ovo-lacto vegetarianism, indicating that this is considered synonymous with "Plant-based diet". Wikipedia has over a quarter million disambiguation pages, and it would be impossible to maintain them if they were not held to strict standards. As has often been observed, if an editor feels like an exception needs to be made to cover the topic, then they are probably not dealing with a topic that is actually ambiguous. bd2412 T 18:28, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Sources are indeed needed when counter-intuitive claims about language are made. In contemporary usage, plant-based does not imply an exclusively vegan or vegetarian diet. Period. Whether there is any other single article that might be the primary topic (such as flexitarian or semi-vegetarian (which sounds like a neologism)) is another matter, but I think readers searching for "plant-based diet" would be ill-served by a redirect to vegetarianism. older ≠ wiser 18:37, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Classicfilms has strongly recommended the use of one source, this 2013 article by Philip Tuso of Kaiser Permanente, which defines (or redefines) plant-based diet as one allowing some meat, eggs and dairy.

Tuso is on the board of directors of the Plantrician Project, which has laudable health goals. He writes in the 2013 article: "Physicians should advocate that it is time to get away from terms like vegan and vegetarian and start talking about eating healthy, whole, plant-based foods (primarily fruits and vegetables) and minimizing consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products. Physicians should be informed about these concepts so they can teach them to staff and patients."

The mistake Classicfilms has made is in trying to have Wikipedia lead from the front in this attempt to change the language. The result is that we have caused other sources to become confused, and their confusion is reflected back into Wikipedia, when editors not familiar with these issues rely on the confused sources. So plant-based diet now refers to a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet, and a semi-vegetarian diet (which can mean anything). That is why it makes most sense to stick with the dab page until uninvolved, authoritative sources have decided how to use the term. Sarah ^(talk) 20:28, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That is inherently not the description of a set of unrelated topics, as would be appropriate for a disambiguation page. It is a set of a range of concepts within a single broader concept. All of these can be described as diets that are to some degree based on the consumption of plants. This is precisely the circumstance that WP:DABCONCEPT addresses, where it says:

If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing it, and not a disambiguation page.

The relationship between the various diets individually characterized as being a "plant-based diet" is capable of being described in an article. bd2412 T 22:06, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Leave as disambiguation for now. Looking over what's here so far, everything from the History section onwards isn't really needed here. You'll find that information at herbivory articles. I'd cut down the text the bare minimum for the list of actual pages and let the pages themselves do the explaining. I do have other concerns from an NPOV perspective that this seems to focus (as a DAB page) too much on the human categorizations for vegetarian, etc. I'd list pages included herbivory, etc. from the natural sciences end of things, include less formal links potentially for human diets that simply have a lot of plants rather than the exclusionary ones that was mentioned briefly below. Once those pages are scoped out, this might be worth expanding into a sort of centerpiece article. For now, I'd just look to shift all the semantics over to the respective pages and keep this bare bones. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:52, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would not be so hasty. I'm a long-time vegetarian (nonvegan) and was unaware of quite the controversy until this arose, and I like being enabled to read about it. Teach the controversy!! Let's leave the page as is (ie in its form as expanded into a full fledged sourced explanation) for now and see what happens. A sprout won't grow if it's beheaded every time it starts showing a hint of green!! Pandeist (talk) 22:29, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what controversy you're referring to, but I wasn't referring to one in my post. This is just a disambiguation page, so it's better to let the individual pages being linked to do all the heavy lifting. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:05, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is that not the controversy right there? Some seem to think this phraseology is ambiguous while others seem to think he has a particular range of meaning. Let us let the reader of this page decide for themselves which of these possibilities sources most solidly support. Pandeist (talk) 04:32, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't getting into the phraseology at all. Just plain and simply if you are having a disambiguation page, you would have something sort of like this:

Plant-based diet" has been used to refer to:

Human diet

• Veganism: diet of vegetables, legumes, fruit, grains, nuts, and seeds, but no food from animal sources.
  • Fruitarianism: vegan diet consisting primarily of fruit.
  • Raw veganism: vegan diet in which food is uncooked and sometimes dehydrated.
• Vegetarianism: diet of vegetables, legumes, fruit, nuts, etc, that may include eggs and dairy, but no meat.
  • Ovo-lacto vegetarianism: includes dairy and eggs
  • Ovo vegetarianism: includes eggs but no dairy
  • Lacto vegetarianism: includes dairy but no eggs
• Semi-vegetarianism: mostly vegetarian diet with occasional inclusion of meat and/or poultry.
  • Macrobiotic diet: semi-vegetarian diet that highlights whole grains, vegetables, beans, miso soup, sea vegetables, and traditionally or naturally processed foods, with or without seafood and other animal products.
  • Pescatarian: semi-vegetarian diet with eggs, dairy and seafood.

Other

Herbivory

other potential articles . . .

That's all this entire page would be. All a DAB page does is list the name of the article and maybe an extremely brief few word summary of what the term means from the article. All the rest of the information goes to the individual articles instead and there's no need for any controversy at this time unless plant-based diet very concretely becomes it's own individual term (which it may be shown in sources someday) as opposed to a general catch all search term. What I've described is what is being suggested by making it a disambiguation page rather than an article linking to a bunch of others with more text and references. Kingofaces43 (talk) 07:06, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And on which of these pages can I read about how the use of this particular phrase, "plant-based diet," has evolved over time, or perhaps been used as a marketing term? Pandeist (talk) 07:27, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Right now that doesn't matter. There isn't content on that. If an when plant-based diet has concrete enough content for it's own page, then that page should be developed and there can be a discussion on how to fit everything together. Right now though, the current content fits best just for a standard DAB page with links to the specific pages. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:23, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with having disambiguation page is that each of that linked articles has to support the claim that it is known as "plant-based diet". A disambiguation page is nothing more than a navigational device. It should not contain assertions that are not present in the linked articles. older ≠ wiser 02:52, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bkonrad is exactly right. In order to keep our hundreds of thousands of disambiguation pages maintainable, they are strictly prohibited from containing links to articles that make no mention of the supposedly ambiguous term. Unless you can provide sources that enable you to add to these articles statements such as "Fruitarianism is also known as plant-based diet...", these links can not be included on the page. As it stands, a disambiguation page would be limited to:

Plant-based diet has been used to refer to:

• Veganism: diet of vegetables, legumes, fruit, grains, nuts, and seeds, but no food from animal sources
• Vegetarianism: diet of vegetables, legumes, fruit, nuts, etc, that may include eggs and dairy, but no meat
• Semi-vegetarianism: mostly vegetarian diet with occasional inclusion of meat and/or poultry

The others can not be linked because they fail WP:DABMENTION. A good rule of thumb is that if an exception to the MOS for disambiguation pages is needed to make a page completely informative, then you are dealing with something that is not actually a disambiguation page. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:25, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

The best way to proceed is to list here completely uninvolved, authoritative sources (none of the celebrity doctors) and how they use the term. People should add here what they find:

• American Dietetic Association, 2009: uses the term plant-based to mean vegan or strict vegetarian, i.e. plant-based means "consisting of plants" as in "plant-based protein." [1]
• David Pimentel, Marcia Pimentel, "Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment", The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2003: defines plant-based as lacto-ovo vegetarian.
• American Dietetic Association and Dietiticians of Canada, 2014: " ... plant-based diets, defined as diets that include generous amounts of plant foods and limited amounts of animal foods." They then list the views of other groups (American Institute for Cancer Research, and similar). [2]

adding some more reviews from the biomedical literature and statements from major medical/scientific organizations Jytdog (talk) 02:09, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Scientific Committee report for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015 "The overall body of evidence examined by the 2015 DGAC identifies that a healthy dietary pattern is higher in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low- or non-fat dairy, seafood, legumes, and nuts; moderate in alcohol (among adults); lower in red and processed meat; and low in sugar- sweetened foods and drinks and refined grains." (top of page 4) and "Consistent evidence indicates that, in general, a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in animal- based foods is more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact (GHG emissions and energy, land, and water use) than is the current average U.S. diet" (page 9)
• Tuso PJ, Ismail MH, Ha BP, Bartolotto C. Nutritional update for physicians: plant-based diets. Perm J. 2013 Spring;17(2):61-6. PMID 23704846 (free full text)
• McEvoy CT, Temple N, Woodside JV. Vegetarian diets, low-meat diets and health: a review. Public Health Nutr. 2012 Dec;15(12):2287-94. PMID 22717188
• USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 2 big messages (see p ix): 1) Maintain calorie balance over time to achieve and sustain a healthy weight. 2) Focus on consuming nutrient-dense foods and beverages (by this they mean whole foods, and lots of fruit and vegetables.
• American Dietetic Association, 2009. Adopting a Plant-Based Diet says: "Eating a plant-based diet does not mean that you have to become a vegetarian; it just means that you should try to select most of your foods from plant sources."
• Demark-Wahnefried W, Rock CL, Patrick K, Byers T. Lifestyle interventions to reduce cancer risk and improve outcomes. Am Fam Physician. 2008 Jun 1;77(11):1573-8. PMID 18581838 (free full text)
• USDA. Last Modified Oct 23, 2006 A Plant-Based Diet is a Healthy Choice

Discussion

• If this is just a list of things to which the phrase "plant-based diet" refers, then the reader will get no sense of the propriety of any of these uses. bd2412 T 22:30, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Okay, do you see how I have incorporated the Canada cite in the "Variations" section? Rather than merely list out the things and say that "plant-based diet" can mean any of these, we explain to the reader why "plant-based diet" can mean any of these. bd2412 T 22:46, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• BD412, I'm about to take this off my watchlist, because the editing isn't good and I think it's pointless to continue. Before I go, the source you've quoted isn't Weil, but Ellen Jaffe Jones. Sarah ^(talk) 22:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• If it can be written better, make it better written, but let's not deceive our readers into thinking that there is no relationship and no historical development of this phrase. bd2412 T 00:02, 17 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• above i said that i had read all day and come to the conclusion that "plant-based diet" is a term that the medical establishment is increasingly adopting to try to get people to eat more whole foods, more vegetables, more fruit, and less meat and less processed food and less sugar. I didn't share the sources I read that day. I just presented a bunch of them. The phrase is very purposefully used to not be the same as "vegan" or "vegetarian' - it is meant to be non-charged - not "anti" anything but rather reasonable - more X and less Y. I think it is smart as hell from a public health perspective. Jytdog (talk) 02:14, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]