So are Grains healthier than No grains, well we don't know because not enough large controlled studies have been done to determine this.
Likewise a Vegan diet is certainly healthier than the diabetes assoc. diet, is it the healthiest diet possible, in my mind not.
When I started looking at diets I did look at the vegan style and vegetarian cancer style diets as well and determined they were on the fringe of nutrition, yes they can be done, but they are borderline, particularly the Vegan aspect which requires supplimentation of Vitamin B12 and the Omega 3 DHA in particular, any diet which requires supplimentation in my mind is not complete, the other issue with the Vegan diet is it is based on a non nutritional ideology, so the diet is secondary to the primary goal of not harming animals, in reality this is not far different to the USDA food pyramids goal of selling annual agricultural production and not to achieve optimum nutrition.
By the way always worth a look at the study authors background, the study title does not always reveal the underlying drivers, whether intentional or not the authors personal opinions are often reflected in the interpretation of the results. Full text link below:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677007/
And the author is:Neal D Barnard
So there is already an inherent study bias, not saying the data is manipulated, but interpretations and language may be skewed.Acknowledgments.
NDB is president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and the Cancer Project, organizations that promote the use of low-fat, plant-based diets, and writes books and gives lectures about therapeutic diets, including vegan diets. He is the author of Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes and receives royalties from its sales. None of the other authors had any personal or financial conflict of interest.
As for my going Paleo it was looking at all the foods we eat that are most damaging potentially and reducing or eliminating from my diet, they primarily consist of Grains, Soy, Omega 6 veg oils, Dairy (except yoghurt) and reducing intake of other legumes.
The biggest bridge for most people to cross is the saturated fat issue because it has been so maligned over the last 50 years.
The fact is the "Lipid Hypothesis" which say's basically "saturated fat intake raises cholesterol and causes heart disease" and has formed the basis of our dietary recommendations, is wrong.
It was never more than a hypothesis, in those 50 years there have been thousands of studies done to "answer the question once and for all" and not one has proven the hypothesis, the saddest part is the data that has been collected and now being mined for other information and it is slowly coming to light that those with higher saturated fat intake and higher cholesterol actually had the lowest "All Cause Mortality", so the hypothesis was not just wrong, it was more or less completely opposite.
Once you get over the fear of eating animal fats & red meat, the rest is smooth sailing.