Talk:Whole-food plant-based diet

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 18 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lizzyczyz.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:56, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Deleting Article
I think we should consider removing this article. It doesn't site any sources and appears to just host external links for people's websites. An Article shouldn't have four external links and no sources.Disagreeableneutrino (talk) 06:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I have added information and cited my sources but I am still getting an error message. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?melissa (talk) 16:01, 15 October 2008 (UTC)


 * You need to add closing tags after your reference. Take a look at Wikipedia:Footnotes for instructions. Disagreeableneutrino (talk) 09:19, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

What I removed and why
I removed a link to the "American Botanical Council" as that site is about herbal medicine, not whole food, and the Veganism and vegetarianism navbox because whole food is not necessarily vegetarian. Pais (talk) 17:55, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Carbohydrates and Fats
Hello,

I am a Nutritionist and was looking up your definition of "whole foods". I would like to correct a particular statement you made in regards to a whole food typically not containing carbohydrates or fats. Firstly, all fruits, vegetables and whole grains are carbohydrates so the claim that a whole food is not a carbohydrate would obviously omit the most important whole foods of all! Secondly, there are many healthy fats such as nuts, avocados, fish, and meats that are all within the confines of what are considered a whole food. I urge you to refine or omit this statement from your text.

Thank you kindly,

Amy Furyk RHN — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.22.114 (talk) 03:16, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you may have misread. "Whole foods are foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed. Whole foods typically do not contain added salt, carbohydrates, or fat."
 * Additionally, there are certainly "whole foods" that are not necessarily healthy and healthy foods that are not whole.
 * As a general observation, the term is slippery. Is brown rice a whole food? You don't eat the whole plant. An avocado after taking it from the plant, removing the pit and rind? Meats and most fish (as consumed) are a part of the whole animal.
 * The demand that dairy not be homogenized (in the article) likely reflects a rather hard-line viewpoint.
 * In general, I don't think anything in the article is necessarily "wrong", though we seem to be giving the idea that this is an objective, blank-and-white term when it clearly is not. - Sum mer PhD  (talk) 03:42, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes I suppose heterogenous seems to miss the point inviting a need for specificity (fresh "cupcakes" and "cashew" are certainly heterogenous if there is appropriate place for specificity173.14.170.177 (talk) 21:50, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

NPOV, possible rumblings of a deletion request?
From start to finish, this article violates the guidance against a non-neutral point of view and is steeped in bias. Animal foods consumed raw or slightly cooked, especially smaller animals like molluscs which truly can be eaten in their entirety at one sitting, meet the dictionary definitions for whole (as in, not being a portion smaller than the entire) and for food. Ellenor2000 (talk) 03:24, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Addendum: I've looked through the history and the article, while basically stuck at dictionary class, is not **hopelessly** biased. But the whole thing is a WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:RS-fest. I'll just stick an NPOV template on it and see where this entire thing leads, so please ignore the invective in the previous paragraph. Ellenor2000 (talk) 03:42, 7 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I would actually agree that certain animal food could be included in the definition if eaten in their entirety. (Also think about insects being eaten whole) Maybe a deletion is too much, could it not just be adjusted? What about definitions in a dictionary?
 * But another important point that should be considered is the question of whether a (slightly) cooked food should be labeled a whole food per definition, after all it is not whole anymore because the cooking process will result in a decrease of water content. The water of a food is definitely a part of the food which is removed upon cooking (the same is true for dried foods, some would argue that the water content of legumes rises in cooking but this is only because they were dried(water removed) previously) but not only the water is removed, the same is true for certain vitamins (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049644/) 21:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.229.254.166 (talk)
 * Couldn't this article simply be renamed to Whole-food plant-based diet? Since "The modern usage of the term whole foods diet is now widely synonymous with [it]", it would avoid confusion and end this neutrality dispute. The RedBurn (ϕ) 12:06, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

The Article is a Problem
It should be deleted or re-written to make the ambiguity of the term clear. The article is immediately problematic in the very first sentence. It defines whole foods and cites a paper that never actually attempts to define what a whole food is. The cited paper repeatedly uses the phrase "whole and unrefined food"; note the "and". The paper is cited as a justification for stating that whole foods are as unrefined as possible, but the paper continually represents "whole" and "unrefined" as separate qualities of a food without defining either one. The concept of "refinement" has a preexisting definition that can be considered, but "whole" does not. As this article is a titled "whole food", the lack of a credible definition of the term calls into question the validity of the entire article. This reference is the only scientific reference in the entire article, and it's usage as a justification for the given definition of whole food is questionable. The article should either be removed, or should make very clear that this concept of "whole food" is not a harmonized nor scientific concept.Mddesan (talk) 07:00, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree in many points, the article could be changed. I would also argue that whole and refined are two distinct qualities and not synonyms. Obviously there are processes of refining a food that make it lose its quality of "wholeness" but this is not always the case. (E.g. Extracting vs. Cutting) 21:09, 29 May 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.229.254.166 (talk)

Since there has been no further movement or discussion on this article, I have taken the step to edit the article to clarify that this is not a unified or well-defined concept, adding the specific defined examples of whole grains and whole milk. I clarified the wording to show that there is disagreement around the term, as the previous word "confusion" implied that there is a correct and incorrect view of the term, but in fact the meaning of the term is disputed by disparate food groups based on their own economic interests. I also removed a redundant and out of context sentence at the end of the article.Mddesan (talk) 17:20, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Problematic article
This article was originally titled "whole food", it's now been changed to "whole-food plant-based diet". Both are problematic. A whole food is dictionary defined as "food that has been processed or refined as little as possible and is free from additives or other artificial substances." There is not much difference between this term and term natural food. I am willing to do some work on the natural food article and I think we should redirect "whole food" to natural food where I can mention the term whole food. I would also support redirecting "whole-food plant-based diet" to the main plant-based diet article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 15:53, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "Whole food definition is - a natural food and especially an unprocessed one (such as a vegetable or fruit)." . Which is no different than the definition of natural food - "natural foods are often assumed to be foods that are not processed, or do not contain any food additives, or do not contain particular additives such as hormones, antibiotics, sweeteners, food colors, preservatives, or flavorings that were not originally in the food". I would support redirecting whole food into natural food. Psychologist Guy (talk) 15:55, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that 1) whole food should redirect to natural food and 2) mention of whole-food plant-based diet should redirect to plant-based diet. Zefr (talk) 16:05, 26 February 2021 (UTC)