Ultrarunner uses vegan diet to help manage diabetes

Ultrarunner Jonty Brown uses a vegan diet to help manage type 1 diabetes

Jonty Brown is a British ultrarunner, a co-founder of the running club and business Runlimited, and an ambassador for Breakthrough T1D… and of course, he’s vegan.

Jonty was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 12 years old after he began feeling really unwell at a football camp. Despite his diagnosis, Jonty wasn’t the type of person who’d let diabetes stop him doing anything.

Although always an active lad, Jonty only began running during the covid lockdown. He enjoyed it so much that 18 months after donning his first pair of running shoes, he set himself the challenge of running coast-to-coast across the UK.

With the support of his friends, the vegan food influencer Sam Jones aka No Meat Disco, and Johnny Morillo aka Johnny Meatless, Jonty became the first type 1 diabetic to run ‘the Wainwrights’ across the UK from west to east.

Jonty told Runner’s World UK that he covered “just shy of 50 kilometres a day for seven days.”

In 2023, on World Diabetes Day and to celebrate 102 years since the discovery of insulin, Jonty ran 102 kilometres around Victoria Park in London.

One year later, Jonty took part in The Speed Project as part of a relay team. A nearly-500 kilometre race across the American desert from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. But not satisfied with a team effort, Jonty returned to the wild west in 2025 to compete as a solo runner. Jonty covered 479 kilometres and finished the ultra race in fourth place – all the time managing his type 1 diabetes and fuelled by a plant-based diet.

Jonty told Runners World UK that he became vegan for the animals but also discovered that he’s needed to use less insulin since starting a plant-based diet and cutting out the saturated fat in animal-based foods:

“I’ve been vegan for about eight [or] nine years… I really like animals and I could never hurt one so if I could never hurt one I’m not going to pay someone else to hurt one… It has also really helped my blood sugar levels control,.. For me, being a vegan diabetic is well good.”