Dr Shireen Kassam

Dr Shireen Kassam is an NHS consultant Haematologist who practises at King’s College Hospital, London. She is also Professor of Plant-Based Nutrition at the University of Winchester, running the UK’s first accredited course on plant-based nutrition for healthcare professionals and where she launched a course on lifestyle medicine for cancer.

Dr Kassam qualified as a doctor in 2000 and her PhD investigated the role of selenium in sensitising cancer cells to chemotherapy. She has since published numerous research papers in journals such as the Journal of Nutrition and Human Dietetics and the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine.

In 2018, she founded the non-profit Plant-Based Health Professionals UK where she is Executive Director and in 2019 she became certified as a Lifestyle Medicine Physician. She co-authored Eating Plant-Based in 2021 and co-edited the textbook Plant-Based Nutrition in Clinical Practice.

Why Dr Shireen Kassam is vegan

Dr Shireen Kassam is vegan for the animals and for health.

Dr Kassam switched to a vegan diet in 2013 due to the ethical implications of eating animals but soon realised a plant-based diet was associated with many health benefits for humans too.¹Pocketmags. Ten minutes with… Dr Shireen Kassam. Available: https://pocketmags.com/us/plantbased-magazine/november-2020/articles/ten-minutes-with-dr-shireen-kassam [Accessed 7 September 2026]. After spending four years diving deep into the research around plant-based diets, Dr Kassam decided that more needed to be done in the UK to promote plant-based diets and fill in the knowledge gaps of her fellow doctors who, like her, may have never come across this information before. She therefore founded Plant-Based Health Professionals UK.²Ethical Globe. 2022. Dr. Shireen Kassam, Founder of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK. Available: https://www.ethicalglobe.com/blog/dr-shireen-kassam-founder-of-plant-based-health-professionals-uk [Accessed 7 September 2026].

In 2026, Dr Shireen Kassam collaborated with Viva! on the documentary What Do You Really Know About Dairy? to expose the cruelty, health myths and industry spin behind one of Britain’s most heavily promoted foods.