05 Sep
Posted by Alex as Alternative Lifestyles, Fitness and Health, Food

Deciding to totally refuse meat and stick with a vegetable diet can be either good or bad for you. Even though various campaigns generally state that you should go on a vegetable diet, don’t drastically change your eating habits without doing your research. If you go meatless, you will lose weight, increase your fiber, and reduce your cholesterol level. But then again, if you don’t keep your food choices balanced, there will be risks to your health. Know which types of food you should eat and some from which you should stay away.
Processed foods. Pasta, white rice, cheese and high-in-sodium packaged foods are very dangerous to your health when you eat too much, too often. Excess in these foods usually leads to weight gain and a sluggish feeling. Treat yourself to five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. You need to to have a full stomach without ingesting too much calories and fat.
Shortage of protein supply. Completely ignoring your chicken, beef, pork, and fish without any protein substitutes is a health suicide. In effect, you will start craving sweets, your skin will become scaly, and your nails will be brittle. To save your health from this crash diet but you still can’t take meat, try beans or bean burritos. You will need six 1/2 cup servings of any meat substitute everyday. Suggestions: Tofu, soybased meat products, and veggie burgers.
Nutrients shortage. If you don’t keep track of your nutrition supply such as iron, calcium, and zinc, your health could be in great danger. Your gums might start bleeding, you’ll suffer from fatigue, and you might get sick often. Avoid this condition by combining your veggies with foods that are high in Vitamin C. Suggestions: spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, and pasta marinara. Go for milk and dairy products to catch up on lost calcium and zinc. Taking multivitamins can also improve your health condition.
5 Responses
Garrett
September 5th, 2007 at 9:35 am
1Vegetarian or not, the most important thing is to eat healthy. Your little blurb does not link to sources nor does it provide further research for the reader. Any change in one’s way of living — especially when it comes to something as basic as food — should be purposefully done.
Your concerns in the article can be valid, although the way you wrote this little bit of text comes off more of reverse encouragement: it looks like scare tactics for people to avoid becoming vegetarian.
Also, the suggestion to eat “tofu, soybased meat products, and veggie burgers” equates to eating soy, soy, and more soy (as that is what each thing actually is), which isn’t healthy for anyone. Eating just one type of food is never healthy.
The bottom line, whether vegetarian or not is to eat healthy and eat a varied and balanced diet. (A big tip is to stay away from overly processed food.)
To be fair and balanced, you should also mention all the health concerns when one eats meat, such as all the e. coli issues, that ground beef often contains meat from over 100 different cows (many of who are quite sick), how meat is often treated with carbon monoxide, nitrates, and other substances… and many other sorts of things. Many people overindulge in meat and leave out fruits and veggies, and this can cause other health issues. For instance: eating a lot of meat (such as meat at every meal) also causes cardiovascular problems and stresses out the digestive tract (among other issues).
I’d suggest reading two good food related books: Fast Food Nation (by Eric Schlosser) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma (by Michael Pollan).
Here are a few links I’ve collected involving food and health which you may find interesting:
http://del.icio.us/garrett/food+health
Claude Gelinas
September 5th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
2Since sushi is made up (in part) of white rice, I’ve always wondered if it can be considered good for one’s health?
Anyway, countless people are exploring semi-vegetarian diets to bring some kind of balance to food eating habits.
Thanks for your tips!
arnold
September 17th, 2007 at 11:44 am
3hey maybe you can help me on alternative lifestyle?
i just finish my first university degree in sociology and i decided to open a personal and non-profit web directory on urban cultures and subcultures from all over the world. by providing information about different subcultures i want to change the stereotypes in the society and to make people to except the other people.
so my main interest is in unique lifestyle.
in other words i want to capture the meaning of being attached to specific lifestyle to help other people that feels the same to express themselves that way.
i`m going to write above 500 words about each culture or lifestyle, so if you have any text information (about any lifestyle or culture on earth) or even better – text about lifestyles that you wrote yourself it will be a great help! and also you will get the credit in my site.
for an example of what i wrote about the lifestyles please visit my site:
http://lifestyle-choices.awardspace.com
thanks again for your help,
-cls
pligg.com
July 13th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
4A Few Tips on Going Vegetarian…
Deciding to totally refuse meat and stick with a vegetable diet can be either good or bad for you…
Pamela
August 26th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
5Its very easy to have a shortage of nutrients with a vegetarian diet. I was reminded of an important deficiency the other day at http://www.ourhealthwisdom.com/tip/diet/vegetarian/flax-seed-oil-your-omega-3-needs . I totally forgot about m omega 3 daily intake. So i went and bought some flax seed oil last week to keep myself as healthy as possible
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
Leave a reply
Categories
Recent Posts
Links
© LifeSpy 2009 - All rights reserved.