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NaturalWay – Margit Slimáková

care about your health

Vegetarianism in summary

  • Vegetarianism is much more than a diet plan – it is a life philosophy.
  • Vegetarians avoid animal products and usually prefer natural choices in all life situations.
  • Reasons for choosing vegetarianism are ethical, philosophical, environmental, health, cultural, or economic.
  • It is possible to find vegetarians with deficits but these are mostly a result of improper application of the vegetarian diet than the fault of the diet.
  • Vegetarianism does not mean skipping the meat and living on a diet of French fries and pudding.
  • According to ADA a properly planned vegetarian diet is, at all stages of life, "…healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provides health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.”
  • It is also possible to be perfectly healthy when including meat in the diet; but most of today’s population of overeaters could only benefit by limiting meat consumption.
  • The modern practice of raising animals for food contributes on a "massive scale" to air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change, and loss of biodiversity.
  • Lowering meat consumption worldwide would make grain more affordable to the world's chronically hungry.

Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism is much more personal testimony about one’s own environment, health, and ethical issues than diet style. Life philosophy is a personal decision and therefore should be respected. Vegetarians avoid all or most animal products; they often prefer natural solutions in all life situations and are usually environmentally aware. The earliest records of lacto vegetarianism come from ancient India and ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE. In both places the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence towards animals and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers. Vegetarianism can be adopted for ethical, health, religious, political, cultural, aesthetic, or economic reasons, and there are variations of the diet.

The American Dietetic Association (ADA) has stated that at all stages of life, a properly planned vegetarian diet is "…healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provides health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.” Vegetarian diets offer lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, and higher levels of carbohydrates, fibre, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phytochemicals. Vegetarians tend to have lower body mass index, lower levels of cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and less incidence of heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, or dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease. 

According to a 2006 United Nations initiative, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide, and modern practices of raising animals for food contributes on a "massive scale" to air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. As populations grow, lowering meat consumption worldwide will allow more efficient use of declining per capita land and water resources, while at the same time making grain more affordable to the world's chronically hungry.

For sure it is possible to find vegetarians with deficits but these are often a result of improper application of the vegetarian diet than the fault of the diet. It is also important to put any deficit into perspective and look at the big picture.  When compared with a typical diet, which causes many of the current chronic diseases, the problems associated with a vegetarian diet are relatively minor. Protein intake in vegetarian diets is only slightly lower than in meat diets and can meet daily requirements for any person, including athletes and bodybuilders. A vegetarian way of living can protect against many chronic diseases, is environmentally sound, and animals love it. 

My recommendations 

  • Learn the philosophy behind vegetarianism in order to be able to understand it and decide if it is the right plan for you.
  • Implement all the recommendations of vegetarian cuisine; do not just skip the meat and live on French fries.
  • There is no problem if you like the meat because purely from healthy reasons is already beneficial  to be choosing high quality organic animal products and from ecological reasons even one day a week meat free diet will have huge impact on your “footprint” and could lead you to real vegetarianism