Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A Vegetarian Restaurant Primer

By Ros Harlot

Mentioning you are a vegetarian as part of a conversation on health issues is still guaranteed to bring about a silence, even in today's world. If you are thinking of following vegetarian diet for certain causes - religious belief, health reason, economic reason, animal rights - you will often face a barrage of uninformed arguments from skeptical relatives and friends. You may want to consider a vegetarian diet for improving and maintaining your physical, mental and spiritual health. Unfortunately, there are some nutrients that can only be obtained from animals despite a vegetarian diet being a healthy one.

You will probably be aware that putting your child on a vegetarian diet can greatly improve his or her health and limit the exposure to animal products that are often linked to hormones and preservatives. While a vegetarian diet is a healthy one, there are other issues to consider when placing a child on a vegetarian diet so some research is necessary.

Of course the main health benefits of heating regular quantities of fruit, vegetables and whole grains are well known. By adopting the vegetarian diet, many obese people could deal with the problem of too much protein and animal fat in their diet and increase the amount of fiber. Of course the health benefits are well known if you have a low fat and cholesterol diet.

Another benefit of a high fiber diet is that our systems digest it faster and of course it doesn't take as long to grow as meat. Historically though, being a vegetarian goes back to the beginning of time, and indeed, most of our ancestors did not eat meat very often, if at all. Some vegetarians still eat dairy products and eggs so when you are in an Italian restaurant it is worth checking what the vegetarian meals contain.

We now have some interesting facts about the vegetarian diet, brought about by medical research. Of late, increasing numbers of people have switched to vegetarian meals - as scientific research has shown the adverse effects of animal meat. Non-vegetarians are also twice as likely to develop some form of heart disease. A large number of the population becomes vegetarian at some point even if only for a short while.

But more and more people these days are discovering the many health benefits of a vegetarian diet as would seem to solve many health problems in the United States today. Eating meat is quite normal and enjoyable to many people so you can understand the difficulty there is in converting people to a vegetarian diet. For a successful change to occur though, you must not consider a vegetarian diet as just a replacement for a meat based diet.

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