Is it unhealthy to be a vegetarian?!
Is it unhealthy to be a vegetarian?
I'm not a vegetarian right now but I think I might become one eventually because I'm going to work with animals and I was just wondering like if its bad for your body to be one because some people say its not good if you don't eat meat. And also can you still eat cheese and milk to be a real vegetarian? So thanks for everyone whos read this and helped/tried to help me
Answers:
The vegetarian lifestyle is a very healthy and satisfying one. In the months since I stopped eating meat, I've lost 45 pounds, my blood pressure is normal, and my cholesterol is in the low-normal range. My joints and muscles don't ache nearly as bad, and over-all, I have more energy than ever before.
Vegetarians usually eat cheese and milk as part of their diets. Vegans don't eat any animal-based product -- only vegetables, grains, and non-animal related foods.
There are plenty of ways to get all the nutrients that your body needs and still stick to a vegetarian diet. Here's a website that will help you, and there are plenty of other groups online that you can do a Google search to find:
http://www.vrg.org/
Good luck to you. . .I think you'll find that being a vegetarian is an excellent decision.
not unhealthy but you will lose a lot of muscle.you can still eat milk and cheese if you are not a vegan.
Have u ever seen a healthy looking vegetarian?
yes
u can eat milk and cheese to be a vegetarian
vegans are the people who dont eat anything that come sfrom animals
also...if ur a vegetarian, make sure u still get protein from soy beans and food like that
u dont have to eat meat, but u still need all of the food groups
if you do become one you need to get your source of fiber sinse you wont be getting it from your meat anymore. you could take a vitamin ro something in a subsitution for meat
if Ur want to be one ok but vegetarian will mack u not to eat cheese and milk that will be unhealthy so mack up ur mined and talk it from me don't get one i try it and it did not work out for me
No; you might want to check out the book: "the vegetarian manifesto" It has a lot of information for teenagers about health-related issues.
No it is not and you will not lose alot of muscle if you take some supplements.There are probably many vegetarian diets here on line that can steer you in the right direction.I know a couple of vegeterians and they are not skinny muscleless people.
well,according to books I have read there are nutrients and minerals that you cannot get from veggies alone and vice versa.So if you are thinking of going vegetarian go seek a professional advise because it is a big adjustment to your body if you suddenly become a vegetarian. I have heard that you can loose hair from doing that.
The vegan diet is the healthiest possible! Go for it!
It's not unhealthy, but you have to be careful. Don't do this without consulting a doctor. My roommate in college was a vegetarian. She would drink milk, but wouldn't touch cheese. Most cheeses are made with enzymes which are made by scraping the intestines of cows. And, for a reason which now escapes me, she couldn't eat Oreos! Some animal thing.
its not unhealthy! i am a vegetarian and just to tell you.....there are a lot of different kind of vegetarians like...I'm a pesco meaning i eat fish but no other meat and osco something vegetarian and there's kinds where you can only eat red meat and some where you only eat white meat and stuff like that but no its not healthy and no you do not lose muscle!!!!!! you just need to kind protein like in tofu and beans and legumes.so no its not unhealthy you don't lose muscle and you can still find really good food!!!!!
good luck on being a vegetarian! if you need to know anything just ask a true vegetarian like ME!!!! later
its better for you
To be a healthy vegetarian, you need some type of protein supplement to replace the protein in meat that you aren't eating. A vegetarian diet isn't healthy if you can't include protein.
Being a vegetarian is not unhealthy... unless, of course, you are not consuming adequate amounts of nuts and grains (in their varied forms) to replace the meat which you have dropped from your diet.
Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat milk and cheese to compensate for a 'supposed' lack of B-vitamins. However, it is quite possible to lead a normal, active, healthy life on a vegan diet (one with no animal foods at all)... as long as you are consuming a good variety of fruits, nuts and grains to ensure that all your nutritional needs are met.
Vegans are the strictest of vegetarians and don't eat (or use, for that matter) any animal-derived products at all, even honey. Many vegetarians do include eggs and/or dairy, though. I've been lacto-ovo-veg for just a hair shy of 20 years. I'm careful about the eggs I buy (cage-free, no hormones, etc) and I'm also careful to exclude those by-products that result from the death of an animal (no gelatin, for example, and only rennetless cheeses.)
Vegetarianism CAN be an extremely healthy diet/lifestyle. Just like meat eaters, vegetarians need to pay attention to getting enough nutrients and a healthy balance between fats, carbs and protein. No diet is a no-brainer... some people eat healthy and some don't and it has less to do with whether or not they are veg than it does what they know about nutrition and whether they bother to apply that knowledge. The biggest nutritional aspect that you will be questioned about if you do decide to go veg is protein, but the fact is that a balanced veg diet offers plenty of protein and most Americans are getting far more than they need.
Note: TJ has obviously not met many vegetarians... all the ones I know look (and ARE) healthy!
Not at all. And I'm not just saying this because i am one, it really isn't. And yes as a vegetarian, you can drink milk, eat dairy and all that s**t. Though a lot of people do think that it is unhealthy, blah, blah, blah. The only time a vegetarian diet is unhealthy is when you don't get the protein for normal brian and muscle functions. As long as you get protein you're good. Beans, nuts, soybeans, "veggie meat", which is just a substitute. And scientist have proved that meat is as about as unhealthy for your body as it gets. Heart failer, cancer and all that good stuff.
To end my little thing here, vegetarians are not unhealthy, get your protein, research the topic very, very well, to where you feel like you know what you're are doing and yada yada yada. As long as you have all the facts from both sides, form your own opinion and stuff. (And if your are a vegetarian that still eats dairy, milk and eggs, and cheese, you are considered a lacto ovo vegetarian.) Good Luck Dude.
i tis totally healthy to be a veghead. i am. its actually more heslthy than eating meat as long as you make sure your getting all the nutrition you need.
types of vegetarianism:
lacto-ovo vegetarain-eats eggs and dairy produst no meat/fish
lacto vegetarain-eats dairy products, no eggs meat fish
ovo vegetarain-eats eggs, no dairy meat fish
pescatarian or semi vegetarian-eats eggs milk fish, no red meat/poultry
vegan or true vegetarian-no animal products/ by-products including honey
im a lacto-ovo vegetarian. currenlty, im cutting out gelatin. someday i might become a vegan, you never know, but right now im just not ready for it.
no,being a vegetarian is most healthy because we get more calories or energy from plants directly as per the ten percent law of environment.
no way! it's so awesome being a vegetarian, u should try it!!
this is a great resource as well:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vegetar...
u can stop all at once, or slowly cut out the meat. get some veggie burgers in the house too! there's so many kinds of meat replacements, and morningstar farms is the best. a BLT with fake bacon...YUMMMMM lol.
check out this site too:
http://www.goveg.com/
and this will give u so many ideas:
http://www.vegcooking.com/
good luck and have fun :) u'll feel great if ur doing it right (it's really not that hard)
No it is not unhealthy to be a vegetarian, if you eat the correct foods. If your really want to learn about being a vegetarian there is a free book that really helped me make the transition. It is pretty long...but extremley helpful.
I would really reccomend reading it....
here is the site:
http://www.veggie123.com/veggie/chapter1...
good luck!
I was a vegetarian for over 20 years and damaged my health. I now believe it is unhealthy to be a vegetarian. It takes about 15 to 20 years for degenetarive effects to show up in a person and one generation for degenetarive permanent defects. Think carefully, especially if you want children one day.
I can't believe how much ignorance there still is out there.
It's definitely NOT unhealthy to be a vegetarian. On the contary, it's the healthiest decision you could make. A vegetarian diet leaves you at a far less risk of major diseases - heart disease, all types of cancer, obesity, diabetes etc. You will be eating fresh living food not dead flesh which is usually pumped with anibiotics and hormones. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that we only eat vegetables but that is not true - vegetarians and vegans enjoy a varied diet and can even eat yoghurts and icecream, as well as cakes, biscuits etc! You won't be short of anything. Of course with any diet you need to be careful to get enough nutrients and that is especially true with a vegetarian diet. Protein is found in grains, lentils, breans, nuts, seeds so unless you plan to live on a diet of ready meals (which I hope wouldn't be the case) it would be difficult for you to become protein deficient. Just be alert to start with and after a short while you will automatically prepare healthy, protein rich meals without even thinking about it. Calcium can be found in all alternative milks, (soya milk, rice milk) so if you don't want to eat dairy then you won't be missing out. Dairy products aren't in fact the best sources of calcium. Almonds, leafy veg, nuts, seeds and grains are all good sources so as long as you eat some of those everyday you will be getting enough. I have a jar of almond butter and I put some on toast for snack for an easy way of getting calcium and protein.
As for the person above who said he ended up in bad health - with all due respect he's either winding you up or he lived on a junk food diet for years, as there is no way you can make yourself seriously ill following a healthy well balanced vegetarian diet. The experts are now proving it. It's no co-incidence that people are being advised to limit meat and dairy in their diets and eat more wholegrains and beans - another words - vegetarian staples! Also, the Yogi diet (tradionally followed by people who practice yoga) consists of a vegan diet - no meat, fish, eggs, or milk, and these people are so healthy and in tune with the world.
Obviously it's up to you what you do but please research the facts before making your decision - sadly you won't get a lot of truth on here as there is a lot of ignorance still about, and many people don't want to face the truth. I'll include a site for you to look at and they have recipes so you can see what you can eat. It also has a lot of info on the benefits of going vegan/veggie for the sake of the animals and the environment, as well as your health.
Good luck and good health!
Actually vegetarians who eat a proper vegetarian diet are healthier those those
that eat a so called proper meat diet.
Meat is dead animal a dead carcass. So if U
eat meat You are eating Death! I
Vegetarians can drink milk or eat cheese or any dairy product cause no animal has been killed to use those items and that's the idea behind Vegetarianism not killing animals. We
don't need meat to survive. Contrary to what some think we really are not suppose to be carnivores. Our intestinal system is different from animals who are meat eaters and so are
our teeth different. If we were ment to eat meat we'd have teeth more like a dog or cat or
tiger! It's easy to be a vegetarian and health too. U can get books at your local library about being a vegetarian. Vegetarians don't have to worry about bad meat. Oh by the way A Vegetarian Gardener won't use manure to help
his or her vegetables or fruit grow.. there are other methods.. grass, clover, hay, cuttings can do just as good helping the soil or getting black earth from some place and add it to the soil! My broccoli was taller than me and no chemicals either.
Or U might see: www.Veggie123.com or www.jtcwd.com/vegie/index.html
If a vegetarian diet is very carefully planned, and in the cae of vegans that requires either fortified foods or supplements, it can be AS healthy as a good meat eating diet. I think there are a couple of benefits, but they come from eating a wide range of fruit and veg and being health conscious as vegans have to be, not omitting meat, and thus those benefits can be go without actually going veggie. Needless to say a uncarefully planned vegetarian, or especially vegan, diet can lack many essential nutrients and be very bad for your health.
There are many benefits to a diet containing meat. Many vegetarians claim that meat is unhealthy. This is a blatant fallacy.
It is well established that eating meat improves the quality of nutrition, strengthens the immune system, promotes normal growth and development, is beneficial for day-to-day health, energy and well-being, and helps ensure optimal learning and academic performance.
A long term study found that children who eat more meat are less likely to have deficiencies than those who eat little or no meat. Kids who don’t eat meat ― and especially if they restrict other foods, as many girls are doing ― are more likely to feel tired, apathetic, unable to concentrate, are sick more often, more frequently depressed, and are the most likely to be malnourished and have stunted growth. Meat and other animal-source foods are the building blocks of healthy growth that have made America’s and Europe's youngsters the tallest, strongest and healthiest in the world.
Meat is an important source of quality nutrients, heme iron, protein, zinc and B-complex vitamins. It provides high-quality protein important for kids’ healthy growth and development.
The iron in meat (heme iron) is of high quality and well absorbed by the body, unlike nonheme iron from plants which is not well absorbed. More than 90 percent of iron consumed may be wasted when taken without some heme iron from animal sources. Substances found to inhibit nonheme iron absorption include phytates in cereals, nuts and legumes, and polyphenolics in vegetables. Symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, headache, irritability and decreased work performance. For young children, it can lead to impairment in general intelligence, language, motor performance and school readiness. Girls especially need iron after puberty due to blood losses, or if pregnant. Yet studies show 75 percent of teenage girls get less iron than recommended.
Meat, poultry and eggs are also good sources of absorbable zinc, a trace mineral vital for strengthening the immune system and normal growth. Deficiencies link to decreased attention, poorer problem solving and short-term memory, weakened immune system, and the inability to fight infection. While nuts and legumes contain zinc, plant fibre contains phytates that bind it into a nonabsorbable compound.
Found almost exclusively in animal products, Vitamin B12 is necessary for forming new cells. A deficiency can cause anaemia and permanent nerve damage and paralysis. The Vitimin B12 in plants isn't even bioavailable, meaning our body can't use it.
Why not buy food supplements to replace missing vitamins and minerals? Some people believe they can fill those gaps with pills, but they may be fooling themselves. Research consistently shows that real foods in a balanced diet are far superior to trying to make up deficiencies with supplements.
Lets not forget either that protein, while it is found in plants, is better quality in animal products.
Some people claim that meat is unhealthy because it contains saturated fat. So does margarine and olive oil, and they're vegan suitable (in fact the hydrogenated fats in Marge can be very bad, but that's another story). Besides, any excess calories in your diet, any excess sugar, starch or carbohydrates are stored in your body for later use. This is done by turning them into saturated fats.
Cholesterol too. Your body on average creates four to five times more cholesterol than the average person consumes, and compensates by creating more when less is consumed. Cholesterol isn't evil, it is essential; it makes up the waterproof linings of all our cells and without it we would die. Too much can be bad, but as with saturated fats there are more healthy ways of disposing of it, like regular exercise. Anyway, it isn't so much how much cholesterol you eat, but how well yur body handles it. A person who eats loads of dietary cholesterol and leads an unhealthy lifestyle can still have low cholesterol, and vice versa. Most people's bodies are able to take a large amount of cholesterol without getting atherosclerosis. For this reason that eating meat gives you heart disease is very misleading, and for the most part untrue. Of course, if you do have a problem eating loads isn't a good idea, but for most people there is nothing at all to worry about.
Yes, there are things in meat that there is some evidence can cause cancer in some people, but there are as many in plants too. Soy especially has some very potent carcinogens. Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines.
Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women. Also they are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.
Soy is bad for numerous other reasons, but that isn't the point, I'm just using it as a quick example relating to cancer not being exclusive to some animal products. The evidence that claims meat does cause cancer is patchy anyway.
Some people also claim that we aren't designed by evolution, to eat meat. They claim that our digestive system is quite long and that we produce amylase, a starch splitting catabolic enzyme, akin to herbivores and unlike carnivores. Apparently this clearly shows that we were designed to eat plants. Such people should go and look up 'omnivore' in a dictionary. They have also been known to cite other reasons we are like herbivores and unlike carnivores: that we suck water instead of lapping it, and that we perspire through our skin, such things have nothing at all to do with whether or not we were designed to eat meat, and nothing to do with how our body handles food. I might as well say that because we, like most carnivores and unlike most herbivores, have eyes that face forwards, we must be carnivorous. Of course, that's not true for precisely the same reason.
The fact is Humans are omnivores, with the ability to eat nearly everything. By preference, prehistoric people ate a high-protein, high-mineral diet based on meat and animal sources, whenever available. Their foods came mainly from three of the five food groups: meat, vegetables and fruits. As a result, big game mammoth hunters were tall and strong with massive bones. They grew six inches taller than their farming descendants in Europe, who ate mostly plant foods, and only in recent times regained most of this height upon again eating more meat, eggs and dairy foods. We are adapted to eat meat, and it is just as natural as eating plants.
Some also claim that the digestion of meat releases harmful byproducts into our system. This is true, however such are our adaptations to eating meat that our bodies are quite able to dispose of said products without any adverse effects.
So, in summary: it isn't healthier to avoid meat. You can be healthy without meat, but likely not as healthy as if you did, assuming you kept things like the wide range of fruit and veg that a veggie diet usually entails. Too much meat can be bad, but normal amounts are no problem at all. Any health benefits that come from a veggie diet come from a wide range of fruit and veg, and being health conscious, as veggies often are; that doesn't require you to not eat meat."
I don't think a vegan diet benefits anyone in any way better than a better meat eating diet could at all. If you have no ethical qualms, it's quite pointless. PETA will tell you otherwise, but they have very strong ethical opinions, and mould their 'evidence' around it. There is, for example, some evidence that vegans live longer and are at less risk from cancer and heart disease; however those studies show only a very marginal and insignificant difference and none of those studies have yet managed to identify meat as the only variable. Veggies are less likely to smoke, drink or eat junk food, and eat a wider range of fruit and veg, making the test results inaccurate and unreliable.
no and you avoid a lot of food poisoning
Ahh yes, look up too PETA you Vegans do...have you any idea of what PETA...or People Exterminating Tons of Animals do? I take it you don't because you wouldn't look at them as a savior for animal rights. These bastards have killed so many animals...healthy animals mind you...they are like the Hitler of the animal world. Then what do they do with the remains? Throw em in a dumpster. They have done everything from trying to stop the eating of meat completely to even trying to stop people from having pets because they consider them enslaved. They even had the gall to make a site that tries to say Jesus was a Vegan...i recal he was a fisherman, and im sure he "reaped what he sewed". According to PETA's own filings, in 2004 PETA killed 86.3 percent of the animals entrusted to its care -- a number that's rising, not falling. Meanwhile, the SPCA in PETA's home town (Norfolk, Va.) was able to find loving homes for 73 percent of the animals put in its care. A shortage of funds? Nope: that year PETA took in $29 million in tax-exempt donations.
So if you want to be a Vegan/Vegetarian, do it because you want to be healthy if you think thats the way to go. Dont do it because you don't like animals being killed cause it wont stop. Even the people you think are on your side arent. The world is about money and companies are going to do what it takes to make it and keep it. In the meantime, while they are still killing cows, im gonna eat em, cause steak sure is yummy!