Vegetarian Health Tips

Vegetarian: Anyone who doesn't eat meat. Vegetarians don't eat fish either. Many vegetarians in the West do consume dairy products and eggs.

Vegan: people who don't eat meat, or consume animal products (like milk, cheese, eggs). Vegans will often try to avoid using animal products like leather as well.

Indian vegetarian: vegetarian but avoiding eggs as well as meat and fish products. The idea is that eggs might be fertilized and that means they might be alive.

This is the topic that got me started on this lens. The Dutch government is putting up a major campaign that people should eat fish, or take fish-oil pills.

This has obvious environmental disadvantages: most edible fish species are at risk of extinction if things go on the way they are going.

Taking pills isn't going to help: they still contain Fish-oil.

So, my question was: where do we vegetarians get our omega-3 and omega-6 oils? It turns out most vegetarians aren't at risk of getting too little omega-6 oils. Those are present in salad dressing, peanut butter etc.

The issue is the omega-3 oils. So here are some sources:

• flax oil (or ground flax seeds)


• olive oil (contains a good ratio of omega-3 and omega-6)


• rape seed oil (contains a good ratio of omega-3 and omega-6)


• broccoli (a little bit)


• cabbage (a little bit)


• walnuts (a bit high on the Omega 6)


• tofu (a bit high on Omega 6)

Pregnant mothers should probably take direct sources of omega-3 oils because they are very important in brain development for the unborn child.

My source

• Juicing


• Ground Flaxseed will add omega 3 oils to the diet - it can be added to grains.

The best known risk of a vegetarian diet is really overrated:

Protein

Protein deficiency is just hard to come by in this part of the world. Since vegetarians can consume milk, cheese, yogurt etc. we can easily get our protein from animal products. For those with more principles the protein in legumes and especially soy is a decent replacement.

B Vitamins

We don't need a lot of vitamin B, and the body stores it. I think I did 12 years on the vitamin B I had stored in the first 20 odd years of my life. But now, finally, my vegetarian lifestyle has caught up with me and I'm on vitamin B supplement pills.

The B vitamins (there are several) are formed from either bacteria, yeast's, fungi, or molds. This means that the vitamin B supplement pills are usually vegetarian. After all it's much cheaper to just grow bacteria than it is to extract the vitamin from meat.

The specific vitamins vegetarians will have trouble with are Vitamin B12 (not found in any vegetable source) and B3 (mostly found in Fish and chicken but also in nuts).

Vitamin B is contained in a number of vegetarian foods like (again) milk, eggs, yogurt, cheese etc.

Tell tale signs: having trouble keeping your hands steady? Go to the doctor or just buy the pills.

Generally speaking the B vitamins are often found in wholegrain products and nuts. Nowadays there are many products for sale that have been fortified with these vitamins.

Iron

This is one I worry about sometimes. Yet research shows that vegetarians are just as likely (or unlikely) to get enough iron in their diet.

The reason that it isn't a problem is that iron gets absorbed in the body best when it's combined with vitamin C. Eating spinach would work for that.

Iron is contained in the following vegetable sources:

• spinach


• (Dried) beans


• Chick peas (one of my favorites)


• Leafy vegetables


• Lentils


• Broccoli

Personally I eat spinach a lot, but also put apple spread on my wholewheat bread. The Dutch recipe for apple spread contains iron in large quantities (not from the apples obviously).

Thank you mimi at growear.com.