Healthy Vegetarian Diet

Whatever your reasons for wanting to follow a healthy vegetarian diet, to lose weight, religious reasons, environmental concerns, or just compassion towards other living creatures, a veggie diet gives you all the nutrition you need to keep healthy. In fact, studies show that over the long-term, a vegetarian diet has been shown to have many health benefits and will help you live a longer, healthier life.

What is a healthy vegetarian diet?

A vegetarian diet can be of different types. A vegan diet is one which does not allow any meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and dairy products.

Foods that contain these products are not allowed too. A lacto-vegetarian diet permits the consumption of dairy products. Similarly, a lacto-ovo diet allows milk products as well as eggs. A healthy vegetarian diet plan is one which gives you the recommended amounts of all the food groups. According to the American Dietetic Association, in a day, you must get 6 servings of grain, 5 servings of legumes, nuts and protein, 4 servings of vegetables, 2 servings of fruit, and 2 servings of fat (which come from oils).

A healthy vegetarian diet for teenagers

will be slightly different. Since teenagers are growing all the time, they need extra amounts of protein and carbohydrates. So, teenagers should drink a lot of milk, eat plenty of fruit, and can also use protein supplements or soybean.

Healthy vegetarian diet recipes

It’s a misconception that vegetarian food is not tasty and exciting. In fact, veggie food can be made in many ways and can look and taste wonderful. Not just looks, but a vegetarian dish will leave you feeling light and energetic, as opposed to meat which drains you of energy. A vegetarian meal is easier to digest and convert into a form that is usable by the body. Cultures all over the world have different vegetarian recipes. Some cultures, which are predominantly vegetarian, have such a wide array of recipes that it would take many books to list them all.

Depending on how you want to eat, your food can be cooked in a variety of ways. For your grains, you can cook rice, khus khus, or some other grain in many different ways. You can also use grain to bake bread or make unleavened bread. To go with this, you can cook a gentle curry, or spice it up if you like spices. If you are looking to eat Italian, most Italian recipes can be made without meat and taste just as good. Similarly, you can eat Indian or Chinese food in a vegetarian avatar too. Just keep in mind that a healthy vegetarian diet meal plan should give you all the nutrients you need, and just because you are eating vegetarian, does not mean you can overeat or fry all your food.

Submitted on March 15, 2011