Friday, January 30, 2009

Ordering Vegetarian at Restaurants

By Ros Harlot

Even in today's health conscious world, mentioning you are a vegetarian quickly stops the conversation. 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. Your vegetarian diet may be very healthy for you but an lack certain elements that are only obtained from animals.

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. You would be wise to carry out some research before placing your child on a vegetarian diet to ensure they receive a suitably nutritious intake.

A vegetarians diet with involves regular servings of fruit, vegetables and whole grains is known to be healthy. It's this healthy consumption of fruit and vegetables etc. Another of the advantages to the vegetarian diet is that it tends to be low in fat and cholesterol.

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. Increasing numbers of the population are deciding to become vegetarians owing to the scientific research highlighting the detrimental effects meat has on us. There is also the fact that you are twice as likely to develop heart disease if you are not a vegetarian. Although exact figures are difficult to produce, a large proportion of the population decide at some point in their life to become vegetarian if only temporarily.

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. - 16003

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