A well-balanced vegetarian diet enables people of every age, including adolescents, teenagers, pregnant or breast-feeding mothers to able to meet their dietary needs.
Today, dietary habits play a significant role in maintaining a healthy and long life of every human being. A person can follow a vegetarian diet primarily due to personal reasons which can be cultural, ethical or religious at times. It has been proved by several surveys that vegetarian diets keep a person healthy; it contributes to the welfare of animals and it is also good for the environment.
People follow healthy diet and nutrition major for physical fitness so as to avoid health problems as vegetarian diets serve the purpose of avoiding cardiovascular diseases. Another advantage of a healthy vegetarian diet is that it enables a person to maintain their weight at an appropriate level. Food lovers might spend a lot of money on buying ice creams but a healthy vegetarian diet helps to develop a satisfaction level which would help avoid the overindulgence in sweet food.
The first step is to plan the meals. In case you are unsure about the right dietary plan, always contact a nutritionist or a registered dietician.
It is a common notion that people consider diet without meat, poultry or fish to be vegetarian diet but they can further be categorized into different types: Vegan diets are those which do not include meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese and even foods that contain these products.
Lacto-vegetarian diets include some of the dairy products such as milk, cheese, yogurt and butter but do not include meat, fish, poultry, eggs as well as foods that contain these products. Lastly, there is lacto-ovo vegetarian diet which includes eggs and dairy products but does not include meat, fish and poultry.
There are many people who strictly do not follow the vegetarian diet. Instead, they maintain a semi vegetarian diet which is popularly termed as ‘flexitarian diet’. This diet is based on plants but meat, dairy products, eggs, poultry can be taken and an infrequent intake of fish is also allowed but can only be taken in small quantities.
People can make intelligent choices to ensure their daily needs by following a well-planned vegetarian diet. A vegetarian needs appropriate planning, the right dietician and the correct choice of foods. Vegetarian diet pyramid helps making this choice and this forms the base of a healthy vegetarian diet. Grains come at the base line of this pyramid, above that we have legumes, nuts and other protein-rich foods (excluding meat), the next above level includes vegetables, further fruits can be taken and the top most categories has fats.