Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets Essays

Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets Essays Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets Essay Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets Essay Essay Topic: Vegetarian Topic: Health benefits of vegetarian diets General Purpose: To Inform Specific Purpose: To Inform my audience on how to begin a vegetarian diet and the health benefits you get from it. Primary Aud. Outcome: After listening to this speech, my audience will know how to plan a vegetarian diet that gives you the health benefits to live a long healthy life. Thesis Statement: No matter your age or situation, a well-planned egetarian diet can meet your nutritional needs. Introduction Becoming a vegetarian has become more popular during the years. There are many reasons for one to choose to be a vegetarian, maybe for there healths, to cure health problems, lose weight, beginning a healthier lifestyle including exercise, for the environment, your religious beliefs, or to help stop animal cruelty etc. Everyone wants to live a happier and healthy life, right? No matter your age or situation, a well-planned vegetarian diet can meet your nutritional needs. Recently, there has been renewed interest in vegetarian diet with the countless books, cook books and magazine articles promoting vegetarian diets and providing guidance for those who wish to follow a meatless diet. Choosing a non-vegetarian lifestyle has a significant health and medical cost. Medical costs attributable to meat consumption were based upon the higher cause of hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, gallstones, obesity and food-borne illness among non-vegetarians compared with healthy vegetarians. A nutritionally balanced vegetarian diet has remarkable health benefits in preventing serious diseases and I will discuss through the steps for beginning a vegetarian diet. Body Now that you know what we’ll be talking about, let’s start by knowing the different groups of vegetarians. 1. First, I will discuss the groups that vegetarian fall into defined by the types of animal derived foods they eat: Vegans eat only plant-based foods. They don’t eat foods from animals, including meat, poultry, fish, milk, egg and cheese. Lacto-vegetarians eat milk and milk product along with plant-based foods They don’t eat eggs as well as meat, fish and poultry Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat eggs, milk and milk products, such as cheese and yogurt, in addition to plant-based foods. They omit red meat, fish and poultry. Flexitarians (semi vegetarians) primarily follow a plant-based diet but occasionally eat small amounts of meat, poultry or fish. Now that we know about the four di fferent vegetarians, let’s start by knowing different ways to get the important minerals and nutrients to help maintain a healthy you. . Second, I will discuss the nutrients that may be deficient in a vegetarian diet and how you can get these nutrients from nonmeat sources to ensure they’re in yours: Protein is very important for your body to maintain healthy skin, bones, muscles and organs. A vegetarian diet that includes eggs or dairy products have convenient sources of protein. Other sources of protein include soy products, replace meat with legumes, lentils, nuts, seeds and whole grains. Calcium an important mineral that helps build and maintain strong teeth and bones. Low-fat dairy foods and dark green vegetables, such as spinach, turnip and collard greens, kale and broccoli, are good sources of cal calcium. Tofu enriched with calcium and fortified soy milk and fruit juices are other options. Vitamin B-12 is very important for your body to produce red blood cells and prevent anemia. Regular intake of vitamin B-12 is important to meet nutritional needs. Good sources include all common multiple vitamins (including vegetarian vitamins), fortified cereals, nutritional yeast, and fortified soy milk. Iron is like Vitamin B-12, iron is a crucial component of red blood cells. Dried beans and peas, lentils, enriched cereals, whole-grain products, dark leafy green vegetables, and dried fruit are good sources of iron. To help your body absorb non-animal sources of iron, eat foods rich in vitamin C, such as strawberries, citrus fruits, tomatoes, cabbage and broccoli to consume iron-containing foods at the same time. Zinc a mineral that is an essential component of many enzymes and makes cell division and in the formation of proteins. Good sources of zinc include whole grains, soy products, nut and wheat germ. Now that we know how to get the important minerals and nutrients to help maintain a healthier body, let’s start by knowing which foods can replace animal derived foods in a vegetarian diet. 3. Third, I will discuss the foods that can be replaced with animal derived foods like meat, eggs and dairy to meet your daily nutritional needs and maintain a healthy diet when meal planning or cooking. Meat can be replaced tofu dogs, soy burgers, nut loaves or textured vegetable protein, to simulate the taste and texture of meat with less fat and fewer calories and to add variety to your vegetarian diet. Many of the meatless products, such as tofu are made from soybeans. Meat also can be replaced with the many varieties of beans, seeds, and nuts. Cow’s milk replaced with fortified soymilk, rice milk or almond milk. Butter replaced with olive oil, water, vegetable broth, wine when sauteing. In baked goods, use canola oil and there’s even fat-free cooking spray instead of butter. Cheese replaced with soy cheese or nutritional yeast flakes, which are available in health food stores. Eggs in baked goods, try commercial egg replacers – a dry product made mostly of potato starch. Or you can use the following to replace one egg: ? cup whipped tofu or 1 tablespoon milled flaxseed mixed with 3 tablespoons of water. For an egg-free omelet use tofu instead of eggs. So you see that a well-planned vegetarian diet is a healthy way to meet your nutritional needs and now that you know the steps to ensure you plan a healthy vegetarian diet the right way. Conclusion Now that you know how to find the many ways from the many cook books, magazine articles, etc which provide ways to cook, plan and replace meat erived foods or unhealthy foods with nutritional vegetarian diet that have plant-based foods that provide many health benefits that can prevent health problems in future. Vegetarianism will not only educate you to choose a healthier lifestyle, but to even educate ones essence of compassion for animals because the beginning of a ethical vegetarian is the knowledge that other creatures have feelings very similar to ours. Because we now ourselves the feeling of pain and s uffering, we can only sympathize with them to help stop such sorry conditions that many animals go through to only pleasure most of us humans wants and needs. A vegetarian can help to stop animal cruelty in the filthy environment of animal slaughter factories and by removing humanitarian objection to the eating of meat to reducing the pollution from those slaughter factories for the environment also. So now that you know even know more about how a simple vegetarian diet can have so many ways to benefit your daily nutritional needs, to help prevent health problems, to help reduce pollution in our environment, and to even help stop animal cruelty that will strengthen the compassion in us.