Benefits Of Plant Foods

Research shows that vegetarians are at lower risk for heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. Vegetarian diets might also protect against diverticular disease and gallstones.

Many vegetarians include some animal foods–eggs and dairy–in their diets. But a growing number of vegetarians are vegans–consuming only plant foods. Plant foods are filled with compounds that protect health and that are not found in animal foods. Animal foods, by contrast, contain compounds that are linked to a higher risk for disease.

Here is a quick summary of why basing your diet on plant foods makes sense:

• Plant foods provide phytochemicals. These are compounds found only in plants; some of these have significant impacts on risk for heart disease, cancer, and other diseases.
• Plant foods contain fiber, which is associated with a lower risk for cancer, heart disease, and obesity. Animal foods contain no fiber and people who eat typical American diets based on meat and dairy generally do not get as much fiber as experts recommend.
• Plant foods contain no cholesterol. Even lean meats like shrimp and white chicken meat are high in cholesterol.
• Plant foods are low in saturated fat. Most of the saturated fat in American diets comes from meat and dairy foods. Saturated fat is linked to a risk for heart disease and possibly for cancer as well.
• Some plant foods, like olives and nuts, are high in total fat, but they typically contain healthful types of fat. Unlike saturated fat, these plant fats are linked to reduced disease risk when they are consumed in moderation.
• The type of iron in plant foods is regulated by the body in a way that guards against iron overload, which may be linked to chronic disease.
• Plant foods are excellent sources of nutrients, such as folate, potassium, and chromium, which help fight chronic disease.

Vegetarian Diets Are More Than Good Health

In addition to health considerations, there are other good reasons for avoiding animal foods. First, meat production is wasteful and harmful to the environment because it takes so much more land to raise animal foods than it does to produce plant crops. The fact is that all agriculture takes its toll on the environment. Raising food requires land, water, and fuel and it produces pollution. But we have to eat. The solution is to choose the foods that have a smaller effect on environmental resources–and for the most part, these are plant foods.

In addition, animals raised for food suffer greatly–some of them every day of their lives. This is true of hens raised for eggs and cows in the dairy industry as well as animals raised for their meat. Today's farm is less likely to be a friendly family enterprise and more likely to be a "factory," where efficiency takes precedence over kind treatment of animals. The details of animal lives on factory farms are downright horrific. The plain and simple–and uncomfortable–fact is that if you eat animal foods–even dairy and eggs–you contribute directly to animal suffering.

These are good reasons to choose a vegan diet. But if you aren't quite ready to make the switch, then start a transition, using the information here to help you. Even reducing the amounts of these foods in your diet makes a difference–and every step towards a completely plant-based diet matters and is something to be proud of.

Don't Sweat The Small Stuff!

There are "hidden" animal ingredients in many foods and the problem is especially difficult for vegetarians who avoid dairy. Even seemingly benign foods like soy cheese can contain milk proteins. White sugar and maple syrup–seemingly vegetarian–can be processed with animal ingredients, a fact that you won't see on their labels. Some food additives can be either animal or plant-derived–and you just have no way of knowing.

Should you care? Well, I definitely don't think so. In fact, I'm convinced that worrying about such things does more harm than good.

There is truly nothing to be gained by careful attention to this kind of detail in your diet. Avoiding these minute animal ingredients won't make your diet any healthier. Nor will it lessen animal suffering or help protect the environment–at least not in any meaningful way. The only thing it will do is make your vegetarian diet more restrictive, time consuming, and difficult to follow. It's possible to get so bogged down in these details that you will simply find a vegetarian diet too laborious to follow.

On the other hand, you may be perfectly happy to put the time and attention into seeking out and eliminating every last animal ingredient from your diet. While that is certainly your choice, it's important to think about how this impacts the general view of vegetarian diets. If others believe that this meticulous attention to detail is what a vegetarian diet means, they are unlikely to feel inspired to eat this way. If you care only about your own diet, that's fine. If you want to have a wider impact, then it makes better sense to portray a vegetarian diet as something delicious, fun–and easy.