Health Benefits of Being a Vegetarian
Why should you be vegetarian? Well, there are plenty of reasons including religious, ethical, and health! While some people prefer to be vegetarian by choice, others realize its importance only after a certain period of time. Whatever it is, many studies indicate that a vegetarian diet helps you combat several unwanted diseases, and vegetarian people are 50% less likely to develop heart diseases as compared to non-vegetarian people. Do you know that apart from heart diseases, saturated fat and cholesterol present in meat and dairy products also cause brain strokes? Research confirms that strokes kill an Americas every three minutes. Research also reveals that people consuming good quantity of fruits and vegetables face the lowest risk of developing heart or brain stroke. Many doctors claim that a low fat vegetarian diet reduces the risk of suffering a heart attack by more than 80% and the risk of developing cancer by nearly 60%.
Do you know vegetarians are less likely to die from heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and prostate and colon cancer? The reason is simple. The vegetarian diet is rich of cancer preventing foods including vegetables, whole grains, fruits, soy, nuts, and beans. In fact your chances of developing cancer reduce manifolds if you minimize the intake of meat.
If you are planning to lose weight, adopting a vegetarian lifestyle can help you a lot! Eating fruits and vegetables help you lose weight and develop immunity against various terminal diseases. In addition, vegetarian diet provides you lots of energy and helps you develop an attitude to say No to fatty meats and cheesy hamburgers. The non vegetarian diet contains lots of fat. Consider this! You just had hamburger for breakfast, a chicken sandwich for lunch along with fries and butter and bread. Haven’t you already surpassed your fat intake for the day?
Vegetarian diet is not only good for adults, but also proves healthy for children. Various studies indicate that vegetarian diet helps children grow taller and such kids demonstrate higher IQ as compared to their omnivore counterparts. A vegetarian diet also protects them later in life from developing heart diseases, diabetes, and obesity. The research published in the American Dieting Association proves that an average American child possesses the IQ of 99 whereas the average IQ of a vegetarian American child comes out to be around 116.
You get all essential nutrients, protein, and minerals by eating a vegetarian diet. If you want to live healthy, give a serious thought to include low-calorie and nutritious fruits and vegetables foods in your meal plan.
By: Jenny R Smith
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Filed under Health And Fitness by on Jun 18th, 2010. 