Whether you choose to eat a
vegetarian or vegan diet for health or for personal reasons,
eliminating certain foods in your diet adds the challenge of
finding other foods to replace the missing nutrients that animal
foods contribute. A vegetarian or vegan diet can be a very
healthy way to eat, but these diets aren't any better for health
unless they include a wide variety of high nutrition foods. I
have assessed many vegetarian diets that were actually of low
nutritional quality because of a lack of variety, or because of
an improper balance of sugar, alcohol, or non-animal fats. Once
again, choosing the right foods in the right amounts will improve
the quality of diets that exclude meat, dairy, or other
foods.
Carolyn Classick-Kohn,MS,RD
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