How healthy are vegetarian diets?
The healthiness of a vegetarian diet largely depends on the variety of foods consumed. Because vegetarian diets feature primarily plant foods, they tend to be richer in dietary fibre, carbohydrates and many vitamins and minerals. Protein is a nutrient that many vegetarians worry about, but quite unnecessarily. While vegetarians typically eat less protein than non-vegetarians, their diets tend to meet or even exceed the recommended daily allowance for protein. And if they eat a variety of different plant foods -grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, vegetables and fruits -the quality of the protein is fine. “In the past, we used to tell vegetarians to mix their plant foods at each meal”, said Julie Howden, a nutritionist and executive director of the Singapore-based Asian Food Information Centre (AFIC). “This is because plant foods supply different types and amounts of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. It was thought that you had to eat all of the amino acids at one meal to provide g
