Some students choose vegetarian

By Ben Liu, Faith Tupin and Leila Roberts
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

Taking up the vegetarian lifestyle can be beneficial not only for the Earth, but also for your health, as long as you are still eating a balanced diet.

The Plant Based Diet from Kaiser Permanente explains its potential to prolong life and make fewer medications necessary in the future by educating you on how to maintain a healthier weight, and lowering cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar.

Kaiser Dietitian Lona Churchill says Kaiser promotes “plant-based whole food nutrition,” which is low in cholesterol and high in antioxidants–good for your heart and immune system.

A balanced vegetarian diet may also help to reverse or prevent heart disease, reduce the risk of cancer and diabetes, possibly slow the progression of certain types of cancer and improve symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, as well as lower your food expenses.

Besides the potential health benefits, many become vegetarian for ethical reasons.

Juniors Kylie Navarro, Adrianne Johnson and Blair Boswell have all stopped eating meat for the animals’ sake.

“I don’t like the idea of killing something that has the will to live,” Boswell said.

Howevever, there are special nutrients to consider when following this lifestyle, including protein, vitamin B12, iron, calcium, zinc, vitamin D and Omega-3 fatty acids. These are nutrients largely found in animal foods and are necessary to build, repair and maintain the body and its functions.

Vegetarians may feel poorly and suffer from conditions such as anemia due to a lack of certain nutrients. All nutrients found in meat that are essential for our health can be found in plant-based foods, though they may be harder to obtain.

“I have to keep an eye on what I eat because I might not be getting enough protein and other needs,” Johnson said.

But according to Brown University Health services, “The key to any healthy diet is to choose a wide variety of foods, and to consume enough calories to meet your energy needs.”

Navarro has been vegetarian for about a year and a half now, and for her, “the only downside is that it is hard to get stuff from restaurants.”

A tip for high school students is “to be smart about the way you go about becoming vegetarian. Don’t go to extremes such as immediately trying to be vegan. Phase it in such as making one meal a day vegetarian,” Churchill said.

Many plant based foods can be a substitute for these nutrients, and supplements for nutrients like iron are available. For example, spinach and kale are high in iron and beans and nuts are high in protein.

“You also have to be willing to try new things. Nutritional balance is important. I’ve met vegetarians who eat few fruits or vegetables! It is possible to eat an unhealthy vegetarian diet,” Churchill said.