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
