More and more people in developed countries prefer vegetarian food. People become vegetarians for various reasons. Someone prescribed the doctor, someone relies on philosophical, moral or moral or religious beliefs, someone just wants something "new", but someone just lives in a place where fish, meat and chickenare so expensive that not all segments of the population can afford them. Not everyone.
Vegetarianism conquers the world?
In view of the fact that there is no unified statistics, the question of the exact number of vegetarians in the world remains open. No one can confidently answer this question, because all the studies that have been conducted in this field have different results. As a rule, most of them are carried out by vegetarians themselves or by people whose impartiality is already very difficult to check from the very beginning, and it is impossible to prove at all.
For this reason, and in view of many other nuances, "the amount of people living on vegetarian diets," identified during the research, is usually estimated at 800 million to 1.5 billion people. At the same time, the fact that most of the people on the "list" live in dysfunctional third world countries is deep behind the poverty line and therefore can not afford to buy expensive meat for those parts. However, if we take the statistics for developed countries, it clearly confirms that the number of vegetarians among very wealthy people has been steadily growing in recent years.
In general, the variety of vegetarian diets is so great today that even the meaning of the concept of "vegetarianism" remains unresolved. There is no exact definition of this phenomenon to this day. Someone is sure that you can only call a vegetarian one who completely abandoned any products of animal origin, and some consider it acceptable to eat eggs and dairy products.
The only thing that makes all vegetarian diets similar to each other is the refusal to eat meat and internal organs of animals( the so-called offal), and attempts to somehow compensate for the products of plant origin with an immediately acute deficit of vitamins, proteins and other nutrients, necessary for any healthy organism.
However, let's not now discuss the benefits and harm of vegetarianism, its advantages and disadvantages. Whether to become a vegetarian - it's up to each person to decide on their own. Let's talk now about another: as a person who has firmly resolved this for himself, it is right and painless to switch to a new diet, so sharply different from the usual.
How to switch to vegetarian food
If you still made a choice in favor of vegetarianism, you should follow the following recommendations if you want to keep your health when switching to a diet so unusual for your body.
- Always remember that a vegetarian diet will never become part of a healthy lifestyle, it will not provide you with a full meal if you simply remove meat, fish, poultry and other animal products from your daily menu. In order not to harm yourself with a sharp transition to vegetarianism, you must make a variety in your menu with various foods rich in those vitamins and trace elements that your body will immediately be in short supply. For example, iron and calcium can be found in legumes, green vegetables, nuts and mushrooms.
- Vegetable food in almost all cases( except, perhaps, legumes and mushrooms) is digested much faster than any meat. Means, it is necessary to eat more often and small portions. But still, try to give your digestive system a rest, otherwise it will work on wear and tear, which in the end will result in a close acquaintance with many doctors and hospitals.
- Do not prepare vegetable salads in advance, they should be eaten immediately after cooking, because otherwise many vitamins and other useful substances are lost irretrievably.
- If you understand that it is very difficult for you to immediately exclude from your menu products of animal origin, try to do it smoothly and gradually. To begin with, it is best to remove red meat from the diet. After this, after some time, the rejection of chicken, fish and other meat products will not be so hard and painful for you. Especially if you do it gradually.
- Be sure to drink water! Otherwise you can not avoid dehydration! Drink at least 2 liters of clean water a day. It's clean! Various drinks, juices, tea, coffee, etc., should not be replaced with plain water. Of course, you can consume them, but you need to drink 2 liters of pure, non-aerated water during the day in any case. And so every day. Unless, of course, you are not banned by doctors - for example, a heavy drink is strictly unacceptable for hypertension or swelling. Get used to it, you chose it yourself.
- If you are afraid that the vegetarian menu will be monotonous and unattractive, get one or more cookbooks with vegetarian recipes. Look also for various resources on the Internet, dedicated to the recipes of vegetarian dishes and how to become a vegetarian. You will be very surprised to learn what variety and originality can enjoy delicacies made from plant products.
Finally, you should get a lot of fun from how you eat. If you feel that you are driving yourself into a painful penance with a moratorium on everything meat, then you will not last long on such a diet. Best then stop everything at once. It's all the same meaningless. But if you succeed in convincing yourself in some way or other that you are benefiting both the environment and your health, and yet you do not deny yourself tasty and healthy food, then it will not be difficult for you to go the way of the formation of the present, convinceda vegetarian.
The main thing here is a strong motivation and unwavering desire to make certain efforts to permanently change oneself.