Becoming a vegetarian?

Question

I need to know how to plan things out so I can have all the nutrients I need to be healthy without eating meat. Experience would be nice.

Answer 1

Hi I am a vegan, and my doctor says I am perfectly healthy by just eating my veggies and soy milk, meat and cheese subtitutes and taking my vitamins every day.

You can go to these websites for more on becoming a veg:
www.milksucks.com Talks about how bad milk is for you, blah, blah,blah
www.peta2.com go here, just take a look around, watch some videos, join the street team,
www.meat.com Watch the video. If you're eating meat before you watch it, you won't after you watch it.
www.vegcooking.com for some great recipes, tips, "Meet Your Meat" (video) and "Chew On This: 30 Reasons to Go Vegetarian".

My personal favorite is vegcooking.com and the "Chew On This" video, it's great!
Hope I helped and good luck!!

Answer 2

What "strain" of vegetarian are you going to be? Are you going to eliminate all dairy and eggs as well?

Things you'll need to think about: Protein is something you can get from legumes (beans of all sorts), soy, and many other foods. Calcium can be gotten from various leafy greens such as kale, brocolli, and collard greens, from tofu or even supplements. There's not going to be a whole lot that you'll need to really specifically target as long as you are making sure that you are getting a healthy diet. You should be maintaining pretty much the nutrients that you will need by ensuring that. There's one vitamin that is harder to have if you are living a strictly vegan lifestyle, it's a B vitamin... You can take a daily supplemental all-in-one vitamin if you are worried about nutrition, but you should mostly just focus on establishing a good healthy vegetarian eating lifestyle going and you should mostly have everything you need in your diet.

Answer 3

If you are dedicated, try not to cut meat out of your diet cold turkey, you might be fighting cravings first and resort back to meat for a longer time that way. Try to shoot for eating meat only three times a week, and then in the next couple months, only once a week until you body has adjusted to how you digest protein differently when you only eat:( beans, soy, various veggies, eggs, cheese etc.)
Another easier way to become a vegatarian is to remove one meat from you diet at a time. ex: first pork than beef, lastly chicken etc.
That way in the beginning if you crave meat you can have some, and you also start your controlling with fallback resorts, not all or nothing straight away
Good luck!

Answer 4

One good site to visit is vegetarianresource.org It's good to make sure that most of your grain intake consists of whole grains-- whole wheat, brown rice etc. Protein shouldn't be a problem as long as your eating habits are good. I've had to do a nutritional analysis a couple of times for college classes & to my surprise was getting more protein than I needed (also more calcium, iron & many vitamins). Whole grains & most veggies have some protein, beans & soy products have more. You might want to use meat analogs (Tofurkey, Fakin Bacon, Smart Dogs), especially in the beginning. Tofu can be either delicious or blah, depending on what you do with it (I like to toss some in a blender with frozen fruit to make smoothies). If you're going vegan, you should take a B-12 supplement. It'soften fun to try fruits & veggies that you haven't had before. There are lots of great books, magazines & websites to help you on this tasteful adventure--good luck!

Answer 5

The hardest part of being a vegetarian would probably finding an adequate alternative to meat for protein. Thanks to hippies and the invention known as california, there's tons of soy-protein products out there for the modern vegetarian.

Tofu is an awesome alternative to meat, and there's an extremely wide variety available at pretty much every asian store.

Beans are awesome, and contain butt-loads of the protein you need for a healthy diet.

As for your daily required nutrients, I would simply recommend going to your nearest supermarket and picking up as many different vegetables and fruits as possible.

Divy them up and start googling for good vegetarian recipes. You're gonna have to get a little creative at times with cooking, and that's the fun part!

Good luck?

Answer 6

ignore the 1st post, that is untrue. Read Becoming Vegetarian, it has a ot of useful info. There are many web sites that slo offer a lot of comprehensive information. I've been a lacto ovo veg for almost a year now with no ill effects and I do not miss the meat at all. Good luck to you.

Answer 7

I am a vegetarian and all you really have to watch out for is making sure you get enough protein.... you can easily get this by adding vegan meat substitutes to your diet.. these are just tofu items. The weird thing is that after you are a vegetarian long enough... the smell of cooking meat makes you sick.

Answer 8

Just abide by the "Food pyramid" Yes, there's a "meat' section. What people don't notice is that in the same section, it includes beans, nuts, soy, eggs.. Just eat those things instead of meat!! Trust me, you'll be plenty healthy, healthier than a meat eater, and you'll get all the right nutrition.

http://personal.monm.edu/ADOLK/food-pyramid.gif

Answer 9

look at the food guid pyramid and cross off what you cant eat. decied if you are going to eat seafood or not to (b/c some vegetarians dont eat meat, but do eat seafood)

Answer 10

well rice has most of the nutrients right there...except for like calcium in milk and vitamin c in juice,

soo basically if u eat rice, milk and orange juice thats all u need.

o and protein which are in the green vegetables.