Both Vegetarian and non-vegetarian diets have advantages. Vegetarian diets tend to be rich in antioxidants, certain vitamins, and healthy fats. Non-Vegetarian diets, by contrast, tend to contain more protein, iron, zinc, calcium, and vitamin B-12.
If you already to adopt a vegetarian diet, it is essential you learn how to increase your intake and absorption of these nutrients to avoid short-term and long-term health complications.
In the next few paragraphs, I will explain how you can regularly assimilate larger portions of these nutrients into your regular diet:
1. Proteins. Different types of protein are made up of different permutations of amino acid chains. In order to create a “complete protein” or a protein that can be assimilated into the human body as tissue, you must consume foods that contain complementary chains of amino acids.
Wheat, nuts, and beans are three types of vegan-friendly incomplete proteins: however, wheat is hard to digest and up to 50% of it’s protein is lost during the process.
Isolated soy protein, which you can get from a number of sources (including soy milk), can be digested efficiently enough to match the animal protein yields.
2. Iron. Plants sources contain a significant amount of iorn, but in nonheme form, which is more sensitive to inhibitors than iron that comes from animal products. You should do two things to increase your blood iron levels: 1. consume more plant iron,2. avoid absorption inhibitors, such as tea, coffee and fiber.
3. Zinc. Where as non-vegetarian diets seem to enhance the absorption of zinc: vegetarian and vegan diets do the exact opposite they inhibit it.
Nutrients suggest that you can overcome this by consuming more foods that contain zinc, such as soybeans, cashews and sunflower seeds while reducing your intake of inhibitors by washing vegetables and grains.
4. Calcium. While vegetarians can easliy consume an adequate amount of calium without any dietary additions, it is important that vegetarians avoid consuming certain foods that are high in oxalates, which inhibit calium absorption.
Dietitians suggest that vegetarians do not consume spinach, beet greens, and swiss chard as the calcium component of a meal plan. While they are rich in calium, they also contain high amounts of oxalates.
Rather than consuming those foods for calaium, vegetarians should consider other options, such as soy yogurt, tofu, beans, almonds, and calcium- fortified foods.
5. Vitamin B-12. Many vegetarians lack vitamin B12 simply because it does not exist naturally in any non-animal forms.Vegetarians should seek out Vitamin B12 fortified foods, such as certain soy milks and cereals to supplements what they lack.
As I outlined, there are a number of nutrients vegetarians can lack of they do not research and plan. This is not mean’t to discourage people from becoming vegetarians, but instead to encourage them to spend time planning a health approach to their vegetarian diet before starting it.
When planned adequately, a vegetarian diet can not only make up for what it lacks from animal products, but it can for exceed the healthfulness of most non-vegetarian diets
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