TIME TO GO VEGAN IN DIET
With millions of people across the globe celebrating November as World Vegan Month, it is indeed a good time to talk about the vegan diet and bust some myths around animal based products.
The vegan diet, as we know, is essentially a 100% plant based diet with a wide variety from the six basic plant based food groups, namely fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds. From these food groups also available are three extracts that we call juices, oils and plant milks.
Since humans are physically and physiologically designed like herbivorous animals, a fully plant based diet is natural, sufficient, suitable and very healthy for us.
Animal protein, heme iron, cholesterol and high amounts of saturated fat that are inherently present in animal based foods are unnecessary for the human body and their regular consumption often leads to diseases and untimely death.
There is a misconception that nutrients like Vitamin B12 and Omega 3 and 6 are available only through animal based foods. The truth is that animals only process the nutrients that they get from plants. Plants are the primary source of nutrition and all herbivorous animals do perfectly well on a fully plant based diet. That dairy milk is the best source of calcium for us is also not true because a new mother’s milk is meant as a source of food and nutrition only for her own babies and after teething, other foods become the direct source of all nutrition. Besides drinking milk post-infancy, we are the only animals who drink milk inter-species and convert it into various dairy products that are all high in lactose, casein, cholesterol and saturated fat.
Sportspersons, athletes, body builders, actors and anyone who is conscious about health and fitness are fast switching to a fully plant based diet. It is no surprise that so many foods and beverages that we consume on a daily basis are, by default, vegan which means we only need to eliminate flesh, eggs and milk from our diet or choose their substitutes that are as tasty if not more!
Originally published on the Jammu Links website http://www.jammulinksnews.com/mob/newsdet.aspx?q=208932
