by Debs Johnson

Created on: April 29, 2010

How good are vegetarian diets for your health? That's a good question! The plural 'diets' is the give away - there are such a lot of choices here and a great many myths and preferences affecting those choices.

How different diet preferences affect our health is something food scientists have been investigating for more than a hundred years. The results can be completely mind boggling, are always being updated and are quite likely to put you off your dinner!

The word 'vegetarian' itself comes with all sorts of additions and definitions. Meat free does not always mean vegetarian, if gelatine is used in a product (it is made from connective tissue - the gristly bits in meat), it is definitely not 'veggie'. Vegans eat no animal products at all, even honey. Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat milk products and eggs, providing themselves with animal proteins without directly eating meat. Anyone who says they are a vegetarian, then tucks into a fish dish, clearly isn't one and should be given a good telling off!

If the decision to 'go veggie' is made on ethical grounds, then there are ways of including eggs and milk through the free-range style of farming. How good a diet is - any diet or eating plan, for that matter - depends on the raw ingredients in the food and the methods of cooking. A decent vegetarian eating plan can be good for your bank balance, your digestion, your weight, for local farmers and for the environment. So, good all round!

For a human to survive and thrive, each day certain nutrients have to go in one end and waste products need to leave from the other. A vegetarian style of eating can certainly enable this.

The main nutrients are the same for meat eaters or vegetarians:Proteins, Complex carbohydrates, Fats and oils, Starches and sugars. These terms are so commonly used these days, but we don't always understand what they mean.

'Protein' is used to describe any food item formed from amino acids; these are basic chemicals essential for our muscles, skin, hair - building materials for the whole body. We must have some amino acids every day, the simplest and most direct forms include animal proteins like meat and eggs. That is why we eat them - it has become easy for us to do so.

'Complex Carbohydrates' again is a chemical group, stuck together into long chains, forming the structure and shape of most vegetables and many fruits. Cellulose is a complex carbohydrate. The foods we eat which are rich in these materials help with digestion; they contain many very

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