Vegetarian diet or meatless diet has become a lifestyle along with the increase of health awareness of people and the rising incidence of diseases caused by unhealthy eating habits. The term, vegetarian meaning “with or without egg or dairy products” was introduced in 1847 by an Englishman, Joseph Brotherton. At this moment, the number of vegetarian communities is growing all over the world.
There are many reasons why people decide to live a life without meat consumption. Aside from the health benefit, other reasons are religion, moral, tradition, environment, esthetics and taste.
A lot of evidences show that being a vegetarian has many health benefits, like rejuvenating and long life effect, the increase of health quality, and significantly reducing the risk of cancer and other diseases. Many scientific studies conclude that vegetarians possess a healthier life and live longer than other people. So, this is really something to consider.
The vegetarian diet has many modifications depending on the restriction of some type of meat and dairy products. There are 4 major types of vegetarian diet as seen in the following table
Other types that are related to vegetarian diet is based on the consumption of foodstuff other than meat like fruits, nuts and seeds, or all other plants that are consumable without doing any harm to the plant. Some to mention are as below:
Macrobiotic diet
The major consumption is flour and beans. Not all of the followers are really vegetarians, since some of them still consume fish
Raw Veganism (Raw vegetable diet)
This diet allows the consumption of only raw or uncooked vegetables, seeds, beans and fresh fruits.
Natural Hygiene Diet
This is a form of the classical diet and a bit similar of the raw vegetable diet
Freeganism
The followers of this diet type avoid buying any type of commodity in the market that is originated from the exploitation (of human or animals). Most of the followers are pure vegans, but some are still willing to consume meat as long as they believe that what they eat is not processed through any form of exploitation.
Semi-vegetarian Diet
Generally they take up any type of vegetarian diet with some exception in the consumption of non-vegetarian food like fish and chicken now and then
A vegetarian diet can be adopted by people with high blood pressure. Just attend to the limitation of salt and dairy products. To implement this diet will also not be a problem since many cooking information on how to process vegetables into delicious and appetizing dishes are available. The vegetarian community has even their own restaurants with a wide variety of healthy food which you can choose from. Books of vegetarian recipes can be found easily in bookstores.