Food and nutrition.pdf

Diet and Health 41: one who abstains from using animal products (as leather) _ veganism've-ge-,ni-zem, 'va-ge-, 've-je-\ n .Partial vegetarians exclude some groups of animal foods but notothers. A diet that excludes red meat but includes fish is often adoptedfor health not moral reasons.Zen macrobiotic diets. This is a Japanese way of eating based on the'Yin Yang' theory. It aims to keep the balance between Yin and Yang(positive and negative) aspects of life for optimal spiritual, mental andphysical welfare. Foods are divided into Yin and Yang, and a spiritualgoal is aimed for by working through ten levels of diet. These graduallyeliminate all animal produce, fruit and vegetables towards the final goalwhich is only cereal (brown rice). Fluids are also severely restricted. Manynutritional deficiencies may develop and death can result. Infants andchildren subject to these restrictions are particularly at risk [Thomas etal., 1988]This is extreme, not all macrobiotic diets are so extreme and are often"equivalent to a palanced vegan diet. It is important to eat as much varietyof food as possible and not limit it to one group of foods.If you are vegetarian or want to become one, start off by giving upone kind of animal food, the one that offends you most. Once you areused to supplementing this food with another of vegetable origin, tacklethe next. Progressively reaching the level of vegetarianisim you desire,slowly over a period of time. This progressive vegetarian is one whochanges their eating habits / lifestyle at a positive rate, by doing so youallow your body to adjust to the eating of new types of foods or foodsthat may have given you troubles before (beans). It also gives you time tolearn more about nutrition and increase your pool of knowledge on thesubject. Thus it is not a fad diet that you will give up the next day but aprogressive change towards a healthy lifestyle.HistoryVegetarianism is an ancient custom. It has long existed among certainHindu and Buddhist sects that consider all animal life sacred, and it wasadvocated zealously by numerous philosophers and writers of ancientGreece and Rome. In the Roman Catholic church, it has been practisedmonastically by Trappists since 1666, and among Protestants more recentlyby Seventh-Day Adventists. As iln active Western movement, it originatedin 1809 near Manchester, England, among members of the Bible ChristianChurch. In 1847 the Vegetarian Society, a nonreligious organization, wasfounded. The movement spread to continental Europe and the U.S. (1850),and in 1908 the International Vegetarian Union was founded. Today theunion holds congresses every two years in different countries.