Diets

© 2007 Clove Garden

There are two broad classes of vegetarians:

• Ethical Vegetarians: are people who feel, or who's religion teaches, that killing animals is cruel and wrong. Some sects go a mile farther and forbid any exploitation of animals for any purpose whatever. Many of the more extreme ethical vegetarians do not extend these courtesies to people, even though people are animals too.
• Health / Aesthetic Vegetarians: all who are vegetarians for reasons other than ethics.

Now lets cut this a different way into types:

• Strict Vegetarians: who don't eat any animal derived foods. The strictist of the strict are the vegans who consider use of any animal products whatevr highly unethical. See our separate Vegan Page for more information.
• Lacto Vegetarians most exemplified by the Jains of India. To the Jains even no-see-ems are "five sensed life" and not to be harmed in any way. In times past Jains wore face masks to prevent injuring tiny insects. Eggs, even sterile eggs, are regarded as forbidden life forms, but milk products are permitted. This leaves a huge hole in the philosophy (see next section) which perhaps could be avoided in the India of times past but not now.
• Ovo-Lacto Vegetarians feel it is acceptable to eat eggs and milk products because the animals producing them are not killed or injured (they may be inconvenienced - but so are the rest of us). It is not possible to be both an "Ethical Vegetarian" and an "Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian". Anyone who doesn't understand why should read my page Veal - Controversy.
• False Vegetarians eat fish, sometimes describing fish as "fruits of the sea". Fish are not vegetables. We, and all other higher animals are descended from fish. All of our characteristics are exaggerations and adaptations of characteristics we inherited from our fishy ancestors. We are of the same flesh and no-one who eats fish has the right to claim the title "vegetarian". Episcatarian, maybe?

Today the vegetarian diet is much better understood and a whole lot less scary than when I did it, but even back then I had no health problems whatever from it. Vegetarianism did, however, prove incompatible with the broad survey of cuisines I am currently involved in.

Protein:     When I started my vegetarian phase the protein thing was scary. It looked very difficult to assure the U.S. recommended minimum. Turned out this "minimum" was so high it was dangerous (encouraged by the meat and dairy industries) and was soon reduced. It's probably still well above any real minimum.

The only real protein deficiency problem normal vegetarians face is with a severely unbalanced protein supply. Vegetable sources are incomplete (soy is one of the most complete but it apparently has other serious problems). Fortunately beans and grains nicely complement each other's deficiencies.

Earlier books on vegetarian nutrition say you have to balance your protein at each meal, but current thinking is that you have at least 24 hours and probably a lot longer to balance out. The "protein combining" theory was popularized by the first edition of Frances Moore Lappé's book Diet for a Small Planet, but has never been supported by properly interpreted data and was withdrawn from later editions.

Vegans     Of all the classes and types of vegetarians who are actually getting enough food, only strict vegans face serious deficiency problems. For details read my Vegan Page.

Links

• 1 - Jain Food - www.jainworld.com.