Word: diets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...four years Christina Economos has run the Tufts longitudinal health study on young adults, a comprehensive survey of lifestyle habits among undergraduates. In general, she finds that "kids who were most influenced by family diet and health values are eating healthy vegetarian or low-meat diets. But there is a whole group of students who decide to become vegetarians and do it in a poor way. The ones who do it badly don't know how to navigate in the vegetarian world. They eat more bread, cheese and pastry products and load up on salad dressing. Their saturated-fat intake...
...that easy for the rest of America, either. Middle-aged to elderly adults can also develop deficiencies in a vegetarian diet (as they can, of course, with a poor diet that includes meat). Deficiencies in vitamins D and B12 and in iodine, which can lead to goiter, are common. The elderly tend to compensate by taking supplements, but that approach carries risks. Researchers have found cases in which vegetarian oldsters, who are susceptible to iodine deficiency, had dangerously high and potentially toxic levels of iodine in their bodies because they overdid the supplements...
...American Dietetic Association found that vegetarian diets are slightly more common among adolescents with eating problems but that "recent data suggest that adopting a vegetarian diet does not lead to eating disorders." It can be argued that most American teens already have an eating disorder--fast food, soft drinks and candy are a blueprint for obesity and heart trouble. Why should teens be expected to purge their bad habits just because they have gone veggie? Still, claims Simon Chaitowitz of the pro-vegetarian and animal-rights group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, "Kids are better off being junk-food vegetarians...
Maybe. According to Dr. Joan Sabate, chairman of the Loma Linda nutrition conference, there are still concerns over vegetarian diets for growing kids or lactating women. When you are in what he calls "a state of high metabolic demand," any diet that excludes foods makes it harder to meet nutrient requirements. But he is quick to add that "for the average sedentary adult living in a Western society, a vegetarian diet meets dietary needs and prevents chronic diseases better than an omnivore diet...
...Michelle Warren, a professor of medicine at New York Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City--and a member of the Council for Women's Nutrition Solutions, which is sponsored by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association--expresses concern about calcium deficiency connected with a vegan diet: "The most serious consequences are low bone mass and osteoporosis. That is a permanent condition." Warren says that in her practice, she has seen young vegetarians with irregular periods and loss of hair. "And there's a peculiar color, a yellow tinge to the skin," that occurs in people...