A For and Against Essay. Kseniya Zhilina

 The Benefits and Disadvantages of a Vegetarian Diet 

Everyone remembers a well-knowing saying “You are what you eat’’. Obviously, a way of nutrition reflects your state of health, physical and mental efficiency, and even mood and sleeping. Therefore, there is a huge variety of diets, but nowadays more and more people choose a vegetarian one. They do it for different reasons; however, the fact is nowadays, according to IBOPE's survey and the research conducted by firm Nielsen Corporation, there are about 800 million vegetarians in the world. Even so, debates about good and bad aspects of the vegetarian diet continue unabated for a long time.  

Many of today's vegetarians adhere to this diet not so only for reasons of humanity (,) but believing that they will bring benefits to their health. And they do win in some way. For example, different types of vegeterian products bring different benefits. Let's take a closer look at them. Vegetables and fruits which vegetarians usually eat in abundance are rich in vitamins and minerals. It contributes to immunity and cancer prevention. In addition, plant foods contain phytoncides that inhibit the processes of rotting in the intestine, improves the gastrointestinal tract, not only does not contain cholesterol (,) but also contributes to its excretion. Cereals are rich with dietary fibers, vitamin B, vitamin E, minerals. Different varieties of nuts present in all vegetarian diets are rich in vitamins and minerals too. Studies have shown that they contain many valuable unsaturated fatty acids that lower cholesterol. Maybe that's why among vegetarians there is less suffering from cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes; they also rarely have kidney stones and gallbladder.

Unfortunately, even such a good diet has its drawbacks, the main of which is connected with the rejection of meat and fish. If you completely exclude from the diet all animal products, as do vegans, no vegetable protein will not replace ART animal. Therefore, refusing meat, vegetarians risk becoming victims of iron deficiency anemia, because iron is best absorbed from animal products. For example, there is a form of protein deficiency, developing in a monotonous diet of plant products with low protein content. In this case, there is a disease called "kwashiorkor". It is found among the population of the tropical and subtropical zones of Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. Thus, sometimes the consequences of such a diet can be terrible.

As you could see, although the vegetarian diet has certain drawbacks, it definitely has a number of benefits for human health. Anyway, the choiсe is yours and you can plan your diet correctly and solve the problem of lack of any nutrients.