Advantages and Disadvantages of Choosing Vegan Diet, Why it is not Successful in India?

• How Vegan Diet helps you healthy body functioning
• It has some nutritional shortfalls

5 Reasons To Choose Vegan Diet

Being vegan helps in a lot of ways –gives you a healthy body, disease protection, and an overall healthy lifestyle. Vegans choose to eat plant-based products and eliminate animal-based products, dairy products like milk, honey, meat, fish, eggs from their diet. The reason can be to stay healthy, religious beliefs or Ethical values. A vegan diet is nutritionally balanced and is highly beneficial for the healthy lifestyle. Some of its advantages are –

Weight Reduction

A large number of population opt for this diet to do excessive weight loss. The reason behind this is there is less intake of fats which come from animal-based products and high intake of fiber. Vegan Diet includes consumption of healthy food products like fruits, vegetables, nut and other plant-based products which maintain nutritional balance in your body.

Reduces Diabetes and Hypertension

People following Vegan Diet are often able to reduce their blood pressure and sugar level than compared to Non – vegans. Intake of plant-based products helps in reducing the need of insulin for the diabetic patients. As mentioned in various researchs, meat and fish eaters tend to have high blood pressure which is eliminated in the vegan diet.

Avoids Heart and Kidney Diseases

Vegan Diet helps reducing cholesterol in your body. Healthy food intake avoids risky heart diseases and helps in proper functioning of the heart. Plant proteins reduce the risk of the poor kidney function than meat proteins.

Helps to Maintain Healthy Bones

The diet is rich in potassium, magnesium and vitamin K which contributes to the bone health significantly. Calcium Fortified plant milk and yogurts can help in achieving recommended calcium dietary intake which keeps the bones healthy and prevents various bone and dental diseases.

Overall healthy lifestyle

It keeps your mind and body relaxed and stress-free. Prevents you from common body ailments like a frequent headache, body pain etc. Eating healthy food like fruits, vegetables and less intake of fats makes you feel active and energized whole day. It makes you feel good and confident about your body.

Disadvantages

Although Vegan Diet has proved to be beneficial to many it has some nutritional shortfalls as well. Vegans often tend to have various nutrient deficiencies like –

Vitamin B12: Deficiency of Vitamin B12 occurs due to the elimination of dairy products and meat from the diet, for vegans, it can be prevented by taking B12 supplements or B12 fortified foods.

Calcium: Vegan should eat more tofu, tahini, and green leafy vegetables to intake the required amount of calcium in the body.

Iron: Iron is essential to transport oxygen to the blood cells. Eat dried beans and use a cast-iron skillet to prepare the meal to have an iron-rich diet.

Omega 3 Fatty Acids: It is important for cardiovascular health, eyes and brain function. Eating walnuts, soy products, and flaxseed can prevent the deficiency.

Although, It is hard to be a vegan in India as Indians love to eat dairy and poultry products.The most indulgent foods in India consists of milk, cheese, fish, eggs, and meat. But when it comes to healthy living, veganism is one of the best options you can opt for and every non-vegan food in your diet can be replaced by a vegan food.

-prepared by Pragya Mittal of NewsGram | Twitter @PragyaMittal05