Why do women become vegetarians?
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Nowadays, many women who want to get rid of excess annoying kilograms, adhere to a vegetarian diet.
Below are some of the reasons why people become vegetarians:
- ethical (moral) - for the sake of not suffering the suffering of animals, in order to avoid their exploitation and killing;
- medical - a vegetarian diet can reduce the risk of atherosclerosis, cancer, a number of cardiovascular diseases and some diseases of the gastrointestinal tract [19];
- religious beliefs (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Seventh Day Adventists [20], Rastafarianism);
- economic - the conviction that a vegetarian diet helps to save money spent on consumption of meat products;
- other - the conviction that plant food is natural for a person.
Economic reasons for vegetarianism:
According to the magazine Vegetarian Times, thanks to the vegetarian diet, you can save an average of four thousand dollars a year (data for the United States).
There is also a story that Benjamin Franklin became a vegetarian, taking into account, in addition to dietary considerations, money saving considerations: so he could spend money saved on books.
There are also opposite opinions. According to the estimation of the employee of the clinic of the Institute of Nutrition of the RAMS, Ph.D. A. Bogdanova, promulgated in the documentary of the First Channel "Four myths about a healthy way of life", vegetarian food is financially enough loaded for the majority of the inhabitants of Russia.
But now there is another reason why representatives of the beautiful half of humanity prefer vegetarianism to other restrictions when eating. It turns out that they choose such a way of eating in order to disguise eating disorders.
According to a recent study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, women suffering from eating disorders are four times more likely to become vegetarian than women who have no eating disorders. The researchers found that 52 percent of women with a history of eating disorders were vegetarians at some point in their lives. On the other hand, only 12 percent of women without eating disorders adhered to a vegetarian diet.
Vanessa Kane-Alves, a nutritionist from America, claims that eating disorders are not a consequence of vegetarianism, but it is not harmful to health in and of itself. Instead, it can be assumed that vegetarianism may be a consequence of eating disorders for some women.
Vegetarianism is a way of life, characterized primarily by nutrition, which excludes the use of flesh of any animals. Followers of strict vegetarianism, veganism, refuse to use all products of animal origin both in nutrition (milk of animals, eggs), and in everyday life (fur, skin, etc.).
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