Why do women become vegetarians?

Nowadays, many women who want to get rid of those extra annoying pounds stick to a vegetarian diet.

Below are some of the reasons why people become vegetarians:

• ethical (moral) - for the sake of not causing suffering to 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 gastrointestinal diseases[19];
• religious beliefs (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Seventh-day Adventism[20], Rastafarianism);
• economic - the belief that a vegetarian diet helps save money spent on consuming meat products;
• others - the belief that plant foods are natural for humans.

Economic reasons for vegetarianism:

Vegetarian Times magazine estimates that a vegetarian diet can save you an average of four thousand dollars a year (US data).

There is also a famous story about Benjamin Franklin becoming a vegetarian, taking into account, in addition to dietary considerations, the idea of saving money: this way he could spend the money he saved on books.

There are also opposing opinions. According to the estimates of the employee of the clinic of the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, PhD A. Bogdanov, made public in the documentary film of the First Channel "Four myths about a healthy lifestyle", vegetarian nutrition is financially quite burdensome for the majority of Russian residents.

But now another reason has become known why representatives of the fair half of humanity prefer vegetarianism to other restrictions in food intake. It turns out that they choose this way of eating in order to mask eating disorders.

According to a recent study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, women with eating disorders are four times more likely to be vegetarian than women without eating disorders. The researchers found that 52 percent of women with a history of an eating disorder had been vegetarian at some point in their lives. On the other hand, only 12 percent of women without eating disorders followed a vegetarian diet.

Vanessa Kane-Alves, an American nutritionist, says that eating disorders are not a consequence of vegetarianism, and vegetarianism itself is not unhealthy. Instead, it suggests that vegetarianism may be a consequence of an eating disorder for some women.

Vegetarianism is a way of life characterized primarily by a diet that excludes the consumption of the flesh of any animal. Followers of strict vegetarianism, veganism, refuse to use all products of animal origin both in food (animal milk, eggs) and in everyday life (fur, leather, etc.).

[ 1 ], [ 2 ]