Healthy choices on a vegan diet
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Decades of experience, culminating in more than a million vegans today, have shown that appropriate vegan diets support good health at all stages of life and reduce the risk of heart disease. This has been confirmed by independent scientific studies.The Vegan Society recommends a highly varied diet including both cooked and raw foods as the proven basis for vegan health, particularly for infants.
Like any other form of diet, some vegan diets are more nutritionally complete than others. White bread, hydrogenated margarine and chips qualify as a vegan meal, but too many such meals will remove the usual benefit of a vegan diet in reducing risk of heart disease. Bananas are a healthful food in moderation, but anyone trying to live on bananas alone is headed for deficiency in about ten important nutrients.
The starting principle for health is to eat a wide variety of plant foods, including plenty of strongly coloured vegetables and fruits. Each food has different strengths, so the fewer foods you eat the less likely it is that all your needs will be met. Vegetables and fruits provide plenty of many vital vitamins and minerals along with a host of other beneficial plant chemicals. In general, the stronger the colour the better. Dark green leaves such as kale and spring greens leave white cabbage, iceberg lettuce and cucumber in the shade. In conjunction with HealthPlus, we've produced a multivitamin - Veg1 - which contains the essential nutrients required by vegans - taken as part of a healthy vegan diet, it will help to ensure vegans get adequate daily supplies of recommended nutrients.
Over-processed foods that have lost much of their nutrient content or have been transformed into unnatural and harmful forms should be used sparingly, if at all. Hydrogenating vegetable oils is one of the worst forms of processing as it produces unnatural trans-fats which have an even worse effect than ordinary saturated fat in raising cholesterol and increasing heart disease risk. Hydrogenated fat is found in most fast foods, hard margarines, doughnuts and biscuits, and in some vegan sausages and burgers. Prefer unprocessed foods and products stating that there is no hydrogenated fat. Refined grains should not be a major part of a vegan diet, but whole grains are associated with many health benefits. At the same time, especially for the very old or very young, it is important not to overtax the body with more fibre than it is comfortable with: some people will fare much better with brown rice rather than wheat as a main grain as it is lower in fibre and very rarely associated with food allergies or intolerances.
In conventional nutrition, animal products are seen as a key source of protein, iron, zinc and vitamin B12, while dairy products are seen as a key source of calcium. However, zinc and iron are found in useful amounts in many whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes and vegans are no more likely to become anaemic than anyone else. Protein is found in adequate amounts in most plant foods: it is fairly low in fruit, potatoes and rice, but particularly high in legumes. With regard to read more
