Like any hungry vegetarian (for both food and knowledge), I am always looking for new ways to improve my diet and make it more tasteful. So as the opportunity arose to find a nutrition education example, I stumbled upon 10 Tips: Healthy Eating For Vegetarians—a part of choosemyplate’s Nutrition Education Series. The material was composed of ten useful facts and suggestions ranging from protein needs to increasing variety within a vegetarian’s diet. The ten tips were followed by a few sentences elaborating on the tip given which I found to be very admirable. The material gave real examples of certain foods, where to acquire them, how to eat out with diet restrictions, and information on key nutrients vegetarians need to make sure they consume enough of.
Many times when someone transitions from an omnivore-based diet to a vegetarian diet, they often lack many key nutrients to a healthful diet. I was surprised that this nutrition education example provided facts about the nutrients vegetarians most often forget to include in their diet and what those key nutrients offer to a person’s health. Before I was interested in nutrition, I became a vegetarian during my high school years. Not having the proper education, rather than replacing meat with supplements, extra protein, etc. I just ignored it and claimed myself to be “healthy”—until one day I collapsed during a cross-country race from low iron levels. I think these small little tips are so helpful to those transitioning into a vegetarian diet and especially those who have little to no knowledge of nutrition.
The last tip on the 10 tips on healthy eating for vegetarians was something I found to be interesting. It provided a link providing vegetarian adaptations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. I thought this was really neat because it provided adaptations for vegetarians of the USDA food patterns with 12 different calorie levels. I often feel as if vegetarians are overlooked in their eating patterns, but now because the prevalence of vegetarianism is increasing, it is nice to see more places take their dietary restrictions into consideration.
As a nutrition educator I would use this resource to advise new or non-nutrition educated vegetarians into a healthful lifestyle. The ten tips the material provides are a simple yet effective way to easily outline the basic nutrition requirements vegetarians need to meet in order to keep themselves healthy. The simplicity and information of the material was extremely helpful, and would certainly be helpful to any vegetarian looking for easy ways to improve their health!