Vegan Diets Vs Junk Food Vegans

Generally, a vegan diet is made up of lots of fruit and vegetables, healthy fats, nuts and seeds, grains and legumes. A well constructed vegan diet can be extremely healthy and meet all your nutrition requirements, including all your protein and amino acid requirements. Often a vegan diet will be lower in calories, saturated fat, free sugars and salt than a diet that includes animal protein (meat). This means your vegan diet will help protect you from heart disease, obesity, diabetes and some forms of cancer. Because vegans do not eat any form of animal products, they need to take particular care with their vitamin B12 and calcium intake. A poorly constructed vegan diet may require supplements, however supplements should only be taken after a full nutritional analysis from a qualified dietitian or nutritionist.

In contrast to a whole food plant-based vegan diet, a diet that is made up of mostly processed foods is going to be very unhealthy. Here are some examples:

• Frozen ‘vegan’ meat. Often loaded with sodium (salt), artificial ingredients, processed oils and preservatives. Choose options that have beans or legumes as the first ingredient listed on the label – which means the product has these foods in the greatest proportion.
• Vegan desserts. Check what you are actually eating – read the food label. Often these foods are high in sugar and calories.
• Coconut yoghurt – watch the saturated fat content. This also means, high in calories.
• Vege chips – read the label. Often loaded in saturated fat and sodium.

• 2-minute noodles

The bottom line is, a well constructed vegan diet, made up of whole-foods and plant-based, will be one that significantly reduces your chanes of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.