Review （SE5）

Short Essay five

After reading food journal of my classmates, I found I am really interesting in Yusi’s article. She writes about she just had vegetables in three days without meat. That’s incredible for me because I will feel lose something if I don’t eat meat for one day. I can’t image people who just eat vegetables for three days because I think it is impossible for me. Besides, I’d have to say that Yusi is eating in a healthy way because eating vegetables are healthier than eating meat. I’m an international from China, and n China, we don’t eat meat very often. But when I came to the United States, I found American food is not very healthy. People always eat hamburgers, sandwich, pizza, and drinking soda. All of the foods are not good for people’s health if people keep eating these foods usually. In china, people always have food, combined with vegetables and meat, for dinner, and actually, people cook vegetables, not like here that people eating vegetables with sauce, such as ranch, 1000 islands. Maybe this is a different eating style between Chinese people and American people, but I’d like to say that I think Chinese people eating in a healthy way.

In order to get to know more about the benefit of being a vegetarian, I also did a research. I searched Penrose website and I found an interesting article named “Nutrition Concerns and Health Effects of Vegetarian Diets” which was published by Nutrition in Clinical Practice. From this article I know that vegetables are full of nutrition and contain some important elements which are good for people’s health. For example, vegetables have low calorie and low fat, and that can help people keep fit. For girls, it is very important for them to keep fit because having a nice body shape represents beauty, and I think that is way Yusi just had vegetables in three days. Also, low calorie and low fat can decrease the risk of getting cardiovascular disease. For the data from the article, it shows that “Based on blood lipid data in one large cohort study, the incidence of ischemic heart disease was estimated to be 24% lower in lifelong vegetarians and 57% lower in lifelong vegans compared with omnivores” (Winston p, 616) and that is why more and more people prefer to eat vegetables instead of having meat nowadays.

However, from reading the “Nutrition Concerns and Health Effects of Vegetarian Diets” I also know people who just eat vegetables may lack of iron, vitamin and other nutrition which are important for people’s health. From looking at the data in the article, I found non-vegetarian can get more Calcium, Zinc, Vitamin D and Vitamin B12. People also need these elements to build their body. So vegetarian also need to change their eating diets to get more Calcium, Zinc such good elements. For me, I eat both vegetables and meat. Not only I like eating meat, but also eating both of the food. I think eating both vegetables and meat can make me grow faster. I like playing basketball, so I need to get stronger and taller. I think vegetable can give me the nutrition I need such as Iron, and I can get Zinc and Calcium from eating meat.

In conclusion, vegetarian should change their eating diets if they only eat vegetable because that will cause vegetarian lack of some important elements, and that is not good for their health. Vegetarian should eat food full of Zinc, and Calcium to keep their nutrition balance.  

Reference

Craig, Winston John. "Nutrition Concerns and Health Effects of Vegetarian Diets." University of

Denver Penrose Library /Penrose/Music. Nutrition in Clinical Practice. Web. 17 May 2012. <http://0-ncp.sagepub.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/content/25/6/613.full.pdf html>.