Why Become a Vegetarian?

One main and simple reason why people usually become vegetarians is that they’re generally healthier than the rest of the population and statistics show they live longer too. A plant-based diet is known to make the immune system strong and slow the aging process.

A vegetarian diet is rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and fiber, while meats may contain contaminants such as herbicides, hormones, pesticides and other hazardous poisons. Viruses such as salmonella and other parasites may also be present in flesh foods.

Most of us fear cancer. Studies now show that avoiding red meat significantly reduces the risk of some cancers and that a diet rich in fiber and vegetables may protect us from contracting that deadly disease.

Lower saturated fats and cholesterol is also a perk of a vegetarian diet. Research has proven that vegetarians have a lower (25%) risk of suffering from heart disease than those who eat meat and can even help to reverse coronary problems.

Vegetarians are generally more slender than those who eat meat. The diet is lower in fat and contains the fiber and nutrients needed to lose weight and keep it off. Diabetics may also benefit from the vegetarian diet plan.

Animal lovers are apt to develop a vegetarian lifestyle because of their spirit of compassion. Factory farms process animals with very little regulation on cruelty and these animals suffer pain the same as cats and dogs that are our pets.

Reduction of global warming is another reason that people are choosing a vegetarian lifestyle. Livestock on factory farms emit more greenhouse gases than the combination of all trucks and cars in the world.

World hunger is a problem that we deal with on a daily basis. Children are needlessly starving to death because much of the food we grow is used to fatten livestock. Facts show that if everyone adapted a vegetarian diet, we could produce enough food for the entire population to survive.

Vegetarians enjoy a wide range of tastes and textures in the foods they consume. As the world becomes more submissive to a vegetarian diet, more options are becoming available and even restaurants and fast food establishments are offering a nice range of vegetarian meals.

Even cutting back on meat-based meals can improve your health and reduce the risk of obesity and other problems. Make sure you check with your health care provider if you choose one of the more restrictive vegetarian diet plans.

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Part Time Vegetarian

A part time vegetarian is someone who doesn’t completely stop eating meat, but doesn’t eat it as often as they once did. It used to be that when someone stopped eating meat, they wouldn’t have any at all in their diet.

But medical studies have shown that even adopting a part time vegetarian meal plan gives you the best of both worlds. You can make delicious tasting meals without meat that are less expensive and can add years to your life because you’re eating healthier.

Small Nutritional Changes Have a Big Impact on Your Health

The biggest mistake that anyone can make when they decide to change their eating habits is jumping in with both feet. People get so excited about a new way of eating that they want to immediately give it their all.

But the problem is that making overwhelming, sudden changes don’t work because when you’ve been used to eating a certain way for years, your mind and body won’t always cooperate.

You’ll think about the foods that you used to eat. You’ll crave them, and when you start an all or nothing change in your life, you can bet the foods you stopped eating will be all that you can think about.

It’s always best to make your environment supportive of your lifestyle eating changes. You can’t simple introduce abrupt changes and expect that everything will go smoothly, because it won’t.

Being someone who is used to eating meat – where it’s been a part of your daily life – then suddenly switching to different foods isn’t going to be easy. It’s because people are creatures of habit.

We associate foods with certain feelings and activities. We have our routines and know what we like to eat. Taking that away in one fell swoop can cause unease and stress.

The best way to change anything about your eating life is through a trickle down method. If you do it slowly, your body and your taste buds will become accustomed to this new way of eating.

By the time you’ve completely changed to a part time vegetarian way of eating, you’ll be so used to it that it will go smoothly. If you’re someone who eats meat in all of your meals out of the seven days a week, then you start by replacing one meat meal a week.

This meal would need to be one of your lighter meals. You don’t want to start with a dinner meal because that meal can potentially be one of the most stressful meals of the week, depending what you have going on.

Start with a breakfast or a lunch meal. Replace the meat with a vegetarian alternative or with vegetables. Do this for a couple of weeks. Then the next week, remove meat from a second meal.

Make sure you do it on the same day. As the weeks go by, increase the amount of meals where meat isn’t part of the recipe. Or, you can get involved in a plan where you choose one day of the week and you don’t have any meat at all.

Then you add another day and then another. If you go slowly, you can switch to a meatless way of eating without hassle. Going vegetarian is easier than going vegan, because you can still enjoy things like eggs and dairy, giving you more options as you make the transition.

Meatless Mondays Are a Good Place to Start

Meatless Mondays are a way to make it easy to get into the swing of switching your eating to a part time vegetarian lifestyle. This term was coined as part of a movement designed to get people to stop consuming as much meat – not only for their benefit but for the benefit of the planet as well.

It’s a catchy term designed to be easy to remember. When you decide to start with Meatless Mondays, you can switch out your meat meals for ones that don’t have any meat easily.

Instead of having a chicken meal, have beans and rice with vegetables on the side. Rather than stopping for a fast food cheeseburger when it’s time to eat, make a delicious veggie burger at home.

You’ll save money and it’s better for your food budget and for your health. Many people relate not eating meat as often to improving their heart health. Medical studies have proven that people who don’t consume as much meat in their diet gain several health benefits over those who do.

Making Meatless Mondays part of your eating plan can help you lose weight, and can stave off obesity. Besides the improvement you’ll see with how much weight you carry, you’ll also lower your risk of developing certain health issues like high blood pressure or diabetes.

You can also lower your risk of developing dementia and other neurological health problems. Many people don’t realize that having a Meatless Monday commitment can lower their chances of getting cancer.

One of the risk factors involved in developing cancers like colon cancer is the consumption of meats such as lunch meats and red meat. Processed meats can be especially hard on the body and elevate your cancer risk higher than other types of meat.

You stand a great chance of being diagnosed with cancers like stomach cancer, lung or pancreatic cancer. Instituting a Meatless Mondays plan boosts your health and helps you lower your cancer risks.

Sneaking Meatless Substitutes Into Family Meals

Whenever you want to make healthy changes such as limiting the amount of meat that’s part of your meals, not everyone will be excited at the prospect. In fact, you’ll probably face plenty of opposition.

When it comes to the way that we eat, most people don’t like change. And if they know that something is different, they’ll often close their mind to the possibility of giving it a chance before they even take a single bite of the food.

That’s why, being a little sneaky can pay off. When you want to cut down on the amount of meat that your family eats for meals, you may have to replace the meat and just not say a word about it.

That is, at least until the meal is over and everyone has said how great the food tasted. When you’re planning to replace meat in a meal and not say anything to your family about it until after it’s done, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that.

Never spring a brand new recipe on your family that doesn’t have meat in it. Because the recipe will be one they’ve never had before, it already has the potential to not be pleasing to everyone.

So start with a recipe that you know your family already loves to eat. You’ll want to pick a meal where you can substitute meat with something like vegetarian crumbles.

These are meat substitutes that don’t contain any cholesterol or trans fat. These meatless products look like meat and have the texture of meat, but they’re not made with any meat products.

Instead, they’re made with healthy alternatives. Because of the texture, it’s easy to swap this food out in something such as tacos. The crumbles can be seasoned the same way with the taco seasoning and other ingredients, your family won’t be able to tell that it’s not beef.

You can do the same with any recipe that requires crumbled ground beef. It will work in casseroles and in soups, too. Many people also use this for dishes such as spaghetti sauce or beef stroganoff.

By using meatless meats, your family has the satisfaction of thinking they’re eating meat but with none of the downside effects. When it comes to using meat substitutes in meals, most people think of beef substitutes, but eating healthy meatless meals also includes substitutes like chicken.

For example, if your family is a fan of chicken nuggets, you can switch the real meat ones out for meatless chicken nuggets that look and are shaped like meat-filled ones but aren’t. This choice is a lot healthier for you.

Yummy Meatless Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner Ideas

The good news about changing your eating style to part time vegetarian is that you gain a lot of new and delicious meals that you can have. While these recipes might not have meat, they don’t lack color, flavor or enough taste to please even picky eaters.

Vegetarian meals are easy to make for any meal – including lunch or dinner. And you can always make extra for dinner to have leftovers so that you can have a quick and easy lunch meal for home or the office the following day.

Tacos are always a family favorite and while you can add something like crumbles to this meal, you can also go completely vegetable with it. All you have to do is use a little bit of olive oil mixed with onion powder and chili powder for seasoning.

Stir in a mixture of diced squash, zucchini, corn and red bell pepper and cook until the vegetables are soft. Spoon into tortillas and enjoy. Any meal that you have that calls for meat, if you don’t want to use a meat substitute, you can replace the meat with vegetables.

You can also make vegetarian pizza using flatbread and topping it with vegetables like squash, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions. You cook the vegetables with oil, then put them on the flatbread and heat them until the bread is warm.

Any traditional meat dish can be tweaked and turned into a vegetarian one. If you love hamburgers but don’t want to eat meat and don’t feel like using a meat substitute, then you can use eggplant.

Top it with tomato and onion after it’s cooked and you can have a meal that tastes like burger but doesn’t have the unhealthy parts. There are tons of recipes online and in cookbooks that you can access to find great lunch and dinner meal recipes.

Eating vegetarian breakfasts are wholesome, healthy, and can give you energy to last through even the busiest of mornings. Smoothies are a great way to eat a vegetarian breakfast while on the go if you need to leave the house before having time for a sit down meal.

You can have oatmeal or yogurt topped with granola and fruit slices. Pancakes are always a good idea and there’s also eggplant frittata. Avocado toast is a great choice, and so is quiche made with a variety of vegetables.

You can use cheese, too if you eat dairy such as Colby-Jack or mild cheddar cheese in the quiche. If you go the vegan route, then you won’t be able to have cheese or eggs.

Meatless Isn’t Always Healthy

Deciding to go meatless part time is a good thing for your health and you can make meals taste just as great. You won’t even know meat is missing from the dish.

But if you go meatless, you do have to do it the right way. If you don’t carefully plan out what you’re going to eat and pay attention to the meals, they can have some surprises in the ingredients that you won’t like.

Not paying attention to what’s in the food that you make, or buy can lead you to eating food that’s loaded with fat and calories, which counteracts the good you’re trying to do for your health.

If you decide that you want to use a meatless substitute in your recipes, check the label. Read how much fat content it has – if any. If the substitute has a high fat content, then it’s worse for you to eat than meat is.

Check out the calorie count as well and also look for other ingredients that won’t be good for your health such as a sodium count that’s much too high. Just because a food is labeled as meatless and claims to be vegetarian doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Processed foods, even vegetarian processed foods, aren’t the healthiest choice to make. You’re always better off eating as much wholesome, natural food as you can.

But if you do eat something like a meat substitute, make sure the substitute isn’t altered with things like vegetable protein. There are chemicals inside these types of foods that are altered that make it not only unhealthy for you to eat but puts your future health at risk of diseases.

Do your homework and search for lists of vegetarian products that are not recommended because of the fat, calorie or other ingredients on the list that aren’t healthy.

There are some recipes that will tell you that the meal is low fat, low calorie and 100% vegetarian. But what can happen is that a sauce the recipe calls for can have meat by-products.

You can also end up with a full day’s supply of your sodium value by eating certain kinds of sauces. Learn what words on products can mean unhealthy fat content or animal content. For example, if you see gelatin on a product, it means that animal proteins are present in the food.

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The Benefits of a Plant-Based Meal Plan

Perhaps you read Rip Esselstyn’s The Engine 2 Diet or Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals and want to reduce your risk of lifestyle related diseases and avoid factory farms, or perhaps it’s the recent U.N. study that said eating less meat is better for the planet — either way, there’s no doubt that reducing your meat intake and embracing a plant-based diet is one of the best things you can do for your health and the environment.

It’s trendy too, thanks to UC Berkeley professor and food writer Michael Pollan, famous for In Defense of Food and Omnivore’s Dilemma. His simple credo re-defined what it means to eat smart today: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Pollan emphasizes the importance of knowing how one’s food was raised, eating locally and organic by “shopping the seasons” at the farmers market, and avoiding the growing number of “Frankenfoods” on the market — high in mysterious additives. “Don’t eat anything with ingredients your grandmother wouldn’t recognize!” he warns. His advice may sound like a joke, but when it comes to food chemicals, trans fats, and genetically modified foods, it could help prevent long-term health implications.

Many others have contributed to the “flexitarian” paradigm: from well-known garden-to-table chef Alice Waters, DYI urban homesteaders like Novella Carpenter, and the Oscar-nominated film, Food Inc. Keeping transportation and environmental costs in mind, this philosophy of eating says support your farmers market, eat whole foods, and limit your meat consumption to grass-fed, wild meats.

What is a Plant-Based Diet?

A plant-based diet is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a diet that is quite different than the standard American diet, which is generally based around meat and animal products.

Think about the traditional breakfast; eggs and bacon, right? What about lunch? That’s probably a sandwich with some type of lunchmeat. And dinner… well, if there isn’t meat on the plate then it’s probably not dinner.

A plant-based diet focuses on vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and seeds. And oh boy there are so many different foods to choose from. You’re going to be amazed at the variety. Many people feel like a plant-based diet is going to be restrictive. The opposite is true. When you come around to eating foods that are grown, rather than born, your mindset shifts and you realize the bounty that surrounds you.

Adopting a plant-based diet can be a great move for your health as well as the environment. Take the Pledge to Go Plant-Based for 30 Days challenges you to try the diet for 30 days and see how you get on!

So If you want to get started with a plant-based diet check out the 23-page eBook by Clicking Here

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Introduction to natural liver detox

We live in a world that is chockfull of toxins be it in the air we breathe, our food, our water… so much so that their entrance into our bodies has become unavoidable.

Exposure to these toxins requires that all of the organs in your body work in synergy to maintain homeostasis – meaning everything needs to be in a certain balance in order to function optimally. If the function of one organ or system goes awry, the others will also be affected.

Your liver and kidneys play a vital role of filtering toxins out of your body, but your liver has an additional function of breaking down the present toxins in order to expel them from your body.

This enzymatic process occurs in two phases – breaking down the toxins and bonding these broken parts to other molecules that destroy the toxic substances and expel them from your body through sweat, urine and fecal matter.

When the liver becomes overburdened or overworked due to chronic exposure to toxins via the environment, diet, smoking, alcohol use, lack of sleep and poor stress management, it can slow down and cause a back-up of toxins in your system. This can impact many other systems and organs in your body resulting in various symptoms.

The following are just a few common symptoms of an improperly functioning liver:

• Weight gain/difficulty losing weight
• Fluid buildup in the belly or abdomen
• You bruise easily
• Painful gallstones
• Chronic itching
• Yellowing of the skin and eyes (jaundice)
• Kidney failure
• Muscle loss
• Loss of appetite
• Unsightly skin conditions and liver spots
• Spider-like veins in the skin
• Low energy and frequent weakness (fatigue)
• Mental confusion as toxins build up in the blood
• A weakened immune system, leaving you unguarded against sickness, disease and infection

After reading the many potential consequences of a toxic liver, you may be wondering how you can support your liver to make sure it is functioning at its optimal level.

Many people think that by just making a few tweaks to their diet they can counteract the effects of toxic buildup. It is true that following a nutrient dense diet will support your liver and can help however it doesn’t have the same impact as cleansing/detoxing.

A cleansing program takes it a step further by helping eliminate the stored toxins therefore allowing your liver to reboot and rejuvenate.

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“Natural Liver Detox Basics”

Keep Healthy Fats in Your Diet to Maintain Muscle

There’s a common misconception that fat in foods is what causes you to get fat. This isn’t really true. There are certain types of fat that are bad for you, but plenty are good for you – and even required.

Getting healthy fats in your diet is a very key part of maintaining muscle. The unhealthy fat that most people are familiar with is the saturated fat. Saturated fats are found in foods like cakes, butter, lard, bacon, fatty meat, and all that other unhealthy stuff.

This is the type of fat that you should avoid all together. There is practically no dietary benefit to saturated fats – they just harm you. Even worse for you than saturated fats are trans fats.

Trans fats are mostly artificial, and these are extremely bad for you. It’s recommended that these make up no more than a small percentage of your calories – as in less than about 5%.

Trans fats are most commonly found in fried and baked goods, such as pizza, cookies, fried chicken, doughnuts, etc. These should be avoided in all ways, shapes, and forms. Unsaturated fats, however, are pretty good for you.

Most animal fat is saturated, but the one meat that has unsaturated fats instead is fish. Fish is actually a really good lean meat, and doesn’t contain any harmful fats. Other examples of foods that contain unsaturated fats are nuts, olive oil, and sunflower and flax seeds.

It’s important to note that you can be fooled into thinking that saturated fats and unsaturated fats both provide similar amounts of calories and therefore must be similarly beneficial in health.

In reality, the unsaturated fats are much better than saturated or trans fats. The health benefits of unsaturated fats are plentiful. First, it helps reduce heart disease. Unsaturated fats also help lower cholesterol, which is pretty harmful to your body in high levels.

Their most important function is that they help maintain your body’s cells and keep them supplied with nutrients. This means that the muscle you put on will stay there when you consume unsaturated fats.

Unsaturated fats should completely replace saturated and trans fats in your diet. Your diet should consist of mostly protein, then carbs, then fats. It can be easy to confuse the different types of fats, however, if you don’t know which ones are good and bad.

Make sure that when you consume your fats, that you only consume unsaturated – and not trans or saturated fats. Be wary of any diet plan that puts out a blanket statement for you to avoid all fats.

The Best Proteins to Help Combat Your Dad Bod

One of the key parts of gaining muscle is protein. If you don’t know where to start, it can be a bit confusing when trying to figure out what protein to buy. Fortunately for you, here’s a quick list of the best proteins on the market.

First, you should know that there are two different main types of protein: whey and casein. These are the two main proteins that are extracted from milk. Whey is generally taken right after a workout to promote quicker muscle healing.

Casein is generally taken before bed in order to keep your muscles well fed. The first brand that you should try is Optimum Nutrition, or ON as their label says. They sell really good whey protein at about $15/lb, and casein at about $16.45/lb.

These are pretty good prices from Amazon – especially for such a great product. Like most proteins, their most popular flavor is chocolate, because the other flavors are generally not as good.

Next you should check out BSN SYNTHA-6. They have a similar product to ON, at a better price – about $8-9/lb on Amazon. The only real complaint about this one is that it has many more carbs than the ON brand.

A serving of this brand has a carb-protein ratio of about 3:4 while the ON brand has about 1:8. This makes ON a better brand for post workout shakes, but BSN is still a good meal replacement.

Another brand to consider is Body Fortress. At a similar price per pound to BSN, they give you a pretty good deal for some quality protein. The carb to protein ratio on this brand is 3:10, which is better than BSN, but still not quite as good as ON.

This is the best post-workout protein for anyone who wants to get their protein at a good price. Most proteins that you find at places like Academy or Walmart will probably be fine – just chose the one with the best carb-protein ratio and try that one.

If you don’t really have loyalties to any one brand in particular, you should just try each one and see which one you like more. One shake may have a weird consistency, one may not mix very well, one may have a weird taste – but you just have to find the one that fits you.

The brands listed above are the recommended starter choices, but if you find a brand that suits you best, stick to that one. You can’t go wrong finding protein to add to your diet to weed out unwanted carbs.

What Is a Dad Bod?

The Dad Bod is a body type that affects many men today – anywhere between the ages of 16 and up. A Dad Bod doesn’t necessarily equal obesity. It equals more of an untoned body, and is a terrible fad of today’s world.

Contrary to what the name may imply, the Dad Bod affects young men as well as middle aged. These men could take the route of getting in shape, but they see this fad right now working okay for other guys, which isn’t being necessarily fit.

The Dad Bod doesn’t mean that you’re overweight or fat. A good example of someone who has a Dad Bod would be someone who does lift weights, but you never see their progress because they’ll have beer and pizza in the same day.

This doesn’t necessarily make them weaker, but they do have excess fat that, if cut down, would make them look much stronger. They may have a slight pudge in their stomach, ands slimmer arms and legs, which are soft and untoned.

The Dad Bod is bad because it promotes an unhealthy lifestyle. Whether or not the man is terribly obese, the habits will eventually cause worse weight gain and the underlying, invisible conditions like diabetes will remain a concern.

The worst part about the Dad Bod is that it promotes averageness. It tries to push the idea that being par is good and encouraged. Dad Bod people aren’t overweight, nor are they super buff.

They’re ordinary. Many have attempted to equate the Dad Bod to Leonardo DiCaprio, now that he has one – or Chris Hemsworth who the media claims looks better with a Dad Bod than as his ripped character, Thor.

You can tell if you have a Dad Bod pretty easily. You’ll have a little beer belly, an untoned chest, but you’re not weak. You might lift weights occasionally, and you’re strong like a dad, but it just doesn’t show.

The diet that comes with a Dad Bod may include beer, pizza, burgers, chips, sweets, etc. It’s essentially the body type equivalent of mashed potatoes versus a crinkle cut fry. One’s soft and lumpy – the other ripped and crisp.

The Dad Bod has become a fad today for various reasons. Most of the women who like it say that it represents someone more “natural” and they like the pressure for themselves to be fit off of them.

Although, this also makes no sense, because a truly natural human would not be drinking beer – he would drink water. And instead of pizza, he’d eat lean meat. The Dad Bod seems to represent comfort to some people, but it’s not worth the lack of health benefits that come with it.

Mediterranean Diet Results

The Mediterranean Diet is a diet that is highly popular for its ability to improve heart health and extend the lifespan.
The diet first came to be popular when national statistics revealed that people in Mediterranean countries actually lived longer and experienced less heart disease! This caused researchers to examine it further, where they found that fat actually benefited heart health and that eating lots of nutrients could have profoundly beneficial results for your health.
While this is all true, it’s also true that the Mediterranean Diet is able to do a lot of other things. If you’re considering giving it a try, then you probably want to know what you can expect from it. Read on then and we’ll find out what the Mediterranean Diet really does for you!
Health
The Mediterranean Diet will improve nearly every aspect of your general health and it does this in numerous ways. We’ve seen that fats and resveratrol improve your heart health – but so too does the garlic and the fiber which are excellent for your blood pressure.
Meanwhile, those nutrients – such as omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D & E – are also excellent for helping you look healthier. Your skin will glow, your hair and nails will look stronger and the whites of your eyes will look whiter!
If you spend some time out in the sun to develop a tan, then the look will be complete! Our bodies look much better when we’re healthy.
Energy
What’s more is that eating proper food also fills us with energy. You’ll be improving the function of your mitochondria as well as providing your body with lots of usable energy, so it should come as no surprise that you’ll feel supercharged and ready to go!
Lifestyle
One of the real hidden benefits of the Mediterranean Diet though is the way it can improve your lifestyle as a whole. This is all about learning respect for food again. It’s about taking time to cook real meals. It’s about actually enjoying what you eat and eating properly.
When you do that, you’ll find that you spend more time with your family and that you enjoy more romantic meals with your family.
Your food isn’t just about eating whatever you need to keep working! What is important is that the Mediterranean lifestyle encourages you to stop and smell your food while you feel the warm sun on the back of your neck…
Weight Loss
And finally, the Mediterranean Diet will contribute to weight loss in a way that is healthy, sustainable and long-lasting. That’s because you’ll want to snack less and you’ll be satiated on smaller portions. It’s because you’ll stop eating those empty calories and it’s because you’ll be making more body more efficient at burning fats!

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The Mediterranean Diet Explained

The Mediterranean Diet is a diet that involves eating large amounts of fruits and vegetables while at the same time piling on olive oil and cheese and eating lots of fish. It also contains red wine, nuts, seeds and salads.
And to the uninitiated, this can seem something of a confusing diet.
Sure, the salad and the fruits and vegetables make a lot of sense. But something that’s less obvious is how adding fats to your diet can help you lose weight. Or wine? And why is there no obvious restriction in terms of the quantities you’re allowed to eat?
Let’s take a closer look and try to discover exactly what’s going on and how this diet works…
A Brief History
The Mediterranean Diet wasn’t invented to sell an ebook but is rather just the natural diet that people eat in Mediterranean countries. Right, away, this makes it a lot more practical and more appealing than some of the fad diets that are a little extreme in their recommendations.
For a long time, no one suspected this diet of being healthy. The olive oil and the wine contents were things that most experts at the time thought were bad for us.
But then they started to study statistics regarding the lifespans and health of people who lived in those regions. What they found was that eating this diet actually increased the lifespan and at the same time made diseases like heart disease, diabetes and cancer less likely!
The Science
So what is going on here?
Well, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. People who eat a Mediterranean Diet simply enjoy their food more than we do.
Many of us in the US and UK are guilty of viewing our diet as pretty much an inconvenience. We eat because we have to and we only really eat for fuel when we do.
We snack on junk food which includes Mars Bars and Coca-Cola. We gobble the food down, give it no thought and then wonder why we feel unhealthy!
On the other hand, the Mediterranean Diet involves creating delicious dishes using fresh fruits and vegetables, lots of fish and delicious cheese.
And as it turns out, fat actually isn’t bad for us! The right kind of fat is rather very good for us and when eaten alongside fruits and vegetables it actually helps us to absorb the nutrients for use around our body!
When you eat this diet, you learn to eat properly again and you learn to appreciate your food. This has huge impacts on your health and well-being and is something everyone should be encouraged to try!

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The Mediterranean Diet Controversy

The Mediterranean Diet is one of the safest, healthiest and most practical diets in the world. Unlike diets that involve cutting things out of your eating habits entirely, or starving yourself for long periods of time; this method doesn’t involve any drastic lifestyle changes.
Instead, all it involves is eating a much more healthy and natural diet. And at the same time, it’s about really enjoying your food and making sure that you actually get to appreciate the food you’re eating. It means slowing down and developing a healthier relationship with what you eat.
And guess what? People all over the world have been eating this diet for centuries.
But despite this, there are still some controversies surrounding this eating plan. Let’s take a look at what those are…
The Fat Thing…
The Mediterranean Diet is quite unusual in that it doesn’t shy away from fats. In fact, a lot of the recipes involve dolloping large amounts of olive oil or feta cheese on top of what you’ve made!
How can this possibly be healthy? For years, experts believed that fat caused bad cholesterol and heart disease and that it would lead to weight gain.
The latter part can be true. Fat contains nine calories per gram, while carbs or protein only contain four. But at the same time, it releases its energy much slower helping you to feel fuller for longer and avoiding any of the damage that sugar causes. This is one of the reasons that incidence of diabetes is lower in these regions!
Likewise, fat doesn’t actually cause high cholesterol or heart disease. More recent research has examined this theory and found that in fact the opposite happens – fat lowers the bad kind of cholesterol (LDL) and improves the good kind (HDL).
What’s more, is that fat also has lots of direct health benefits. Not only does it increase testosterone (leading to more strength and weight loss) but it also enhances nutrient absorption and improves brain power.
Wine and Carbs
Likewise, wine and carbs are still a part of the Mediterranean Diet. Carbs provide a sudden sugar hit and some people think that this can be very bad for you.
But actually, the Mediterranean Diet contains fewer simple carbs than a regular Western Diet. That’s because you’re ruling out processed foods like ready-made meals, things like chocolate bars and things like fizzy drinks. When you stop seeing food as an inconvenience and actually start to eat properly your health improves drastically!
And as for the wine? Well, it seems that alcohol in small quantities can actually increase the lifespan – especially red wine which contains the all-important ‘resveratrol’ for strengthening the mitochondria.

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