Dear Tree-Hugger: What is Vegetarian and What is Vegan? What are the benefits?

It's nice to know that you at least care enough to attempt to read this article, a very good start. Don't run off just yet, I'm neither going to berate you for slaughtering animals nor show you pictures of myself swimming in a pool of blood outside of KFC with members of PETA. I make it a point to avoid both situations if at all possible. In any event, what it means to be a vegetarian or vegan will be detailed in this article. Who knows, perhaps it may even inspire a few readers to begin adopting a more natural diet (the word natural is italicized because many people I talk to find that eating meat comes quite naturally to them).

This first piece is easy to grasp and you may already know a bit of it. So, for the sake of classification, let us now define modern Vegetarians as those who refrain from eating all meats and instead eat only plants and/or plant-based materials. That being what it is, modern Vegetarians may also be found eating and/or using products from animals (as opposed to made of animals); which is to say, some Vegetarians will often eat cheese, drink milk or perhaps enjoy some honey. Vegans, on the other hand, will neither eat nor use anything that comes from animals and, typically, other living things like insects (this means no milk, no butter, no cheese and no honey). It's really as simple as that.

In all actuality, Vegetarians are supposed to be defined as those who eat/use only plants and plant-based materials, but that stigma has been skewed as of late and Vegans now assume the more strict vegetables-only role. Unfortunately, eating fish or other types of seafood is neither Vegetarian nor Vegan. As time progresses, however, Vegetarians are becoming more and more apt to eating seafood while still referring to themselves as Vegetarian. It is unknown just how far down the rabbit hole that particular dietary category will sink before it has completely lost it's original definition, but that's a debate for another article altogether.

Now, to say that those aforementioned differences are the only differences makes things a bit too simplistic. Due to the fact that many food additives are derived from animals the job of a Vegan (and some Vegetarians) is doubly-difficult. Also keep in mind that many vegans will NOT use anything that was tested on animals, much less derived from them. Other dietary considerations for both Vegetarians and Vegans include whether or not to eat raw foods, organic foods and/or genetically modified foods, which I'll touch on in the coming sections.

No matter what your personal preferences are, venturing down either path is a sure-fire way to find yourself on the road towards a healthier you, period. There are powerful remedies caught up in the adoption of these diets that are so simple you'd be shocked to find out just how inexpensive and tolerable they are compared to regular medications. The idea behind these forms of diets go well beyond what you eat; they delve into what you DON'T eat, how you eat it, how much you eat and when. This is an excellent and well-rounded approach to any would-be form of dieting.

Let's be serious, a vegetarian diet is hard enough . . . but a vegan diet will really put constraints on daily living. We are used to fast food and restaurants. We define our well-being by our ability to intake large amounts of fat and protein. We gorge on milk, butter, ice cream and a host of other fatty, animal-based treats and snacks and, let's face it, they're flippin' delicious. That said, I ask you, how healthy a nation (USA) are we? Right, of course, we're not. We're all dying anyways, yes, but our modern lifestyle puts us on the fast, miserable track to artery-slamming death.

Alright then, answer-man, how do we fix it? That's easy, start small and head towards becoming vegetarian. Now, before you stop reading this article entirely please remember I'm not asking for a commitment. I'd hate for you to leave here without a solid reason to avoid (I hope not) or go through with either form of diet. A vegetable-based diet should come slowly and with knowledge, which I'll give you a bit of here. Besides, if the benefits aren't good enough, who's going to drop something as important as pizza? Nobody, so root for the underdog for a little while yet and read on.

I have to state here clearly that the benefits of either a vegetarian or vegan diet are immense. Weight-loss, energy increase, increased awareness, better memory functions, lower health-risk factors, increased resistances to illness, longer life and more can all be attributed to the proper migration to healthier dieting. I'd like to start by sharing a few personal experiences I've had while working to become Vegan in hopes that you'll get a true, reasonable impression of the changes I've experienced in my life. Don't worry, I'm fairly sure that I'm quirky enough to make for an interesting read.

First, let me say that I used to be THE worst eater of anyone I'd met. Let me explain what I mean by that statement. Starting with childhood and running up until a few years back my motto for eating was as follows:

"Processed foods, complex preservatives and manufactured food additives are delicious, more please."

The more a food was processed, the more I tended to enjoy it. I can easily tell you now that by doing so I clearly ruined a good portion of my own childhood. Don't be fooled, I was a normal, happy kid without any major, debilitating health problems; however, had I known then what I know now I would have been much happier and healthier still. To avoid article-choking cliche, I'll refrain from referencing the accuracy of hind-sight and exit my childhood story now by saying that I held steadfast to my unhealthy eating habits throughout my childhood, teen years and early 20's.

As I got older the "processed foods only" diet began weighing heavily on my health. I was thin, young and energetic and yet I had incurable hearburn, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. When doctors decided that they were going to start prescribing more medication for all of the different problems that were creeping up on me, I began to get frustrated. I was 24 years old, 200lbs of pure muscle, had been working out daily and, as far as anyone could tell, I looked like the epitomy of excellent health. In reality, as good as my lifestyle was, my health was flat-out failing. So, after all of that hard work, what gives? For me, the only thing left to give was my diet. I decided to start making changes to see if a healtheir diet truly could cure or treat me for my ailments.

To keep my own back-story from interfering more than it already has, let's just say that I started small, very small. I decided to make changes that I could tolerate without worrying about having to make too many exceptions. First, I stopped putting more sugar in my soft drinks (yes, I know, gross). Second, I decided not to use any additional salt on my food, which took some time and bit of cheating here and there. Third, I decided to stop eating pork . . . because, well, I hardly ever ate pork anyways. I can say that the changes helped immediately with the frequency of heart murmurs but other changes were hardly noticeable. I wanted and needed more improvements. Minor or not, the changes were something though and as small as those changes were they constituted a solid beginning; plus, it really made me feel better knowing that I could stick to my guns and that there was a true benefit to be had should I take my diet further.

As I continued making small changes over the course of months and years I cut out more meats as well as processed foods. Eventually I cut out beef, then chicken, then I stopped eating things with ingredients that seemed fake, odd or downright scary. This process took years, but what I noticed after just a few months is that I started taking an interest in natural cures. Eventually I found out that apple cider vinegar is a major cure-all for many ailments, namely heartburn and digestion problems. This discovery, with the right timing, eliminated my hearburn medication (which had also been giving me anxiety and God only knows what else). This saved me approximately $140/mo, which was a real, tangible motivation. Later still, I came across an alkaline chart which allows me to control my diet to eliminate heartburn by food choices alone, not to mention the natural resistance to cancer it provides (cancer simply does not live well in an alkaline body).

Skipping ahead a couple years, now that I am primarily a raw, orgainc Vegan, I have truly become what I would finally consider healthy. My blood pressure, heart troubles, cholesterol and more have all found their way deep into the green. Going to the doctor's to get a check-up is now fun. My heartburn troubles remain for certain types of cooked foods but they are minor and I've learned to treat the problem with natural, healthy remedies. If I should die tomorrow of a heart attack I'll attribute nothing more to it than the fact that I should have started this diet sooner, and that is all. If I should get hit by a bus, I won't fall unjust, for I'd rather fall having done the right thing than die being the type of person who has to get as much "bad" as possible before kicking the bucket. Heaven smiling, I'll be around a long time yet to enjoy my kids and, hopefully, grandkids.

All that aside, I enjoy talking to family, friends and co-workers about what I've done and what I am doing that is really helping me to avoid sicknesses of any and all types. Although everyone thinks I'm crazy, they always come back, one-by-one and in private, to ask what they can do to fix an ailment or improve an attribute about themselves. I simply give the answer(s) just as secretively, never taking a chance at pushing them away for having poked fun at me here or there. Doing so would be much like shooting someone walking up to you naked, white flag in-hand, asking for nothing more than a few words of advice. After all, if I push people away, who will attest to natural cures? The answer is no one. By the time I've made enemies out of all the carnivores they'd be more likely to kill me, cook me and eat me than suffer my undeserving wrath for a bit of advice. Now that I'm back from that tangent, the benefit I meant to portray here was "inspiration", inspiration for those you care about and inspiration for those all around you to become happier and healthier.

So, through my own, actual real-life experiences, those are some of the benefits, but they don't constitute what I've GAINED that I hadn't before had. I can honestly say that before I made these changes I felt numb, like a mild seditive or body-numbing agent was running through my system at all times. I can finally feel joints and muscles like never before . . . it's quite strange even saying things like that; and it's even more difficult to explain those types of benefits without making people think my diet is causing hallucinations. I've noticed that my energy has increased, my mind is more sharp and I very rarely get sick. Other things I'd like to leave out, but think warrant some mention, are digestive-system-related improvements. I'll leave out all the details but we'll just agree here that the whole digestive process, beginning to end, has never been better. More than all of this, things just seem like they are fitting into place, as if my health were a run-down building that is being fully restored brick by brick. The slow migration from processed junk to natural, organic and mostly raw foods has turned my life inside out and for reasons that keep me from indulging in all of the horrid foods that I used to eat lovingly on a daily basis.

I could continue to talk about the benefits of Vegan or Vegetarian diets, but the good news is that I don't have to. Hopefully, you can see that a Vegan or Vegentarian diet is not as much of a life boost as it is a way of giving your body ONLY the right materials in order to function as it intended since the day you were born. Your body has a natural order to things, an order that it would return to if it didn't have to fight through the carcinogens, toxins or other indigestable materials it must deal with on a daily or hourly basis. In essence, within you quite-literally exists a thinner, smarter, more-energetic, happier and resilient self just waiting to be properly nurtured.

First things first, what you gain is nearly as important as what you're going to cut out, so let's address common concerns people have with these forms of dietary lifestyles and why they aren't actually concerns at all. You'll see that the concerns people have about vegetable-based diets are irrelevant. Misconceptions include a lack protien and essential vitamins as well as a general sickness that may come about from either a lack of meats and animal-based foods or from having too many vegetables in your diet. After reading this you'll be able to put your worries to rest, as if my having lived healthier and happier off of a Vegan diet for nearly two years now isn't enough. Again, I digress, let's take down the big-hitters, shall we?

When confronted, one of my favorite (and certainly one of the most popular) misconceptions to knock around is protien intake. The forgivably mistaken hypothesis of some individuals is that protien consumption for Vegetarians and Vegans is substancially lower than those who eat meat. I always start off with the answer that yes, protien consumption is undeniably lower. I wait a moment and let the nay-sayers enjoy their percieved victories for a few moments before continuing. I then clarify that building protien in your own body with the direct protien of another animal is akin to building a house by first letting someone else build it elsewhere, killing them and then taking it all apart piece by piece, all the way down to it's raw elements, re-creating the pieces on your own propery and then finaly building the house itself. That sounds adequately inefficient enough to get some attention, doesn't it?

You see, your body simply does not take animal protien and use it directly. Instead, your body breaks protien down into things like amino acids and other small components. Then, through a process that requires additional nutrients, your body turns those components into a protien that it can use. Many plants already have amino acids and nutrients stored within them naturally, thus cutting out having to kill, break down and then re-assemble protiens. For example, spinach has more protien-generating content in it per-pound than all of the lean and easily-digestable meat we commonly consume, not to mention the addtional nutrients it stores within help facilitate protien synthesis. In contrast, meat must first rot inside of your gut before it will start digesting. Meat also requires a considerable amount of effort to digest and move through your digestive system, causing a body to feel tired or drained for a time. While the meat is migrating through your system it will also release toxins that naturally occur in foreign protiens and additionally expose your digestive tract to the toxins that are produced via the rotting process. I'll stop now, but you get the point, there's a substantial difference in the way your body handles the development of protien when digesting vegetables or meat.

Since the explanation of protien was done utilizing the same type of logic I'd use for for iron, calcium, fat and other such necessary building blocks, we can see that plants simply do the job right while other sources, namely those from animals, merely suffice for a time. Remember, when I say that plants provide nutrients the right way I mean to say that they supply a more easily-digestable, thorough, usable and less-harmful way for your body to get the nutrients it needs. That said, there are two psueudo-exceptions: 1. Vitamin D is not found in plants in any overly-substantial form, however, your body actually produces the most beneficial Vitamin D, naturally, via sunlight. 2. In ages long past Vitamin B-12 intake had typically been derived from the dirt and beneficial bacteria that would normally exist on plants if we didn't wash and/or cook them so thoroughly. To avoid eating dirt (something that is done, believe it or not) vegan and vegetarian vitamins exist to make up any concerning difference, though supliments are not typically necessary.

Also note that the iron found in plants is actually considered by some to be less-digestible than iron that has previously been digested in meat; however, Vitamin C makes iron more digestable. With a higher intake of fruits and vegetables, Vitamin C will be so abundant that iron intake and digestion will not be a concern for Vegans and Vegetarians. It's is also of worthy note to state that digesting milk, butter and cheese requires a substantial amount of calcium FROM our bones. That's right, digesting calcium-rich animal products requires our bodies to steal calcium from our bones. Calcium may then be placed back into our bones again once it has been digested from the animal product. As we get older our ability to digest calcium from animal sources begins to lag. When calcium digestion lags it actually causes more calcium to be drawn out of our bones to digest the food than can be put back in when digestion is complete (though age is not the only prerequisite to this problem). So, though the calcium content in plants is lower, we can rest assured that it will not come at the cost of early-onset osteoperosis.

So we come to the end of the risks section and I have hopefully left you with a few new thoughts on the matter. I'm really hoping that you see how the dynamics of plants are more apt to supplying the proper nutrition that our bodies require. Keep in mind that while my tones seem highly anti-carnivore, they only appear so because of the information I've provided related to how the human body functions and not because of an animal love story or pictures of animals being tortured and then destroyed. Again, vegetables aren't a replacement for meat, they are truly THE source for proper nutrition while meat is merely a lack-luster substitute (even if it's taste is difficult to resist). The only thing you truly miss in a vegan or vegetarian diet are all of the snacks, treats and delicious foods we were raised to think were necessary for daily living. There is something you'll have to find entirely on your own though, something that no one can give you, something that will get strong with time so long as you exercise it as often as possible . . . willpower (note that perfection was not listed). I'm not perfect and no other Vegan is either. The decision to stop eating meat will come with moments of weakness, trust me. If you take the road to either form of diet, start small, reward yourself, get better, set goals and take an active interest in your diet. Sounds lame, but being kick-ass healthy doesn't end up feeling lame at all.

So it's like this, when you start caring more about what you eat you start considering other factors such as the quality of the fruits and vegetables you're eating. Some also consider how their food is prepared and yet others consider the origins of their food and whether or not it's natural. We'll touch on these important considerations next.

Many vegetarians and Vegans visit markets that sell only organic or, in the very least, natural produce. There are indeed a few differences between the two, but for simplicity's sake we'll just state here that organic is the more natural of the two distictions, but both are good. Organic foods may or may not be labeled as such, but be sure to at check for a certified stamp from the USDA (a green and white circle that says, "USDA Organic") or another somewhat respectable source before swallowing a label's claims (for fresh produce you're often at the whim of the grocer's claims, so merely exercise caution). Organic fruits and vegetables are less likely to have harmful pesticides, fertilizers and other such materials. The concept here is simple, too many pesticides and fertilizers are hazardous and dangerous and should not be placed in, on or around plants that will be used for consumption. If you tried becoming vegetarian once and discovered that you were actually getting MORE ill, you could be purchasing from a grocer carrying produce from a chemically-dependent farm.

Whether or not to eat raw foods is another consideration for Vegans and Vegetarians and is as easy a concept to understand and it sounds. Raw foods are just that, uncooked. This means that nothing in a raw diet may be prepared with heat greater than 110 degrees. The concept behind raw foods is that the cooking process used to prepare foods changes the overall composition and chemical structure of food and therefore destroy's many of its health benefits. Over the course of a couple years studies have been conducted to show a large number of health benefits from "living" foods. I can also say that most cooked foods give me heartburn without fail, however raw foods typically do not. Eating raw foods simply keeps all of the "good stuff" in place while making digestion easier. I have to say that "going raw" was just as big of a step in my dietary life as becoming Vegan, the changes were that noticeable. After all, if people were intended to ONLY eat food that had been put to the flame we'd all breath fire.

I'd now like to tell you a bit more about the "root cause" of a few issues we may be seeing with our health. GMO is an acronym for Genetically Modified Organism. Without delving too deep into this subject, you are likely already thinking of a problem with eating something that has been modified genetically. Perhaps you have no quams with genetic modification, you may even think it's cool to have neon pink and green fish in your fish tank; however, keep in mind I'm talking about food here . . . food you are eating. Where is the rub? Well, the problem is that food labels are not allowed to state that the food within contains genetically modified materials. Food labels MAY state that the food within is free of GMOs, and that is all. Healthfood bars and other foods that state that they are GMO-free are generally better than those that do not. I supposed you'd like an example of a "harmful" genetically modfied food, huh? I hate to say it, but that's entirely too easy. Corn is genetically modified to the Nth degree and is now harvested for the sole purpose of creating food additives like corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and many more by-products that we find in nearly everything we eat or use; by-products that are absolutely horrible for our everyday health.

The last substance I would like to touch on is Soy. It seems like the Soy revolution is well underway and people have more-than adopted the utility of Soy in their diet. It is an easy replacement for milk in some cases and works well as a food additive. Now you're going to ask, "Oh, c'mon, is nothing safe? What's wrong with Soy for Heaven's sake?" Calm down, you wouldn't want me to just let you walk around with a booger hanging out of your nose, so I'm not going to let you walk into the grocery store and purchase Soy milk without some form of warning. The bottom line on Soy is that it is NOT as largely consumed in the East as some believe. Soy was also not considered edible for a LONG time. Now we are able to produce, harvest and process Soy in large quantities on the cheap, which would be cool . . . if it didn't cause Estrogen levels in women to go wicked awry. That's right, if you love hormonal women and can't get enough of your sweetheart during "that time of the month" then soy milk is your sure-fire, non-refundable, one-way ticket to her round-the-clock emotional wonderland. This same side effect is common in men as well, though it may not appear to have much of an effect as a man's level of Estrogen is always much lower to begin with. In any case, hormonal imbalances are cause for more ailments (and unhappy couples) than I could list here, so something as important as Estrogen really shouldn't be one of the hormones we're willing to sacrifice or tinker with.

Okay, so this article delved into more than a simple classification; but what is a category without contents, a building with no doors or a million dollars in the middle of the desert? Distinguishing something without an explanation is like maintaining a border without lines. Oh, and just as a side-note, if after reading this article you become more interested in the positive health effects of food and it's cures to everyday ailments, please check out The Gerson Therapy. It's less of a therapy and more like the science of eating in order to cure specific ailments or maintain the right type of health for your individual needs. In any case, we're not talking about fads in this article, we're talking about the way things should be and, best of all, why that pays off for everyday folks like us. Thanks for reading and may good health follow or find you should you decline seeking it for yourself.