Undoubtedly every new vegetarian asked a questions if a vegetarian diet can provide all the essential nutrients to the body. Although the answer is generally “yes”, you still have to ensure that to achieve optimum health your diet has to be properly planned.

Recent studies indicate that vitamin B12 deficiency is very common among vegetarians and might be affecting over 90% of vegans.

The symptoms of B12 deficiency develop gradually over several months and sometimes years. Typical symptoms can include loss of energy, blurred vision, poor memory, hallucinations, inability to maintain balance, weakness and excessive fatigue, depression, mood swings and irritability. Long term vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to irreversible nervous system damage.

If you’ve been a vegetarian for a while and didn’t pay much attention to your nutrition, you might even experience some of these symptoms. Fortunately in majority of cases these symptoms are reversable and if you plan your diet properly from the beginning you’ll enusre that your body gets sufficient amount of nutrients.

So where does vitamin B12 come from? It’s a product of bacterial fermentation that happens either naturally in the animal digestive system or can be reproduced in a laboratory. Because bacteria is the source of this vitamins we do not require animal products to produce B12.

There has been a lot of misconceptions that such foods as seaweeds and tempeh are high in B12. However it was established that vegetable foods can provide only inactive analogues of B12 which can actually prevent the absorption of the active vitamin B12.

As there are no reliable and adequate plant sources of B12, vegetarians have to rely on dairy and eggs for this vitamin. For example a cup of milk or yogurt can contain up to 1 mcg (microgram) of vitamin B12 and one egg can contain 0.6 mcg. It’s important to keep in mind that the more processed the product is the less B12 it will contain. Sterilization and boiling will destroy ½ of the B12 in the food.

Vegans should include foods speicifically fortified with B12 such as cereals, milk and meat substitutes and nutritional yeast. It is important to read the label to ensure that your intake will be adequate. Vitamin B12 supplements are also available in health food stores.

Vegetarian barbecue might sound oxymoronic to you, but it’s a reality you’d love to taste. Better still you don’t have to be a great cook to do that.

So what can you grill? Almost everything, as long as it’s not lettuce. You’d definitely want to start with some potato wedges, pumpkin cubes and corn cobs. All of them will go great with some olive oil, salt and black pepper. Add some firm tofu marinated in soy sauce with your favorite spices and you’ll have a complete meal. Just add salad.

Want to get even fancier? How about some shish kebabs?
Get pieces of marinated tofu, tempeh or seitan. Thread them on kebab sticks together with mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, olives, pieces of bell peppers… you get the point. Remember to add some spices and serve with marinated gherkins (don’t grill them though!) and potatoes.

That’s just a few examples of what you can do but the options are limited only by your imagination and stomach.

So leave all the memories of your past omnivorous life with it’s saturated fats and high cholesterol food and get grilling.

Need more ideas for cooking healthy vegetarian meals? Check out Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy.

We tried our best to stay away from being another “collection of vegetarian recipes” blog but we couldn’t resist sharing this little secret.

If you’re trying to lose fat or build muscle you probably asked yourself many times if there’s a low carb, high protein snack that you can take with you anywhere. Can we find anything that does not come in a shake or a sweet bar form?

Here it goes - vegetarian jerky.

Ingredients

500g firm tofu (the firmer the better)
2/3 cup water
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 clove fresh garlic (crushed)
2 tablespoons liquid smoke
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon onion powder

Preparation

Cut the tofu into 1/2 inch think strips. Prepare marinade by thoroughly mixing in all the remaining ingredients in a bowl. Place the strips into the bowl ensuring that every piece is completely covered in the marinade. Let them soak for at least 8 hours, stir occasionally.

Place the strips to dry into a food dehydrator or a conventional oven at 200°F / 90°C. Rotate the strips regularly. The strips should be ready and chewy within 6-8 hours.

Other things you might want to try

• Use gluten instead of tofu.
• Use any other spices you like, eg Italian herb mixes (oregano, basil, rosemary etc) could work well
• The soy sauce, depending on the variety, might already have enough salt. In that case, be careful with adding salt separately.

Need more ideas for cooking healthy vegetarian meals? Check out Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy.

Even among some vegetarians there is a misconception that vegetarian diet on it’s own does not provide enough protein. Majority of plant foods contain protein. In fact some plant foods contain more protein than meat products.

There are several advantages to eating plant protein:

• Plant protein does not contain any cholesterol or saturated fats
• Plant protein is rich in antioxidants, calcium, zinc, and other minerals and vitamins
• Plant protein is high in fibre

The key to any healthy diet, vegetarian or not, is to eat a wide variety foods. This will guarantee that you get sufficient amount of protein and importantly all the other nutrients.

To meet one’s daily requirements, an adult leading “modern” sedentary lifestyle would need to consumes only 0.75g of protein per 1kg of body weight. It’s not surprising that many people eat more protein that they need.

Here’s my top 15 sources of protein. Unless you subsist on junk food only, you probably can see that these are the foods that you eat on a daily basis anyway.

The quantity of protein is given per 100g of food.

1. 75g - wheat gluten (seitan). Ready made products from wheat gluten can be bought ready made from Asian grocery stores. It can also be easily made either from gluten flour or wheat dough by washing out the starch. Read more about gluten here.
2. 60g - dried seaweed, spirulina. Spirulina is a seaweed that has been used for food in Africa and America for centuries. Apart from having high protein content, it is rich in beta carotene, iron, vitamin B-12 and other nutrients. Here’s more information on spirulina and it’s benefits.
3. 50g - Sesame seeds can be added as is or roasted to breakfast cereals. Here’s a very informative article about uses and nutritional value of sesame seeds.
4. 48g - Sunflower seeds can be eaten as a snack or part of a meal. They can be added to salads and breakfast cereals. Sunflower seeds are an excellent source of fiber, Vitamin E, magnesium and selenium. The also possess cholesterol-lowering properties.
5. 39g - Soybeans are one of the most popular sources of protein for vegetarians. They are used in preparation of many popular foods such as soy milk, tofu, textured vegetable protein and tempeh. For example, tofu and tempeh is used in Asian cooking and can be stewed, stir-fried, cooked in sauce or in soups. In Western cooking it’s used for preparing kebabs and mock meat dishes.
6. 33g - Pumpkin seeds can be either eaten as a snack or added to salads and other foods.
7. 27g - Peanuts, just like any other nuts is a good snack. They are mostly known in the form of peanut butter. Peanuts are a significant source of resveratrol, a chemical studied for potential anti-aging effects.
8. 19g - Chickpeas. Apart from being high in protein they are also a good source of zinc and folate.
9. 19g - Almonds can be eaten as a snack and also made into almond butter and almond milk. As almonds are very low in carbohydrates, almond flour can be used for cooking low-carb biscuits and cakes.
10. 17g - Oatbran. Oat protein is nearly equivalent in quality to soy protein, which has been shown to be the equal to animal protein.

If you’re not a vegan, you have a few more choices:

1. 25g - Cheddar cheese
2. 15g - Cottage cheese
3. 14g - Feta cheese
4. 13g - Eggs
5. 6g - Yogurt

It’s definitely not an exhaustive list, but merely an example that protein is easy to obtain by eating only vegetarian diet. Bookmark this page and next time you think you need more protein in your diet, you’ll know exactly where to look.

Any vegetarian or vegan who has a cat, at some stage thought about feeding it vegetarian diet. Out of all the domestic animals cats are unique. A study by the National Cancer Institute suggests that all current domestic cats in the world are descendants from a group of self-domesticated wildcats 10,000 years ago. In fact there’s still no conclusive evidence that domestic cats should be classified as a separate species.

Being a true carnivore a cat (domestic or wild) subsists on a diet consisting primarily of meat. In its natural state the cat will hunt and provide for itself at every opportunity. A wild cat eats all of its prey including hair, skin, flesh, bones and internal organs. Cats are very unlikely to give up meat voluntarily. If you intentionally feed cat vegetarian diet, it will look for meat somewhere else. Many cats will hunt and kill mice, rabbits and birds. Certainly they will consume other foods as well, especially of animal origin. However as these are not important in their diet, cats will eat them only in small quantities and not on a regular basis.

Cats lack the physiology to properly digest vegetation. It’s no coincidence that a cat eats grass to induce vomiting to get rid of the hair collected in its stomach. The cat’s digestive system cannot convert plant based nutrients in to the form that its body can utilize. That’s why cat are are called strict carnivores, as they need to take the active form of the nutrients from other animals, who do the conversion beforehand.

Here’s 7 most important nutrients that your cat is unable to get from a vegetarian diet:

1. Taurine is an amino acid essential for cats as unlike other mammals, cats cannot synthesize it. In the absence of taurine, a cat’s retina slowly degenerates and the cat suffers eye problems and can become irreversibly blind. This condition is called central retinal degeneration (CRD). Cow’s milk is a poor source of taurine and there is none in plant foods. The only rich source is meat.
2. Arachidonic acid is one of the essential fatty acids. Dogs and humans can convert linoleic acid found in vegetable fats into arachidonic acid. Cats are unable to do that, as their liver doesn’t contain delta-6-desaturase enzyme (no kidding!). Cats need arachidonic acid to be able to produce an inflammatory response so that the body can protect itself in case of disease. Arachidonic acid also helps control skin growth and is necessary for proper blood clotting, proper functioning of the reproductive and gastrointestinal systems. Animal fat is the only major source of arachidonic acid, very small amount can be found in eggs and milk. Arachidonic acid deficiency takes some time to develop but its effect on the cat is profound.
3. Vitamin A found in vegetables (carotenoid) cannot be converted by cats in to the active form of vitamin A (retinol). As cats do not have the necessary enzyme to do the conversion they have to hunt other animals that have done it for them (mice, rabbits). There are sufficient quantities of retinol in meat and very small amounts in eggs and milk. Liver is the richest source of preformed Vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency in cats can cause night blindness, retarded growth, and poor-quality skin and fur.
4. Vitamin B12 is another vitamin that cannot be synthesized by cats. Vitamin B12 is present only in animal products.
5. Niacin can be synthesized from the amino acid tryptophan by many mammals but not cats. Meat is the best source of niacin. Insignificant amounts of niacin can be found in milk and eggs. Lack of niacin in cat’s diet can cause loss of appetite, loss of weight, inflamed gums, and hemorrhagic diarrhea.
6. Thiamin (vitamin B1) has an important role in carbohydrate metabolism. Cats are very susceptible to deficiency of this vitamin. Thiamin is rapidly destroyed by heat, that’s why only raw meat is the only good source of this nutrient. Very small amount can be obtained from eggs and dairy. Thiamin deficiency in cats can lead to anorexia, ataxia, paralysis and finally permanent brain damage.
7. Protein is required by cats in large amounts. Over 30% of a cat’s diet should consist of protein and this can be a problem on a vegetarian diet.

For all these reasons cats must not be fed vegetarian or vegan diet. Cats have very specific nutritional needs which you must meet if you want to keep them fit, healthy, and happy.

You might have to make some hard choices as this is a question of life and death for your cat. It might be impractical or impossible to let your cat hunt, but killing your cat by feeding it food they cannot digest is just another way to participate in animal cruelty that we’re trying to avoid in the first place.

Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy is a great book and a comprehensive resource both for vegetarians and vege-curious. Despite it’s cookbookish title it’s far more than a collection of vegetarian cooking recipes. The book gives you extensive information on what vegetarianism and veganism is about and includes a chapter on reasons for becoming vegetarian or vegan. If you’re just discovering vegetarianism you’ll see why it’s gaining popularity, as people take up vegetarianism for many reasons be it ecological, health, ethical, financial, and spiritual. Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy helps you choose the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle that is right for you. It stays away from preaching and honestly lays out all the advantages and disadvantages. This book includes information about what foods vegetarians and vegans do and do not eat. This is really good to know as it’s estimated that in nearly 12% of households in UK someone is a vegetarian.

There’s plenty of easy-to-understand dietary advice for vegetarians at any stage of their lives eg pregnancy, babies, children, teenagers and athletes. Even non-vegetarians will find interesting the information on micronutrients such as protein, calcium, fats, vitamins and minerals, and their importance and role in a vegetarian diet. The book shares practical tips and gives you all you need to know to make smart, healthy food choices at home, at restaurants, or while travelling.

Being a cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy naturally contains lots of vegetarian recipes. Over half the recipes are vegan, containing no animal products whatsoever, and many of the remaining ones can easily be converted to vegan with instructions included with the recipe. Depending on your cooking abilities you might find some of them easier to prepare than others. However most recipes require simple items that you already have in your cupboards and refrigerator. As you move from absolute basics you’ll discover lots of ingredients that can be purchased in any supermarket to make your cooking even more delicious and unforgetable. Each recipe gives you cooking times and serving sizes. No matter how busy you are you can always find something quick and easy to prepare and you know how long it takes you. Based on the serving sizes you can easily adjust your favourite recipes for any number of portions. Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy is indeed your complete guide to getting started with vegetarian cooking right away.

What makes this book even better value is that it comes with 14 bonuses. Here’s some of the things you get:

• Vegetarian Holidays Recipes Pack
• Vegetable Reference Guide & Recipes
• Fruit Reference Guide & Recipes
• Specially compiled videos on vegetarianism and the treatment of animals
• Grandmother’s Cookbook
• Dr Allinson’s Vegetarian Cookbook

There are literally hundreds of recipes for vegetarian entrees, side dishes, desserts, dips, salads, soups, beverages and holiday meals. Keep in mind that even without bonuses the book itself is 86 pages long. You get another 123 pages on beverages, 63 pages of breakfast recipes and the list continues. There’s more than 824 pages of amazing vegetarian recipes to get your teeth into. Better still, follow this link and have a look yourself at everything that’s included.

No matter how much cooking you do it’ll be really hard for you to run out of cooking ideas. What’s even better that with this book you always have something special to cook to surprise and entertain your friends and relatives. You don’t have to be a vegetarian to enjoy using this cookbook. Most of the dishes are so hearty that you won’t miss the meat at all.

Of course, no book is perfect. You might come across a few spelling mistakes here and there. This is a downloadable book, so if you just must have something with glossy covers to collect dust on the bookshelf, this wouldn’t be the right choice. If you’re after the invaluable information that Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy contains, then you definitely find that this book overdelivers many times at less than half the price of any other super cookbook you ever own.

The price of Vegetarian Cooking Made Easy is US$24.97. You can read more about this book and purchase it here.

As for any product that we recommend, we’d really appreciate if you could give us your feedback whether it lived up to your expectations.

Recently launched MDLR Airlines claims to be the only airline in the world that serves only vegetarian food on board. The airline started operating with 2 AVRO RJ-70 aircraft leased from British Aerospace flying from Delhi to Chandigarh. Other regional destinations will include Ranchi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Goa, Surat and Bhavnagar. MDLR plans to have a fleet of 10-12 aircraft by the end of the year.

This is a very interesting idea and makes flying vegetarian a lot easier, at least in India. For the other parts of the world we still have rely on own experience and internet research of airlines vegetarian meals.

A recently launch publish reports of inmates in the Parappana Agrahara prison are eating so well that many are reluctant to leave. Other convicted criminals are trying to move in.

The prison houses 4,700 inmates more than twice its capacity. The reason being that criminals are refusing to apply for bail and juvenile offenders are overstating their age to qualify as adults and enter the facility.

The vegetarian food is being served by ISKCON, or Hare Krishna movement, a Hindu evangelist organisation, under contract from the prisons department.

The menu typically include piping hot rice, two vegetables and a spicy lentil dish called sambar and buttermilk. A dessert is added on festival days and national holidays like Independence Day, and weekends.

“When we are getting tasty, nutritious food three times a day here, why should we go out and commit crimes,” said prisoner Raja Reddy, who has been arrested 20 times in 30 years for theft, robbery and burglary.

“Our going out of the prison will only benefit pawnbrokers who purchase stolen items at a throwaway price from us, advocates who fleece us to fight our case and the police who collect bribes,” Reddy was quoted as saying.

If you know anything about prisons in India, it’s surprising that people are trying to get it in just to get decent food. Surprising, unless you know what it’s like to be outside.

The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, shows that the nutrient content of farm grown fruits and vegetables has declined over the past half a century.

The study compared US Department of Agriculture data from 1950 and 1999 for 13 nutrients in 43 crops. The researchers found that, on average, all three minerals and two of five vitamins have declined. The protein content of the evaluated crops has decreased by 6 percent.

The researchers concluded that “decades of selecting food crops for high yield, with resulting inadvertent trade-offs of reduced nutrient concentrations… For many decades agronomists have cited ‘the dilution effect’ to describe reduced nutrient concentrations caused by intensive agricultural practices.”

Many have already suspected that traditionally grown crops often have better flavour and taste than commercially grown varieties. As this study suggests, in many cases the traditionally grown fruits and vegetables may also be more nutritious.