Vegetarian Nutrition

This book contains expert summaries of various aspects of plant-based, or meatless, diets. It provides not only ethical, moral, and religious viewpoints from different periods of history but also modern perspectives on health promotion and disease prevention. The editor, Joan Sabate, is a physician and nutrition specialist who for several decades has been a principal investigator in observational and intervention studies of health promotion among Seventh-Day Adventists. He has recruited an international group of authors and many of his colleagues at Loma Linda University for this collection. That the 26 contributors include only 2 physicians may indicate the need for this book, since the overall impression the book leaves is that vegetarian diets are safe, palatable, healthy, and at times curative.

The material is presented succinctly, with good use of tables, and is referenced appropriately. Vegetarian diets may be classified as lacto-vegetarian, ovo-vegetarian, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, or vegan, respectively, if they include dairy products, eggs, both dairy products and eggs, or no animal products at all. The macrobiotic diet is an extremely restrictive vegetarian diet that is not nutritionally adequate and leads to malnutrition, especially in children. The book's synopsis of growth studies involving children and adolescents who are vegetarians provides data on children from birth to 18 years of age. Lacto-ovo- or lacto-vegetarians, as most Seventh-Day Adventists are, have normal physical growth, whereas children who are vegans may have slower growth even if they are in good health.