Want to go Vegetarian?

If your New Year’s resolution incorporated adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet, you are probably not alone. Each year, more and more people are switching to a meatless diet and more restaurants and grocery stores are offering more meal options for the growing population of strictly herbivores. Burger King offers a Veggie Burger, Johnny Rockets has a Boca Burger and at P.F. Chang’s you can make any entrée vegetarian friendly.

But what is popular is not necessarily as easy as simulating what everyone else does. Being vegetarian takes a lot of research and learning — otherwise your good intentions could become unhealthy for you, says Don Carrier, a long-time vegan and creator of lvvegan.com.

“One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to go vegetarian is not having enough knowledge. You need to do a lot of reading and research,” he said. Carrier has also helped guide people who want to change their diets to be more vegetarian and vegan friendly.

For Carrier, giving up meat was easy — he’d been a vegetarian all of his life and it was more out of a necessity than a choice.

“I was born with an allergy to the enzyme in animals and so it was pretty easy to be a vegetarian,” said Carrier.

But most people have not been vegetarians all their lives. Most are, unlike Carrier, vegetarians by choice.

Definitions of the word “vegetarian” vary. Most vegetarians do not eat meat, fish, poultry or any other animal product such as gelatin but will consume free-range eggs, milk and cheese. Those who do not consume any animal products whatsoever, including honey and dairy, are known as vegans.

Some do it for ethical and moral reasons and some do it for health reasons or both.

And for the most part, a vegetarian is healthier, says Dr. Neal Barnard, a clinical researcher, physician and author of “Eat Right, Live Longer.” Vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease, nine times less likely than meat-eaters to become obese and also live six to 10 years longer than meat eaters. Renowned physician Benjamin Spock wrote that children who grow up eating vegetarian typically grow taller and have higher IQ’s.

The American Diabetic Association reports that vegetarians have a lower rate of ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, and blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes, as well as prostate and colon cancer.

But with all those great ambitions, there can also be a lot of problems. Vegetarians who don’t do a good job of balancing their diets well tend to have low rates of iron, zinc and have been known to be vitamin B-12 deficient.

“There really are a lot of vegans who I call them junk food vegans and they can drink Pepsi and eat potato chips and you are a vegan but you aren’t eating anything healthy,” said Carrier.

According to information from the Mayo Clinic, it is not that difficult finding the nutritional supplements often left out by an animal-free diet. For example, people who don’t drink milk can have soy milk or rice milk instead; soy cheese is a good alternative to eating cheeses and you can use potato starch in place of eggs in recipes. All these are good options for vegans.

Although it is probably easier to be a vegetarian than a vegan, vegetarians still have to make an extra effort to eat a balanced meal. Soy products, legumes, lentils, nuts and seeds for protein and iron; tofu, fruit juices and green vegetables such as spinach are good sources of calcium; and whole grains, nuts and wheat germ provide zinc. One of the essential vitamins that is difficult to replace is B-12. This vitamin is necessary for the body to produce red blood cells and prevent anemia and is found almost exclusively in animal products, as well as in milk, eggs and cheese, according to the Mayo Clinic. This makes it particularly difficult for vegans but there are enriched cereals and fortified soy products that cater to a vegan diet and have the supplement or there are also vitamins supplements that can be taken for this purpose.

Maria Juarez, who has been a vegetarian for two years, found out she was B-12 deficient after her annual visit to her physician.

“I was always feeling very tired, I knew something was abnormal because I was sleeping a lot and didn’t have energy, but it never occurred to me that it was my diet,” Juarez said.

After finding out that she was a vegetarian, her doctor started asking her questions about having enough energy and her diet, which is when he realized that she was B-12 deficient. Now Juarez takes B-12 supplements and takes extra precautions to make sure that a lot of the food she buys has B-12.

“I realized that even some of the soy milk I was drinking didn’t have B-12, so now I make sure that I make it part of my daily intake,” she said.

Juarez said she did a lot of reading and research about getting the proper nutrients through her diet, but in practice didn’t pay enough attention to some important things.

“I was so concerned with making sure that I get the iron and the protein that I was overlooking some of the other essentials and I didn’t want to become anemic. It never occurred to me that I could be missing some other vitamins,” she said.

For that reason, Juarez recommends always talking to a physician before starting a vegetarian diet — or any diet for that matter.

“My doctor was vey good. He knew what questions to ask me and he was aware of what some of his vegetarian patients often have problems with. They are more informed than us about what our body needs and they can give us the guidance to take on a new diet in a healthy way,” Juarez said.

Many worry that a vegetarian or vegan diet will not offer enough protein.

“Yes, I hear that every day, that people are afraid of not getting enough protein,” Barnard said. “Many people have high cholesterol as a result of a meaty diet. There is plenty of protein in a vegan diet … if you look at a bull or a stallion, those are vegans and they have lots of muscles.”

While it is true that adopting a vegetarian diet can lead to weight loss, some of the substitutes can be more fattening than a meat-eating diet. Physicians at the Mayo Clinic caution against eating peanut butter and cheeses because they are high in fat; and they also recommend against traditional preparation of foods such as frying in favor of steaming, boiling and grilling as healthier options.

Foods such as peanut butter, cheese, sour cream, salad dressing and mayonnaise can all be found in lower-fat versions and are recommended against the “original” product.

Even Carrier, who had been a vegetarian all of his life, had heart disease and was scheduled for a triple-bypass surgery, which is why he converted his vegetarian diet to a vegan one.

“Mostly for me as a vegetarian, I ate a lot of cheese and dairy was my big downfall, and being Italian I loved olive oil and it was no help either,” he said.

A big problem that vegetarians and vegans can have is that if they are not properly informed on how to eat they can fill up on carbs and cheeses and other foods that are not necessarily healthy, said Carrier.

But probably the biggest problem for both Juarez and Carrier is finding vegetarian- and vegan-friendly restaurants in Las Vegas.

That need is what prompted Carrier to start his Web site lvvegan.com, which provides a list of restaurants in Las Vegas that offer vegan friendly foods.

“I kept on having friends ask me where they could eat and I would have this manual list of places I would carry with me, and so I really saw a need to putting this information out there,” he said.

One such restaurant that caters to a vegan, vegetarian and healthier diets is the Red Velvet Café.

Chef Aneesha who is a graduate of the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school also saw the demand and embarked on the opportunity.

“We have always offered vegetarian options but we saw more people who are vegan and so we decided to offer every dish with a vegan option,” she said.

At Red Velvet Café they offer all kinds of vegan options from soy cheese, which Chef Aneesha makes herself, to burgers, veggie pizzas and their signature red velvet cake, which is vegan friendly and packs in only 200 calories.

“Most of our cakes are vegan and we do that not just because of our vegan clientele but because it keeps our clients healthy it has no fat, no eggs and no dairy and you drop calories by taking out those things,” she said.

According to Chef Aneesha, the key is making the plates taste like “the real thing”; she uses tofu and soy protein which a consistency and texture parallel to chicken and many herbs and spices.

“It’s just a matter of converting our food and giving it the same quality and taste by using herbs and spices to give it the same flavors,” she said.

Red Velvet Café is also a good option for people wanting to try meat substitutes and for those people, Chef Aneesha recommends jumping in gently and trying something like a taco salad first, which is more similar than what the taste buds are already used to.

“I wouldn’t jump into a vegan fish plate or you might not like it. Also if you didn’t like chicken to begin with, for example, you’re not going to like soy chicken any better,” she said.

Chef Aneesha said she has seen her clientele grow but she said it is a lifestyle and not just a fad.

“There are a lot of people who want to be organic and be healthy and it is genuine people want to take care of their bodies,” she said.

As far as eating more organic and changing to a vegetarian or vegan-based diet, it is hard to argue with the fact that it can be more expensive, but to Juarez it is all worth it.

“It’s part of you and your body. If some people have no problem buying a $15 cocktail, which is not even good for you, then they should also be willing to make the sacrifice to eat healthier,” she said.