DIET PAPER
In America today obesity is one of the largest growing problems amongst American citizens. People exercise and go on diets in order to maintain a healthy body weight. Everyone has their own diet and workout plans that seem to work the best for them and keeps them at their desired weight. I am writing this paper and exploring two different kinds of diets to see which one is “better”. The two diets I will be exploring are the vegan diet and the Mediterranean diet.

The vegan diet is a diet based strictly on vegetables and is known to lower the risks of developing colon cancer, heart attack, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, prostate cancer, and stroke. Vegans do not use or consume animal products, notably meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and dairy products. Even though this diet cannot seem any healthier for you, it has been found that the vegan diet does have some health risks. Because this diet involves no meat, people on this diet are advised to take vitamins, minerals, and to monitor there eating habits. When asked about his experience with the vegan diet and the process he took, Steve Pavlina had this to say. “I was surprised at how easy it was to go vegetarian. I thought it would take a lot of discipline, but it really didn’t. I just made obvious substitutions: cheese or veggie pizza instead of pepperoni, pasta dishes, rice dishes, stir-fry veggies, etc. If I did this today, it would be even easier due to all the vegetarian products now on the market that weren’t available back then. I acquired one vegetarian cookbook (which I still have) that helped me with a few recipes, but mostly I found that cutting out flesh was painless.” Overall the Vegan diet is a good step towards keeping your body in shape, as long as you monitor your diet.

The Mediterranean diet came about from the Mediterranean basin, especially Greece and Southern Italy. “Common to the diets of these regions are a high consumption of fruit and vegetables, bread, wheat and other cereals, olive oil, fish, and Red Wine. The diet is often cited as a beneficial one for that it is low in saturated fat and high in monounsaturated fat and dietary fiber.” Although this diet does provide a good source of calcium, the diet doesn’t provide a good source of iron.

In conclusion there are pros and cons to every diet. Each diet works different for everyone and has different results on everyone. My advice to you (the reader) after doing this paper is to try a couple different things and see which works best for you.