Saturday, April 4, 2009

Vegetarianism

The study, in the april issue of the journal of the American Dietetic Association, found that twice as many teens and nearly double the number of young adults who had been cegetarians reported having used unhealthy means to control their weight, compared with those who had never been vegetarians. Those means included using diet pills to control weight.

There's dark side to vegetarianism, said dr. David L. Katz. " Adolescent vegetarians [inthe study] were prone to disordered eating and outright eating disorders. This is not due to vegetarianism but the other way around: adolescents struggling to control their diets and weight might opt fot vegetarianism among other, less-healthful efforts.

Katz said he thinks a balanced vegetarian diet is among most the healtful of dietary patterns, and the study suggest some of the benefits.

"Adolescents practicing vegetarianism were less likely to be overweight that their omnivorous counterparts and,were the measures available, would likely have had better blood pressure and cholesterol,too" he said. " Eating mostly plats and even only plants is good for us and certainly far better for healththan the typical American diet."

The study's lead researcher, Ramona Robinson-O'Brien, an assistant professor in the Nutrition Cepartement at Collage of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in St. Jhoseph Minn. agreed

The majority of adolescents and young adults today would benefit from improvements in dietary intake,” she said. The study found, for instance, that the vegetarians among the participants generally were less likely to be overweight or obese.

“However, current vegetarians may be at increased risk for binge eating, while former vegetarians may be at increased risk for extreme unhealthful weight-control behaviors,” she said. “Clinicians and nutrition professionals providing guidance to young vegetarians might consider the potential benefits associated with a healthful vegetarian diet, [but should] recognize the possibility of increased risk of disordered eating behaviors.”

The researchers collected data on 2.516 teens and young adults who participated in a study called project EAT-II : Eating Among Teens. They classified participants as current, former or never vegetarians and divided them into two age group : teens (15 to 18) and young adults (19-23)

Each participant was questioned about binge eating. Whether they felt a loss of control of their eating habits and whether yhey used any extreeme weight control behaviors.

About 21 percent of teens who had been vegetarians said they used unhealthy weight-control behaviors, compared with 10 percent of teens who had never been vegetarians. Among young adults, more former vegetarians (27 percent) had used such measures than current vegetarians (16 percent) or those who’d never been vegetarians (15 percent), the study found.

In addition, among teenagers, binge eating and loss of control over eating habits was reported by 21 percent of current and 16 percent of former vegetarians but only 4 percent of those who’d never followed a vegetarian diet. For young adults, more vegetarians (18 percent) said they engaged in binge eating with loss of control than did former vegetarians (9 percent) and those who were never vegetarians (5 percent), the study found.




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