Vegan and vegetarian diets or lifestyles have been getting more and more popular, claiming that they create cleaner and healthier living. Their reasoning for not eating commercial meat is because of the cruelty inflicted on animals or for the fact that the animals are filled with chemicals, drugs and unsanitary foods to help in making the slaughtering process quicker. One main aspect that is extremely healthy is staying away from commercially raised meats, but not necessarily staying away from meat all together. Human beings are meant to eat meat. We have canine teeth to help us tear the meat off the bones. From the meat we absorb important macronutrients known as protein as well as all the micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. A strictly vegan diet restricts any meat products. It is extremely difficult for a person to fulfill their bodily needs from a daily intake of only plant foods. We are not cattle; we do not have 4 stomachs that can help us digest large amounts of greens without causing bodily harm.
There have recently been a couple of cases where infants and babies have died from being put on vegetarian diets and becoming malnourished. If this diet is not safe for infants, what makes people think that it is safe for a grown-up? Some of the parents were sentenced to jail for involuntary manslaughter and neglect due to this. It is extremely difficult to fulfill all your bodily needs when you are a vegetarian and it is probably impossible to attain any vitamin B12. It is tremendously easy to get suckered into the latest craze but it's very unlikely that you will stay healthy on that type of diet. Conduct some research and figure out what your body is asking for. Just because you are not eating McDonalds cheeseburgers does not mean that you are healthy.
For more in depth on vegetarian diet check out: http://www.ppssuccess.com/FoodforThought/ArticlesbyPaul/ArticlesbyPaulChekDetailPage/tabid/496/smid/2144/ArticleID/96/reftab/104/Default.aspx
For the cases with infants dying:
http://naturalhygienesociety.org/diet-veganbaby.html
http://www.news4jax.com/news/13286030/detail.html
