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I have met people that eat eggs on a vegetarian diet and they are called lacto-ovo vegetarians,
I've even met people who eat chicken and call themselves vegetarians and don't eat red meat,
but these are subtle distinctions. One variety of vegetarian is a person who eats no animal
products and they are called vegans. And so a vegan will not eat honey because it comes
from bees, vegans will not eat dairy products, so they are quite strict. Now one of the questions
that comes up, if you shift your eating in this direction, are you at risk for any dietary
deficiencies? Also, a practical problem is, especially in the past ten years, I've met
a lot kids and teenagers who have become vegetarians or vegans often because this is either morally
appealing or it's a fad in the circles they travel in. And a lot of them are eating things
like macaroni and cheese every night for dinner and pizza for lunch and French fries and if
you are eating that way that is certainly not a healthy variety of vegetarianism or
veganism. I think it's possible, being a vegetarian or being a vegan, to get everything you need
for your diet but there are some things you have to be careful of. For vegans especially,
there are a few concerns - one is where are you going to get omega-3 fatty acids? You
can get these from vegetable sources but it's not as good as getting them from fish or fish-oil
supplements. Also on a vegan diet you can be at risk for iron deficiency and zinc deficiency,
there are vegetarian sources of these minerals but they are things you just have to be conscious
of. After being a lacto-vegetarian for about fifteen years, I changed my diet and started
to eat fish. So technically I am not a vegetarian anymore - I am a pesco-vegetarian, somebody
told me that a good name for that would be vege-quarian. I started eating fish for several
reasons; the first is I travel a lot, and I travel internationally, and I found that
being a lacto-vegetarian was difficult for me especially going to Japan where I spend
a lot of time, it's very hard to be a lacto-vegetarian in Japan. And also, I was more and more convinced
from the scientific literature about the value of including fish in the diet especially for
omega-3 fatty acids. So I am very careful about the fish that I eat because of two concerns
- both about environmental toxicity in finish and sustainability of fish sources.