What are the special food/nutrients that vegetarians need in their diet?

Question

Vegetarians need a special diet in order to keep healthy as they do not eat meat and many things found in meat are not easily available to them. What sort of special foods provide these nutrients for them?

Answer 1

Special foods? None. Vegetarians have the same nutritional requirements as "regular" people do except that they don't get it from meat. As for protein, people only need a few grams (or milligrams, I forget the exact amount)per day depending on activity. A regular serving of nuts or legumes should take care of the protein "problem"

On the contrary, getting hold of food other than meat is not a problem, at least in the US and the west. In fact, even unseasonal foods are becoming more and more available year round.

Answer 2

Vegetarians don't eat a "special" diet.  There isn't anything "special" that's obtained from animal flesh that isn't easily available from plant foods.  

Just eat a wide variety of whole foods: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, raw nuts and seeds, beans and legumes.

Answer 3

lol.. special foods.. you can eat exactly the same as you used to just without the meat and be perfectly healthy providing you had a balanced diet before hand.

normally people say fill up on proteins, as meat is a protein and now you're not eating it etc., but you must NOT eat loadsa dairy to try and make up for it - it's not really got that many nutrients in it and is very bad for your heart/cholestorol.

bananas and nuts, foods rich in iron if you're a woman, green veg, fruit - all the stuff you were told to eat as a kid!

Answer 4

beans.

green beans, lima beans, pinto beans, black beans, kidney beans.

any kind of beans is necessary because by not eating meat, your diet will lack a lot of protein.

beans are the most protein-rich foods that aren't meat.

you also need to drink a lot of milk and eat cheese.

Answer 5

A special diet?  All the nutrients is meat can be found quite easily in a vegetarian diet.   I don't eat a "special diet"..just a well rounded one.

Answer 6

Emily, I've been a veggie for years and haven't found anything available in meat to not be easily available in veggie foods. Veggies don't eat special foods as such - they eat veggie foods that just the same as the ones meat eaters consume - they just eat more of them. Protein, for instance, is in most plant foods to some level - in fact it's difficult to not get enough protein as long as you're eating a varied diet and taking in enough calories for your own daily needs.

Eating large amounts of meat and animal products has been linked time and again to ill health and disease, not to mention the environmental damage large scale animal farming causes today. Eating animal free is a wise choice in the world we live in today.

Answer 7

The most important thing is to complement proteins daily.  Your body needs several different types of proteins to maintain itself.  All of them are found in most types of meat.  But vegetable sources of protein rarely have all types.

Vegetarians must combine vegetable sources to get all the types of proteins they need for the day.

For example, legumes contain all the proteins that are missing from most grains.  So, the old southern standby, red beans and rice, would provide all the types of proteins needed in one meal.

There are many other combinations that work.  But it is part of the vegetarian lifestyle, and cannot be neglected.

Answer 8

Well, veg*anism is already a "special diet."  The only thing we need to do is ensure we eat a wide variety of foods--which you should do whether or not you're veg.  The only thing that's in meat that isn't in plant foods is cholesterol.  Oh, and hormones, antibiotics, steroids, etc.  And believe me, your body makes all the cholesterol you need.