• Question: Do you think that it is more beneficial to have a vegetarian's diet, or a normal one? - by normal I mean by eating both meats and greens :D - and if you chose one of the two and never ever having the other, would it change your mental and physical performance?

    Asked by everybodydotheflop to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 13 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by joeb.
    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      There’s several stories for and against with performance. I don’t think that there’s much difference either way if you wanted to have your brain or body at their peak, as long as you’re eating a balanced diet.

      Where there does seem to be a difference is the chance of disease, vegetarians have fewer heart diseases http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21258509 , in this study they followed 45,000 people for 11 years and found that they have less heart disease. This is more useful to show something, whereas something like this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21258509 which had about 10,000 people looked back and saw that people who are vegetarian had a slightly higher IQ than the average. I’d imagine that in the last study it might be that people with higher IQs could be more likely to be vegetarian instead of being veggie making you smarter.

      Does that make sense?

    • Photo: Melissa Brereton

      Melissa Brereton answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I don’t think there is much difference between a vegetarians diet and a normal long as long as the vegetarian diet had a substitute for the protein that we require for a healthy diet. Vegetarian foods rich in protein are beans, pulses, lentils, and tofu. If all you eat is meat (such as the Atkins diet), this can have bad side effects such as bad breath, constipation and headaches which can all affect your mental and physical performance. This is why it is best for us all to eat a varied healthy diet which contains all the correct macro- and micro-nutrients such as protein, carbohydrates, salt, calcium, fibre

    • Photo: Phil Rice

      Phil Rice answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      This is a very contentious area, but I am afraid that the answer is to have a varied diet with lots of fruit, veg, whole grains, nuts, pulses and some meat/fish. Sounds boring, but it’s true. Veggies and Carnies perform equally well physically and mentally in my opinion.

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