Customer Reviews

Becoming Vegetarian: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Vegetarian Diet

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a fabulous resource, not just for vegetarians, but for anyone who wants a straightforward approach to nutrition. After reading this book, I understand much more fully the role that iron, protein, calcium, fiber, vitamins, etc. play in my diet and my health. I found the nutritional breakdowns of different diets (omnivore, ovolacto vegetarian and vegan) to be especially helpful. For those who ARE considering vegetarianism, there is a wonderful glossary of terms and a helpful section on vegetarian menu planning. There is also a chapter on how to gracefully deal with the potentially sticky social situations vegetarians sometimes face and a section of basic vegetarian recipes to get you started. Overall, I found this book to be incredibly informative, without being intimidating. As a beginning cook who wants to avoid meat, I know I'll go back to this guide again and again.

This is an excellent book. I decided to become vegetarian a few years ago both for health and ethical reasons and this one one of the first books I bought - its remained the one I turn to over and over again - especially when friends or relatives questions how healthy a vegetarian diet is and I need to educate them. Some of the most fascinating parts of this book talk about the history of the current meat-based diet and how the government pushed it and helped market meats of all sorts to get people to buy more (to help farmers out). Also though there is great info on how much protien a person actually needs and where you can get it from - its actually pretty easy to get all the protien you need over the course of a day. Since becoming vegetarian (really almost vegan except for the eggs I get from a lady down the street who really takes wonderful care of her chickens) I've never felt better. My husband has even voluntarily made the switch as well (spurred on by a few episodes of food poisoning at the local sandwich shop). Vegetarian is the way to go and this book will give you ALL the info you need to get rolling and keep others quiet when they criticize. Bon sante and Bon appetit!

I thought this book was very thorough, yet easy to follow. Every recipe I've made has been very delicious. I was a vegetarian for 6 years before I became pregnant and began to eat meat for fear I wouldn't get enough protein my babe needed. I wish I had this book then, as the authors lay out precisely what you need for nourishment. My son and I now have a great reference so we can be healthy lacto-ovo vegetarians, and possibly convert my husband as well!

Easy to read and a good book to use as a jump-off point for more specific readings catering to your individual vegetarian interests.

I have ample reason to be concerned about my health largely because of four ex-wives and the crazyness currently going on in my house between my bulldog (Colonel) and my current wife's annoying tabby (Bobo!). It doesn't help that I'm a beerswilling carnivore and largely a lazy couchloaf. Also complicating matters is the undeniable fact that my brooding spouse is a horrible cook and routinely serves beef-oriented t.v. dinners or worse (greaseburgers from the local fast food joint).

That's where this handy tome comes in. One of the girls from the bar I've been seeing on the sly has been trying to get me to start incorporating more vegetables in our relationship (in addition to the meat) and suggested several books (not this one) to help me get started. While those books had some value, this book really told me what I needed to know about the nutritional values of various vegetarian diets and how to make up for the nutirtion I would be losing by giving up meat.

It's very informative, well-written, easy to understand, but somewhat short on recipes. As I've mentioned, Bessie isn't a very good cook--even when she has cook-by-numbers recipes (which basically means, even if this book had recipes it wouldn't be of much value to her) and that's too bad. Nevertheless, this is a very informative book and has surprisingly convinced me that it is possible to maintain nutrition while maintaining an all-vegie diet. Unfortunately, the recipes in this book (and those I found in several others) have failed to convince me that any of these vegie diets taste any better than the leaves and grass in my backyard.

As a result, I've scrapped the vegetarian route, started cooking for myself, stopped worrying about my health, and I'm staying away from the girls at the bar.

This book is an excellent resource for beginning vegetarians who are dealing with a lot of new questions -- will this diet be adequate for me nutritionally? do I need to take supplements? what will I tell mom (hee hee)? This book tries to answer all the big questions, and does so quite admirably. It does have a few recipes at the back, which are not bad, but certainly, this is not a cookbook per se. For those looking for a ton of recipes instead of advice, I'd be more likely to recommend The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook (by Diana Shaw), a wonderful book full of tips, tricks, ingredients, glossaries, and 600 low fat recipes, many of which are adaptations of old favourites. Getting both these books would be an excellent beginning to any new vegetarian's bookshelf.

Ol' Dipper has been trying to lose weight for years now. I recently was at the local supermarket and ran into Shirley, my ex-girlfriend, while looking for a bulk pack of good beef jerky for the start of baseball season. She was busy walking the aisles with the book "Becoming Vegetarian : The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Vegetarian Diet" in hand looking for healthy flora while I looked for fine, fine processed fauna. As kismet would have it, we were forced to meet again at the only open cashier. Somehow, she talked me into considering the Vegan path and even gave me her copy of this book after referencing the "wonderful effect it has had on her self-esteem" several annoying times. I thumbed through it quite a bit thinking this might have some chance of working for me due to it's decent writing and thought out ideas along with oodles of curious recipes. What left me less than convinced was a lack of solid reason why I would really be better off eating half of Kermit the Frog and George of the Jungle's green habitat. My prostate's fine, my cholesterol is 197, my one great downfall is that I'm tubby! I couldn't get past the nagging thought that I was just being a trendy follower choosing the rooted route. I figured I'd give it a try though and piled into the Kia for an inaugural supermarket visit with an animal friendly to-buy list from this 262 page book. Seems that Vegan wasn't in the cards for me. On the way there I wrecked the Korean econo-box while totalling a burly buck trying to sneak across my path! Saved by the airbag and my bounding belly, I pondered the meaning of this while looking over the pile of fresh, tasty venison in front of me. Fate again brought my old hunting buddy Officer Freely to the scene and an idea was hatched. Tommy Boy laughed when hearing of my near-Vegan ways and mentioned his dotty wife's dabbling with the very same book. She dumped it when Oprah cranked it up to a Size 14 once again! Tommy and I have since rediscovered the joys of making like Elmer Fudd again in the forests and "walking" ourselves to a better physical state and caldrons full of yummy, yummy protein rich venison stew! This book is now plugging up a drafty hole in our hunting shack!!!

I thought that this book was excellent. I fully made the change with very few problems. I did still have an issue with low iron, but I believe that is one of the most common problems. This book was very thorough. From what foods are really good, to how much, and even how to prepare. First thought was that they seem to give very limited food ideas, but once you realize that they are creating a foundation, the world opens up and grows. Very good info on the protein myths, etc. Only thing that I found very humorous was the social situations. Yes, skip that part, if you are like me, but otherwise, they are pretty funny.
Definitely the best going Vege book there is..........

First of all, I would like to thank the previous reviewer for a very thoughtful and complete review.

I bought this book when my 13-year-old son asked me about going vegetarian. While I am a closet vegetarian, I would not have had a clue on what healthy, growing youth might require. What I found was a book that included sections, not just for vegetarian/vegan adolescents but also sections for: Infancy to two years: Children 2-10 years-old; as well as Adolescents Ages 11-17. This also includes appropriate warnings of what not to do for each age group.

While #1-Son had not switched to a fully vegetarian life-style, we as a family have incorporated a much more healthy diet, due in great part to the information in this book.

The cover says, " The complete guide to adopting a healthy vegetarian diet." I would add, " for the entire family".

This book is an excellent choice to read if you're even the least bit interested in eating properly for good health! It explains everything you need to know about being a vegetarian. I really like how it goes into great detail in each chapter about the foods our body needs and how to replace protein and dairy when restricing meats and dairy and eggs from your diet. The recipes are great! Even my meat-eating husband has liked some. The information on feeding vegetarian and vegan children is very helpful. This book would be great even if a person was still a non-vegetarian in that it explains so much about what our bodies need daily to be healthy. Recommend to everyone!!!!!