Rodriguez said people choosing a vegetarian diet have to be extra diligent to supplement their diet with iron, zinc and calcium.

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This can be partly explained by the fact Adventists don't drink or smoke and many stick to a vegetarian diet the church advises.

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Ditching meat and fish in favour of a vegetarian diet can have a dramatic effect on the health of your heart, research suggests.

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Giancoli believes there's a nutritional downside to a vegetarian diet.

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Keep in mind, however, that in children it's sometimes hard to tell what's an eating disorder and what's simply a whim, a new fad, or experimentation with a vegetarian diet or other eating styles.

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These people almost universally went from a cooked food, meat-centered diet and gave up their meat, their dairy products and their refined sugar and switched to a raw food vegetarian diet, and by simply changing diets their bodies were able to cure their cancer.

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Researchers don't know why a plant-based diet seems to have a protective effect, but one likely reason is the nutrient profile of vegetarian diets, which tend to be higher in fiber and lower in saturated fat.

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Patients on this vegetarian diet for four weeks reduced their bad cholesterol levels just as much as a control group on Merck's Mevacor.

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