Vegetarian Diet, Healthier and Less Negative Emotion

It has been well documented that people who choose a vegetarian diet enjoy superior health with lower risks for a variety of disorders, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Now, science has presented us with yet another reason to choose the healthful vegetarian lifestyle.

A new study published in Journal Nutrition has linked the vegetarian lifestyle with healthier mood states. It turns out that vegetarians are not only a lot healthier than the rest of the population, apparently, they are a lot happier, too. How does this finding challenge current recommendations?

According to the researchers at Arizona State University, the vegetarians in their study experienced significantly less negative emotion than the omnivores. This is good news for everyone, because consuming fish is often the subject of government health advisories.

The oceans are increasingly polluted and contain unacceptable levels of contaminants, such as dioxin and PCPs, and a recent government study revealed widespread mercury contamination of fish in streams across the U.S. Consuming farmed fish can also be problematic, as raising fish in this way relies on a processed diet and requires the use of antibiotics and other elements to prevent the spread of disease.

Nuts, seeds, and polyunsaturated vegetable oils are rich sources of fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids and in fact, the omega fats in plant foods may be even more important to your health than that found in fish.