Vegetarian diet increases vitamin intake

Teenagers who opt for a vegetarian diet are more likely to get the recommended doses of vitamins and minerals than their counterparts who stick to the traditional teenage diet of fatty junk food, according to recent research from the US.

A team from the University of Minnesota, led by epidemiologist Cheryl Perry, studied the eating habits of 4,500 teenagers from 31 different schools in Minnesota. Around 6 per cent of the students studied said they were vegetarian.

Perry's team evaluated the diets of the teenagers, whose average age was 15, and compared them to the dietary recommendations set out by the US Department of Health and Human Services in its Healthy People 2010 document. These recommendations include reducing intake of fat and saturated fat and increasing intake of fruit and vegetables.

The researchers discovered that teenage vegetarians were much more likely to meet these targets than those consuming a more traditional diet. "It seems that rather than viewing adolescent vegetarianism as a difficult phase or fad, the dietary pattern could be viewed as a healthy alternative to the traditional American meat-based diet,"​ Perry wrote in the journal Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine​.

"Vegetarian adolescents were more than twice as likely to eat less than 30 per cent of their calories from fat and nearly three times more likely to eat less than 10 per cent of their calories from saturated fat,"​ she added.

The team also found that teenage vegetarians were nearly twice as likely to eat five or more servings of fruit and vegetables every day. This in turn helped increase their intake of iron, vitamin A, folate and fibre compared to the non-vegetarian group. Neither group consumed enough calcium, however.

The vegetarians were also more likely to make a conscious effort to reduce their weight, drinking more caffeine and diet soft drinks, Perry's team said.