Lacto-ovo Vegetarian Diet: A Comprehensive Nutrition Assignment

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of the lacto-ovo vegetarian diet, a plant-based diet that includes dairy products and eggs but excludes meat, poultry, and fish. It explores the origins of the diet, its prevalence in various cultures, and its ethical and environmental motivations. The essay details the food sources within this diet, including grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts, lentils, and fruits, and highlights the numerous health benefits, such as lower obesity rates, blood pressure management, and reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. It also discusses how the diet can be adapted for different age groups and body types. The essay acknowledges potential downsides, such as the need for careful attention to food proportions and timing, and the perception that it may be more challenging to obtain balanced nutrition compared to non-vegetarian diets.

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Nutrition
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Nutrition 1
Lacto-ovo Vegetarian Food
Lacto-ovo vegetarian diet is a primarily a plant based vegetarian diet that does not
include any non-vegetarian product like fish, poultry and meat; however, this diet surely
includes dairy products and eggs. The word lacto in this elaborates intake of dairy products
while ovo refers to eggs. Therefore, lacto ovo food products involves the products that can be
consumed during lacto ovo vegetarian diet. It should be noted that people adopt this type of
diet in the environment because it reduces the intake of animal products for ethical, health
and environment reasons as well. Many people in the society believes that it is not ethical to
kill an innocent animal for personal consumption (Rzymski, & Ganz, 2018).
Therefore, it eliminates the use of non-vegetarian products. This type of diet and food
products were originated in the society through the western world. It is also highly prevalent
in Europe and metropolitan cities in North America. This diet is related to the culture of
Jainism that prohibits people from causing harm to any living being or potential life.
Traditionally this diet includes eggs, some animals and few vegetables as well but jains are
only lacto vegetarian and not ovo lacto vegetarian. Furthermore, lacto ovo vegetarian diet
involves grains, vegetables, legumes, nuts, lentils and fruits. This type of diet involves several
health benefits in the environment as it lowers obesity, manages blood pressure and settles
heart diseases as well. Along with this, this diet and food consumption helps in removing the
problem of diabetes and certain types of cancer as well (Dinu, et. al., 2019).
The vegetarian food sources involves protein, zinc, iron and omega 3 fat. For different
body type, this diet is managed differently, for instance, a person with age group of years
need more calcium, B12 and vitamin D so their diet should components that are rich in these
segment. This diet provides wide variety of vegetarian products like soy products, kiwi,
melon, tofu, broccoli etc. Considering the benefits of this type of diet, it should be noted that

Nutrition 2
it helps in preventing type diabetes by increasing the blood sugar level and improving the
sensitivity to insulin as well (Huang, Huang, Hu, Chavarro, 2016).
Fibre sources are optimally provided through the diet due to which it manages the
bowel and eliminate the stomach problem as well. This type of products also helps in weight
loss as well; this diet keeps the stomach full of the person due to which they do not perform
binge eating. This diet prevents and reverse the obesity and diseases related to obesity and
body mass index is managed according to body type through this diet. Lastly, it should be
noted that there are downsides of using this diet, as it requires extra attention of food, its
timing and proportion as well. It is also believed by few people that by taking non-vegetarian
diet, one easily gets the right proportion through meat and other products. Also, in that diet,
regularly eating and managing proportion is not highly needed (Crawford, 2018).

Nutrition 3
References
Crawford, M. H. (2018). Vegetarian diet vs. Mediterranean diet to reduce cardiovascular
risk. Clinical Cardiology Alert, 37(6).
Dinu, M., Pagliai, G., Cesari, F., Giusti, B., Gori, A. M., Marcucci, R., ... & Sofi, F. (2019).
Effects of a 3-month dietary intervention with a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet on vitamin
B 12 levels in a group of omnivores: results from the CARDIVEG (Cardiovascular
Prevention with Vegetarian Diet) study. British Journal of Nutrition, 121(7), 756-762.
Huang, R. Y., Huang, C. C., Hu, F. B., & Chavarro, J. E. (2016). Vegetarian diets and weight
reduction: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of general internal
medicine, 31(1), 109-116.
Rzymski, P., & Ganz, T. (2018). Comment on “Serum Hepcidin and Soluble Transferrin
Receptor in the Assessment of Iron Metabolism in Children on a Vegetarian
Diet”. Biological trace element research, 185(1), 252-254.