YOGA FOR BEGINNERSVegetarian
The vegetarian way of eating can be summed up into two
words: no animals. Vegetarians refrain from eating meat,
fish, and poultry. There are three types of vegetarians:
OVO: Refrains from consuming meat, fish, poultry, and
milk but will eat eggs.
LACTO: Refrains from eating meat, fish, poultry, and eggs
but will consume milk.
OVO-LACTO: Refrains from eating meat, fish, and poultry
but will consume eggs and milk.Beyond the aforementioned types of vegetarians, there
are some people who will identify as vegetarian but will be
semi-vegetarian—eating fish and poultry, but no red meat—
and others will take a pescatarian approach—eating fish.
People become vegetarians for many reasons. In the
yoga lifestyle, one of the main reasons is the principle of
ahimsa. These vegetarians refrain from eating meat because
they do not believe in killing animals for food. However, oth-
ers become vegetarian for health or ecological reasons, sheer
economics, or the fact that they simply dislike meat.
Oftentimes people become vegetarian for one reason
and adopt another reason later on down the line. While
there can be many benefits to eating a vegetarian or semi-
vegetarian diet, there are some downfalls as well. When
eating a vegetarian diet, you want to include whole, organic,
and minimally processed foods, and you want to go easy on
the highly processed foods.