How Not to Be an Unhealthy Vegetarian

Do you eat a vegetarian diet and can’t seem to lose weight, or you gain weight and feel terrible? You might think you are eating a healthy vegetarian diet, but you could actually be eating a diet of junk food and not realize it. Eliminating animal products in your diet does not automatically mean you're eating healthy. Doctors report that many of their patients are in fact vegetarians. Find out how not to be an unhealthy vegetarian.

 

Studies continue to find that a strict vegetarian, vegan, or whole food plant-based diet is one of the healthiest ways to eat, but only if you avoid certain unhealthy vegetarian junk foods. 

There are people that claim eating a vegetarian diet made them sick, gain weight or feel lousy. Many times, it comes out later that they weren’t always eating a strict vegetarian diet, or more likely, they were eating a diet full of unhealthy vegetarian junk foods.

There are numerous reasons a vegetarian diet can be an unhealthy diet. Even though a person doesn’t eat any animal or dairy foods, they can still gain weight, lack energy and feel bad.

How Not to Be an Unhealthy Vegetarian

A plant-based vegetarian diet is becoming very popular. Restaurants are now offering plant-based foods, grocery stores have aisles dedicated to plant-based foods and even fast food restaurants are selling plant-based burgers.

I have a feeling that sooner or later, it will fade away from popularity, with people stating that they gained weight or they felt worse eating these plant-based vegetarian alternative foods.

The following will describe how certain unhealthy vegetarian foods can cause health issues and how you can avoid this while eating a plant-based vegetarian diet like the McDougall Diet. 

 

High Fat and High Carbs Do Not Mix

I cannot stress this enough, fats and carbs do not mix in a healthy vegetarian diet. The standard American diet (SAD) is what most people eat, and it is full of refined carbs, vegetable oil and fat.

 

This way of eating combines a lot of oil, saturated fat and refined carbs all in the same diet. And that is a main reason that obesity is still on the increase.

A vegetarian plant-based diet is normally a low fat/high carb diet, with fat kept to about 10% of calories. If you stray too far from this, weight gain and possibly worse is the result.

It is not the complex carbohydrates that cause weight gain, it is the fat. A baked potato cannot make you fat. For vegetarians, it is the fake butter with oils on the potato that causes weight gain. 

 

Many vegetarians believe that fake butters, like Earth Balance for example, are a healthy alternative, but they are not as they contain a lot of fattening oil.

All oil is pure fat, and some type of oil is in almost every single packaged food, fast food, and restaurant food. Oil has more than twice the calories per gram than either protein or carbs. 

 

Fat and oil have 9 calories per gram while protein and carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram. And those extra calories add up.

Unhealthy Vegetarian Fake Meats

Most unhealthy vegetarian fake meats are plant-based, but they are not all healthy and should only be eaten once in a while, if ever. They are becoming a popular alternative to real beef, especially the Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat.

You might wonder why fake meats would cause you to become an unhealthy vegetarian, and the answer is because they contain too much oil, fat and sodium. The Impossible Burger ingredients include genetically engineered heme iron molecules [1], along with coconut oil, and sunflower oil.

A few nutritional facts of the Impossible Burger include:

• Calories: 240
• Total fat: 14 grams
• Saturated fat: 8 grams
• Sodium: 370 mg
• Dietary fiber: 3 grams

That is more saturated fat and sodium than a grass-fed beef patty has. It you were to eat too many of these fake burgers, you would gain weight, your blood pressure could be affected and you could be on your way to becoming an unhealthy vegetarian.

The impossible burger is just one example of fake meats and sausages that contain a lot of oil, fat and sodium. 

In addition, many of these fake burgers are made from soy that could have been sprayed with glyphosate or Roundup, which are known obesogens that can disrupt our hormones and cause weight gain.

There are vegetarian burgers that are good and healthy, like Sunshine burgers, or you can make your own without oil or soy.

Processed Unhealthy Vegetarian Foods

Similar to the fake meats, there are all kinds of overly processed unhealthy vegetarian foods with too many chemicals and oils. A few examples of processed and unhealthy vegetarian foods would be potato chips, French fries, Doritos, veggie hot dogs, and a thousand other vegan junk foods.

You always have to read ingredients, even on products you think are healthy, because companies have been known to change ingredients. When I first started eating a vegetarian diet in 1990, foods like MorningStar and Boca Burgers were fine. Today, they contain oils, milk protein, and cheese.

Some of the ingredients you should avoid in unhealthy vegetarian processed foods include:

• Oils that are listed under different names like soy lecithin or vitamin A palmitate.
• MSG like autolyzed yeast, glutamic acid, yeast extract, and many others.
• Milk or milk byproducts like casein, caseinates, whey, and ghee.
• Artificial and natural flavors are always a mystery on food labels. Artificial flavors can be made from almost anything and should be avoided.
• High fructose corn syrup is in many unhealthy vegetarian foods and beverages. It is also one of the main causes of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and weight gain.

Refined Carbs and Nutrient Deficiency 

Sure, donuts, cakes, white bread, white rice, and white flour products are all vegetarian, but they are void of nutrients. The vitamins, minerals, and nutrients have been stripped out of these foods. These foods are then fortified with inferior synthetic vitamins that are sprayed on.

This is why eating a well rounded vegetarian diet is important. Brown rice and whole grain bread and pastas should be used instead of white refined carbs. When baking, use whole grain flour when possible.

In order to not become vitamin and nutrient deficient, you must eat a healthy, well-rounded plant-based diet incorporating whole grains, beans, lentils, tubers, vegetables, and fruit.

Going Crazy with Nuts and Nut Butters

Nuts are one of those foods you can hardly eat just a few, and while they do have nutrients, they are also high in fat. Coconuts are another food that should be limited because they are so high in fat. Coconuts are 90% saturated fat, and that does not mix well with so many carbs in a healthy vegetarian diet.

Nut butters are even worse because they are so good and they are included in many plant-based vegetarian recipes. There is almond butter for pumpkin pie recipes, cashew sauce recipes and the list goes on. These are great for special occasions, but if eaten too often, you will gain weight and could turn into an overweight unhealthy vegetarian.

Supplements on a Vegetarian Diet

Vegetarians should take a vitamin B12 supplement, otherwise, a well rounded plant-based vegetarian diet contains all of the vitamins and nutrients we need, though some might take an algae based omega-3 supplement or a vitamin D3 during the winter.

If you eat too many processed unhealthy vegetarian junk foods, you can find yourself with a deficiency of certain vitamins or minerals. For more information about getting enough nutrients, please read Plant-Based Diet: How To Get Essential Vitamins and Nutrients.

Conclusion

Eating a healthy plant-based vegetarian diet is a great way to eat for your health, help the planet, and is certainly friendly to the animals. But you must learn to say no to these unhealthy foods and oils mentioned in this article, or you could end up becoming an unhealthy vegetarian.


About the Author

Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

© 2019-2022 Sam Montana/Healthy Food and Life

Resources

[1] Impossible Burger genetically engineered heme iron