Living with Karen, my vegetarian wife, I have learned a lot!
The first is probably that to be a committed vegetarian and get ones required daily nutritional intake is hard work.
So, is being vegetarian necesarily healthy? Quite possibly not.
If one simply drops meat out of one's diet, one is likely not to feel full or satisfied.
Consequently, the new vegetarian might be tempted to fill up on pastas, breads, cakes and sweets etc, which are full of highly refined carbohydrates and sugar.
Neither of which are 'real food', and can, in fact be bad for you!
Have a read of this article on Dr Andrew Weil's website - The Surprising Reason People Get Fat.
Another thing I have learned about, (and still lots to learn) is eating healthily.
Which brings me to the main point of this post -
White flour and how to avoid it.
The white/cheese sauce in the vegetarian lasagne recipe I gave you last time uses flour, and most people automatically use white flour.
Better to use a whole-grain flour, or as we do now, use oats, and grind it into flour ouselves.
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| Making rolled oat flour |
The picture shows 50 grms oats, a coffee grinder, and the final gound flour. Took about 1 minute to do!
Not only is this a much healthier option, the oats give a wonderful nutty flavour to the white sauce.
And while on the subject, the little coffee grinder has turned out to be a gem in the kitchen.
In addition to its original purpose, we use it for making the oat flour, grinding up nuts and seeds, as well
as spices. I make up my own garam masala for curries and spicy dishes.
So an aswer to the question: Vegetarians outlive meat-eaters and tend to have fewer health problems.
This is probably due, not only to the higher vegetable content of their diet, but because they also consciously make healthy choices.
For more low carb and meat free recipes go to the recipes home page - here.Labels: healthy, living with a vegetarian, oat flour
