Vegetarian Diets are Not All Created Equal: An Example
From Dr. Fuhrman's book Eat to Live:
A patient came in for his yearly checkup. He was not overweight and had been following a vegetarian diet for years. I did a dietary review of what he ate regulary. He was eating "healthy" flaxseed waffles for breakfast, lots of pasta, whole-wheat bread, and vegan (no animal products) prepared frozen meals on a regular basis.
I spent about thirty minutes pointing out that he was certainly not following my dietary recommendations for excellent health and presented him with some menu suggestions and an outline of my nutritional prescription for superior health, which he agreed to follow.
Twelve weeks later, he had lost about eight pounds and I rechecked his lipid profile, because I didn't like the results we received from the blood test taken the day of his checkup.
The results speak for themselves:
2/1/2001Cholesterol 230
Triglycerides 226
HDL 55
LDL 130
Cholesterol/HDL Ratio 4.185/2/2001
Cholesterol 174
Triglycerides 57
HDL 78
LDL 84
Cholesterol/HDL Ratio 2.23
