The flexitarian diet is increasingly popular, but not everyone is familiar with this diet which has positive effects on the environment and personal health.
Hearing about the flexitarian diet today is almost a custom, but often pausing to reflect on it is not so much. This alternative style of nutrition aims to combine nutritional needs, health benefits, and respect for the environment. The cornerstones are not, then, rigid rules and categorical imperatives but principles and flexibility that, perhaps, may not even scare carnivores.
The Flexitarian Diet
The expression flexitarian diet is already in itself a declaration of intent. The word brings together the terms “flexible” and “vegetarian”. This alternative diet provides for the massive consumption of plant products but does not contemplate the total exclusion of meat or products of animal origin.
They remain the basis of 20% of the diet, in a conception in which organic and 0 km become key concepts of purchases. The American nutritionist Dawn Jackson Blatner, who aimed to develop a diet that promoted well-being, presented this new concept of nutrition in 2008. physical and mental of the individual.
What Are We Eating?
Following the flexitarian diet means adhering to a philosophy. Seasonal fruits and vegetables form the basis of every meal, along with whole grains, legumes, and other alternative proteins. The basic formula provides for the intake of 1500 kcal per day to be divided into five meals. Five hundred will go, thus introduced for dinner, 400 for lunch, 300 for breakfast, and 150 in each of the two snacks.
Alternative formulas include the elimination of breaks or the addition of 200 kcal to breakfast. The meat is then gradually limited. In the initial phase, it can be consumed five times a week for a maximum of 700 g. Subsequently, the dose is brought to 500 g to 3 days of “abstinence”; in the end, the quantity reaches 250 g with five vegetarian days out of 7. No reductions are foreseen for fish.
Big Benefits
Choosing the flexitarian diet means promoting your well-being and that of the planet. A predominantly vegetarian diet limits the consumption of saturated fats and introduces vitamins, minerals, and other valuable nutrients into our bodies. Our food system is responsible for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, 60% of which are attributable to the livestock sector.
Limiting our environmental impact by making informed food choices becomes a priority. Several studies have then shown that thanks to the increased attention to the required lifestyle, following the flexitarian diet often means losing a few pounds, which is an additional stimulus.
The flexitarian diet is now imposing itself with arrogance on the world food scene. Famous people like Gwyneth Paltrow have helped to make it popular, but now many are approaching it, appreciating its principles and beneficial effects. Even if some small sacrifices are required, remember that the only element to be abolished from our vocabulary is “excess”, which can only console.
