Vegetables are necessary staples of most diets.
Dietary changes are considered a natural way to cure many physical ailments as opposed to taking pharmaceutical drugs or opting for surgery. The first reason to come to mind for making dietary changes is to effect weight loss in the obese. Researchers have found, however, that food intake can cure and change the long term effects of other health conditions as well.
Obesity
Many diets have been prescribed by dietitians and nutritionists for weight loss. These include caloric restraint, low fat diets, low carbohydrate -- high protein diets and food changes that target specific body parts. The 100-calorie diet consists of 100-calorie food portions for easy calorie counting. The New Abs diet helps people lose stomach fat by eating only 12 kinds of food. Japanese doctors have recommended breakfast meals of bananas and room temperature water for rapid weight loss. The popular Atkins diet restricts the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar-loaded beverages and promotes eating protein-laden foods like meat and eggs to counteract obesity.
Depression
In October 2009, Dr. Almudena Sanchez-Villegas and her colleagues reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry that a longitudinal study conducted revealed that the diet of most of southern Europe prevented the onset of depression. These results have been accepted by many mental health care providers who are recommending Mediterranean dietary changes without the use of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and other anti-depressive medications. Specific foods and food by-products that lower the risk of depression are olive oil, beans, nuts, fruit, lean meat, cereal, fish, vegetables, hummus and whole wheat pasta.
Seasonal Allergies
Dr. Neal Barnard is a self-proclaimed seasonal allergy sufferer. He promotes and follows a vegetarian diet to lower the incidence of allergic reactions as opposed to taking pharmaceutical anti-histamines. Dr. Barnard further recommends that taking butterbur herbal supplements and eating vitamin E laden foods like apples, leafy, green vegetables, beans, wheat germ, celery and nuts also help to prevent seasonal allergies. Parents can prevent the onset of seasonal allergies in new babies by waiting until the child is 2 years old before incorporating cow's milk, fish, nuts and eggs in the diet.
Infertility
Researchers from the Jewish Medical Center of New York found that multiple birth rates among vegan women from 1980 to 2003 were one-fifth of that among meat eating women. Researchers surmised that eating animal products such as milk, cheese and eggs raised the female body's natural production of insulin-growth factor. In turn, allowed the ovaries of animal by-product consumers to release more eggs, increasing fertility.
