Lacto-Vegetarian Diet: What Is It And How Can It Benefit Your Health?

Food is essential for our living, in India, most of the people are vegetarians. Therefore, choosing the right diet plan can be tough, not because there are less options, but gives you the right nutrition. In early days, most of the vegetarians usually had normal food with variety of spices and at least one glass of milk per day. This flexible diet is very hard to have in some special diets such as keto and intermittent, etc. Lacto-vegetarian diet is actually very similar to the normal food which was given to us in earlier days, not to mention which had highly balanced nutrients. Lacto-vegetarian diet can actually be easy to follow and can give you a number of health benefits.  

What is Lacto-Vegetarian Diet? 

Lacto-vegetarian diet is a flexible diet option that can give you many health benefits. We spoke to Ms. Shilpa Singh, Clinical Nutritionist from Fatima Hospital, Lucknow to know about this diet plan. She said it is a very natural diet just keeping in mind that you do not take any excess calories in form of carbohydrates and fats. However, you can consider this is natural routine, not exactly in case of high intensity workout or muscle building practices. Lacto-vegetarian diet consists of dairy products such as yogurt, cheese and milk. People usually adopt lacto-vegetarian diet because of religious or ethical reasons in India.  

Benefits of Lacto-Vegetarian Diet 

1. Improves Heart Health 

There have been multiple studies that have found that lacto-vegetarian diet can help to improve the heart health of the person and can also reduce the risk factors that could lead to it. There have been reviews about vegetarian diets that could be linked to lower the level of total cholesterol level or bad cholesterol. Both of them can literally contribute towards heart diseases and thus taking this diet can lower down the risk. 

2. Helps to maintain Blood sugar 

There have been many studies that have been linked to adoption of lacto-vegetarian diet with blood sugar control. According to those studies, there was a significant improvement in hemoglobin levels which marks the long-term blood sugar levels in people. It can especially aid people with type-2 diabetes. This includes study on 156,000 adults who followed lacto-vegetarian diet.  

Also Read- Cinnamon For Weight Loss: How Can It Help?

3. Supports weight loss 

Not just your heart but it can also reduce your waistline. Obesity is one of the biggest factors of health diseases. Those who have a lower body mass index have easy and beneficial ways compared to those who eat meat. BMI is very important to sustain longer health. Vegetarians have tendency to consume lesser calories than other people. Lacto-vegetarian diet can also aid lean body structure.  

4. Reduces risk of falling for certain Cancers 

Lacto-vegetarian diet can actually be associated with reduced risk of several cancer. This could even be linked to lower risk of development of overall cancer. There is no significant nutrient that could be pointed out, but this whole diet focuses of balance of nutrients in the body, which help to improve overall health and immunity. Lacto-vegetarian diet could be reduced risk of colorectal cancer and breast cancer.  

Also Read- Plant-Based Diet Or Vegan Diet: Which One Should You Choose?

Potential Cons of Lacto-Vegetarian Diet 

Even though it provides the body with all the necessary ingredients that are needed, lacto-vegetarian diet could potentially not be able to save the day for you regularly. This is because lacto-vegetarian diet has a huge variety but still lacks in some of the important nutrients. This includes the following- 

• Omega-3 fatty acids 
• Iron 
• Zinc  
• Vitamin B12 
• Proteins 

This increases the person to be at the risk of nutritional deficiencies. You need to be careful about anemia, impaired immune function and mood changes while following lacto-vegetarian diet.

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