Vegetarian Lunch

Delicious vegetarian lunch ideas

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The three-meals-a-day standard has been around since...well, I'm not sure...but a long time that's certain. Remember your mother or grandmother telling you that it was important to eat three meals a day? I do. But, more than likely they didn't tell you to eat three meatless meals a day. Or, at least to many of their generation a "healthy" meal meant one that made you feel full and included some type of meat, a few veggies, a glass of milk and maybe a slice of bread or two. If it was the evening meal or especially a Sunday dinner then dessert was also a must!

That was then - this is now. In an age of ever-increasing numbers of people choosing vegetarian and vegan lifestyles ...in an age of advanced medical research, science and technology...our defintion of "healthy" has changed. It may very well change many more times before all is said and done. After all, remember when it was strictly taboo to eat eggs(if you do)? The cholesterol bogey-man was simply waiting at your arterial front door, ready to pounce! Then suddenly things changed. Suddenly it was ok to eat eggs again and in fact they might even have some minimal benefit. Certainly they weren't the harbingers of death and destruction that we had been led to believe! I have to wonder how that little "oops" affected the egg industry. Then again, perhaps it was the egg industry that funded the study that brought the prodigal egg back into the fold. One thing I have learned is that you really do need to discern who is fronting the research money for many of these studies that seem to be, in many ways, contrarian in nature. More on that later.

But for now, let me say that most of us are still on a three (sometimes only two) meal a day meal plan. And let's assume that as vegetarians or vegans or even health minded individuals in general, we are eating healthy meals for the most part. Is that a good thing? Well, yes and no. It's obviously good that we are attempting to eat "healthy" meals. However, there are some studies that indicate that perhaps it is much better to eat 4 to 6 smaller meals throughout the day. The premise is that as your body consumes calories to go about its task of "living", having too much time between eating, that is refueling, causes your body to store calories as fat in order to avoid "starving"...you literally go into "starvation mode". Then, when you eat again your "full factor" is turned way up and you typically end up eating more than you really need to eat to feel satisfied. Long stretches between meals also causes bigger spikes and dips in blood sugar levels. It's a vicious circle.

The bottom line with the 4-to-6 meal theory is that it could help you lose weight or at least maintain a healthy weight if you're already there. It is supposed to also give you more stamina and energy throughout the day as it balances the sugar levels more readily. I'd like to ask readers to take me up on a challenge. If you aren't already an advocate of the 4-to-6, as we'll call it...try it for a month. I'm not doing it yet but I would really like to try it. I guess the challenge is this - try it for a month. Stick to it as well as you possibly can. And then let readers know if you've lost any weight, felt better, had more energy or whatever. Now don't forget, that means eating healthy meals 4 to 6 times a day. They shouldn't be big meals obviously, but enough to allow you to feel satisfied and they do need to be low in fats and simple sugars. Then we can also find out what specific foods worked best.

In the meantime, we do have some terrific lunch ideas in the vegetarian lunch recipe section.

Click here to check them out!

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