All in the vegetarian family: a number of diets start with vegetarianism and add their own twist. Let us introduce you to the relatives - Getting Started - includes list of resources

Vegetarian Times, June, 1997 by Barbara Haspel, Tamar Haspel

Unless you're reading Vegetarian Times because it's the only magazine in the dentist's waiting room, you're probably somewhat familiar with vegetarianism. You know, for example, that fish isn't part of most vegetarians' diets (harvest time in the salmon orchard?). You may even have a passing familiarity with other dietary regimes. When the guy who isn't scarfing up the snacks at the cocktail party tells you he's macrobiotic, you don't worry about whether it's contagious.

You're most likely aware of the concerns that motivate, to a greater or lesser degree, nearly all vegetarians: animal welfare, ecology and health. But like some vast extended family, vegetarianism has dietary aunts, uncles and cousins. These relatives have their own distinct, sometimes eccentric twist on a plant-based diet, but they're family nonetheless. Some of these relatives might strike you as the kind you prefer not to have at your wedding; others might become lifelong friends. Come, let's introduce you.

OVO-LACTO VEGETARIAN: Meet the Jones Family

Meet the Jones Family.

By far the majority of those who espouse a vegetarian diet simply eschew all forms of meat (including, of course, chicken and fish) and its byproducts, such as soups based on meat stocks. In other words, if something had to die to produce it, they don't eat it. They do, however, eat foods that are produced by living animals -- things such as eggs and dairy products. It's easy to eat a balanced, healthful diet if you're an ovo-lacto vegetarian. Of course, you've got to be moderate about whole eggs and full-fat dairy products, or you'll have a diet that's very high in saturated fat. And sometimes people who lead busy lives and don't cook much discover that the most readily available vegetarian food is blueberry muffins or chocolate-chip cookies. However, if you can remember that being a vegetarian ought to mean eating vegetables, you can thrive. So can your kids.

VEGAN: Not the Brother From Another Planet

Vegans aren't alien beings -- they're just stricter vegetarians. They consume no foods produced by any animal, living or dead. For many of them, this includes honey. Although some vegans avoid animal foods because they consider them unnatural and unhealthful, most select this option over ovo-lacto vegetarianism for ethical reasons. Nearly all vegans believe that our only humane relation to the animal world is to interfere with it as little as possible. Many are convinced that animals have inherent rights that we are ethically bound to respect and hence; some vegans extend their philosophy to incorporate clothing choices (no leather, wool or silk) as well as food. Vegans must plan more carefully than ovo-lacto types in order to achieve adequate nutrition, but a diet of vegetables including plenty of dried legumes, fruits and whole grains can keep people very healthy. Although some dietitians express concern about vitamin [B.sub.12], vitamin D, calcium and zinc in vegan diets, tests of vegan populations find few deficiencies in any of these areas. Still, if you're a vegan or thinking of becoming one, or -- especially -- if you are raising a vegan child, you might consider supplementation or the use of fortified foods such as cereals and enriched tofu.

MACROBIOTIC: Zen and the Art of Metabolism Maintenance

It's hard to pin down the macrobiotic diet, probably because of its roots in Zen Buddhism, a philosophy that's anything but proscriptive. "No, you can't eat that," is just not a Zen thing to say. Macrobiotics is based on a perceived need to keep the principles of yin and yang in balance in our bodies. Yin represents the force of expansion in the universe, yang that of contraction. Cooking "yangizes" yin vegetables with fire, pressure or salt to create the proper balance. The most advanced forms of the macrobiotic diet are heavily dependent on brown rice, the food that is said to balance yin and yang. Macrobiotics, as practiced by most of its adherents, provides a reasonable mix of whole grains and vegetables; sometimes even going beyond the plant kingdom to include small amounts of fish. The guidelines are flexible. An adult who eats a wide range of the permitted vegetables, sea vegetables and fish can be adequately nourished. This is a diet for adults only, unless you really stretch the flexible guidelines to include more legumes, more fruit and more fish for your kids.

RAW FOODS/FRUITARIAN/NATURAL HYGIENE:

The Raw Deal

Devotees of a raw foods diet save lots of money on cookware and electricity but make up the difference in the produce aisle. Rawists believe that cooking destroys many vitamins and minerals and, particularly, essential food enzymes. Human beings, like all other animals, evolved eating raw food, and rawists believe we are naturally dependent on these enzymes and that they have a significant role in disease prevention and its cure. Fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts are the mainstays of the raw foods diet.

Few people try to subsist entirely on raw foods and that's probably a good thing. Although raw foods are undeniably nutritious and we should all be eating more of them, it'd be hard to cram in adequate calories and nutrients on an entirely raw foods diet. If you want to consider yourself a full-fledged rawist, you'd have to consume about 75 percent (by weight) of your daily fare uncooked. That means that a person who consumes 1,800 calories in a day would have to eat about six pounds of raw food. You'd tend to zero in on fruit, just because it's easy to eat it in quantity and it's on the diet. Go to the market and get yourself a pound of raw spinach and you'll see what we mean. We like spinach, but a pound is a daunting amount. You'd end up avoiding a lot of the foods you need just because they take too long to eat. A modified rawist diet, say, a fifty-fifty split between raw and cooked, can be healthful for an adult, but it would be hard to get enough of the raw stuff into a kid to keep her running and growing.