Assessment of vegetarian nutritional knowledge and development of nutritional strategies

Abstract

In recent years, a significant increase in vegetarians in Brazil and around the world has been observed, and these are influenced by various reasons, leading to a gradual or direct exclusion of animal foods. Thus, this research project aims to evaluate the general nutritional knowledge of vegetarians about their diet in order to identify where there is a greater need for information on the subject. Since the vegetarian diet is more restrictive and the exclusion of foods such as meat, eggs, milk and dairy products can bring significant deficiencies to the body when performed abruptly and without the appropriate adaptations and adjustments in the diet. This is an exploratory and descriptive, qualiquantitative research on the vegetarian diet through an online questionnaire using the sampling technique of non-probabilistic sampling, called “snowball”. 66% of the population is classified as eutrophic, 74% practice physical exercise, 76% perform some routine biochemical examination, 68% do some type of supplementation, with the highest percentage being 68.57% of vitamin B12. The feeding of the group was well diversified, with high consumption of 80% of soybean, 90% of dark green vegetables and fruits, 86% of beans, and 88% of rice. Although individuals demonstrate excellent knowledge about the benefits and risks that the vegetarian diet can cause, it was identified that there is a need to develop and apply food and nutritional education strategies to help and guide this group to plan their meals properly.