Making a decision as important as changing your lifestyle or diet is not within everyone’s reach. There are many issues that concern those who decide to take the step, whether they are omnivorous, vegetarian or vegan; but mainly, they are the consequences that said change will have for your health.
This is precisely why many decide to readjust their diet over time. That has been the case of the British actor Martin Freeman, star of hits such as Sherlock or The Hobbit, who after almost four decades living as a vegetarian, decided to incorporate meat into his diet again.
The actor, 52, tells how he made the decision to be a vegetarian when he was just a teenager in 1986, because he was never comfortable with eating animals. However, 38 years later, he decided to eat meat again because the strictly vegetarian foods found in any supermarket can be “very, very processed.”
This was revealed on the Dish podcast, by British communicator Nick Grimshaw and chef Angela Hartnett, where he sat down to share a lunch. On the menu, they had bolognese, and Freeman confessed that it was the first “proper” bolognese she had ever had in her life.
The actor thus confirmed his return to an omnivorous diet, something “new” in the last two months – and being a vegetarian is apparently marked in the genes, according to some studies. The podcast host, Nick Grimshaw, also commented that he flirted with changing his lifestyle and diet for a healthier one, but found himself unable to do so.
It is not the first, since it seems that more and more vegetarians and vegans are abandoning or modifying their diets precisely for this very reason: the increasingly processed foods that are available.
There are a thousand and one guides for healthy eating, but they all agree on what the maxim should be: the base should be made up of vegetables and fruits, followed by whole grains and healthy proteins. This is something that vegetarian and vegan diets follow, in addition to being healthy and recommended.
However, there is a negative point: in vegetarian and vegan diets, just as in omnivorous diets, there are also ultra-processed foods – with salt, preservatives, additives, flavorings and colorings – which are very harmful to health.
As Freeman points out, the supply of ultra-processed vegan products is increasingly similar to the rest, so their consumption should be limited as much as possible. Perhaps for this reason, the actor would have preferred to include animal products in his diet, a “healthier” alternative to the options available on the market.
