Health
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The Three-day Lagos Vegetarian Festival has ended successfully with participants learning more about living a vegetarian lifestyle
| By Fidelia Salami | Nov. 3, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT |
HAKEEM Jimoh, a vegetarian and restaurateur, is a happy man. His happiness emanates from his successful hosting of the first ever three-day Lagos Vegetarian Festival, LVF, and the applause participants gave him for organising an excellent event.
The festival which is also the first of its kind in Nigeria started Friday, October 10, at Freedom Park, Lagos, and hosted some of Nigeria’s most innovative businesses in the health and wellness industry, fashion industry, beauty and spa, easy taxi, green and grill house, nuts and cakes who exhibited their products. The Other participants and organisations are International Art of Living Foundation of Nigeria, international guests; advocates, people interested in vegan and vegetarian lifestyle and business thought leaders in sustainable living. One of the highlights of the festival was a musical performance by Nneka Lucia Egbuna, a German Nigerian hip hop Soul singer, song writer and actress.
“The Lagos Vegetarian Festival is all about Healthy Living Expo in Nigeria. Nigeria has not seen an event like this before. This is the 1st edition of the Lagos Vegetarian Festival. It is all about sustainable green lifestyle. The idea is to promote the vegetarian healthy lifestyle. About thirty booths are available for exhibitors to showcase their products and services,” said Jimoh, who is also founder of Veggy Victory, Nigeria’s first and vegan and vegetarian restaurant, said.
Some guest speakers at the festival educated the populace about the promise of ecotourism in Nigeria amongst other things. One of the speeches was delivered Egypt Iredia, of Egypt Natural Wellness and Training Company, who has been a vegetarian for 18 years and lived the last eight years a vegan. A vegan is a vegetarian who abstains from dairy products and egg. She spoke on empowering body and spirit naturally. Her message was geared towards encouraging people to lead a natural lifestyle and also to empower people to be educated and informed to take responsibility of their own health.
Some of the participants and exhibitors were excited about the festival and the told Realnews that the event was successful. One of the participants, Christopher Bjergmose of Ody.ng from Denmark, who is a promoter of peoples’ businesses and has been in Nigeria for about four months, gave the event a pass mark. He said that a lot of Nigerians have been into sustainable development and that it was a healthy move so far.
Another participant, Chima Okon, a business woman, who had a glass of smoothie from Veggie Victory booth, said it tasted real good. “This smoothie is absolutely delicious. Although I call it vegetable drink because it is made of mostly vegetables like avocado, water melon, pineapple, banana, coconut and cucumber. In my case, I add a dash of cabbage, carrot and cucumber. You need to add these in your diet because they contain a lot of fibre that aids digestion,” she said.
Exhibitors did not regretted showcasing their goods at the event but said the festival promises more business in-flow for them as they have created more awareness for their businesses.
To become a vegetarian, it takes just having passion and determination to want to make your life better, to make a healthier options in your life, and with additional supports from the right people, the right information sources and educating yourself on how to make vegetarian burger and sausages if one really want to improve your health.
Some of the tips and tricks to becoming a vegetarian include cutting down on beef in-take gradually in your rice, People are advised to go meat free one day in a week. People should try the gentle approach to make lasting lifestyle choices. To be a vegan you have to depend on plant based vegetables, you get all your energy, your nutrition from plant sources. You don’t consume any animal product whatsoever, including dairy products and milk.
The largest nutrition study that has been done in modern history, which is called the China study based on research finding, revealed that vegetarians live longer with higher quality of life indexes. They have lower rate of diabetes, low cholesterol, and heart problems.
Having gained popularity in several regions of the world over decades, the World Vegetarian Festival made its debut in Africa recently and the main event is coming up in Ghana in 2015.
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