The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that “Vegan diet” means eating of foods that are naturally from plants or eating of foods that contained no other products derived from animals.
Mr Clement Dike, the Executive Director, made the call at the inauguration of the group, and a public awareness forum to celebrate Africa Vegan Restaurant Week.
NAN reports that the forum which was aimed at promoting plant based diet is jointly organised in partnership with restaurant owners in Abuja.
According to Dike, the Africa Vegan Restaurant Week is a week for the celebration of plant based diet and is celebrated across all African countries.
He said that the group is carrying the restaurant owners along in the celebration for the purpose of encouraging them to promote plant base diet in the menu they offered to the public.
“We are purposely here at the Eagle Square to create awareness to these restaurant owners to inculcate plant base diet in their menu options. It is also to let people know that there are vegan outlet in Abuja here for those who also want to become vegan.
“Our organisation is in partnership with African Restaurant Food which is a pan Africa organisation that are working to promote veganism in Africa.
The more vegan food you eat, the more healthy you will become, we are saying no more eating of animal diet food like red meat, ” Dike said.
Femi Johnson, Holistic Life Coach, also a member of Vegan group, also encouraged Nigerians to live on Vegan saying that there are so many benefit from it in terms of health wise.
“I have been a vegan for 39 years, one of the major benefit of being a vegan is that you will enjoy so many benefits, currently my biological body is 10 years greater than my age medically and this is because I subscribe to eating a vegan diet.
“Vegan diet will help in lowering the level of cholesterol, it will help to reduced weight for those who are overweight, inculcating a vegan diet will help you to shelved excess fat in the body.
“It will help to reduce cardiovascular diseases like heart attack, stroke, eating right is something that every Nigerians should embrace .
“You don’t have to be a vegan at once, you transit into this gradually, you can start by eating less of much meat, Oilly things, less chicken so that your body can adapt to the responsive move, so that you don’t overpower your body with all the big effect at a go.
“We are also encouraging restaurant owners to include Vegan diet in their services so that those who want to become vegan can have a place to go, ” he said.
Dr Opeyemi Adeosun, Executive Director, INEMO Foundation, an NGO, said his organisation is supporting the initiative of Vegan group because it knows the important of eating right to stay healthy.
According Adeosun, one of the things Vagan group is trying to push for is to reduce the rate at which people are dying in the country through non-communicable diseases.
“People are so conscious about infection disease with so many death from these diseases, if you are told the number of people non-communicable diseases is killing annually you will be afraid.
“So this is a very good awareness programme, one of the main reasons for this programme is to encouraged people to live healthy, my advice to Nigerians is that going on vegan diet is a journey we need to start.
“The early we stop eating some kind of food is better, we don’t need to wait until we are 40 or 50 years old , people at ago 20 and 25 are having renal failure, cardiac arrest, hypertension.
“We have to start watching our eating habit, now is the time to change, even if we cannot stop at once, let us stop gradually, it is better we reduce animal source food or we stop it completely.
“Let’s focus our diet on plant source, plant is one of the gift of God natural food, let’s take more of our vegetables, ” Adeosun said.