Wherever possible I personally like to assess the healthiness of all my patients' underlying attitudes to eating and food. This is particularly important in teenagers and others at risk for eating disorders. On a less extreme note, I have seen many vegetarians whose nutritional knowledge left much to be desired, even though they are following a lifestyle framed in dietary terms. Many factors apart from health considerations can motivate a patient's interest in vegetarianism - ethical, ecological, sociological or sometimes just a distaste for animal foods. By no means all of these guarantee knowledge or even interest in nutrition and cooking.
Some vegetarians are remarkably ill-informed about food .
They may believe that a vegetarian diet consists of eating vegetables, and eat little else. They may have no idea that a proper vegetarian diet is based around grains and legumes, not vegetables. On a clinical level, such problems might manifest in malaise and tiredness , complaints which are surprisingly common in the less nutritionally careful vegetarian. More specific nutritional deficiency states may be present. Vitamin B 12 deficiency is one.