The purpose of our study was to establish whether the knowledge about vegetarian diet was enough among nurses in order to practise professional nursing. We made an empirical study based on a questionnaire. Twenty-one registered nurses answered the questionnaire that consisted of mostly open questions. The result showed that almost everyone experienced that they gave dietcounselling and many nurses mentioned that dietcounselling was important. The majority of the nurses thought that they had enough knowledge to be able in order to deliver a fundamental dietcounselling but nobody considered that they knew much about vegetarian diet. / Syftet med vår studie var att lyfta fram sjuksköterskors kunskaper om vegetarisk kost, och se om dessa var tillräckliga för professionell omvårdnad skulle kunna bedrivas. För att få svar på våra frågeställningar gjorde vi en empirisk studie i form av en enkätundersökning. Tjugoen legitimerade sjuksköterskor svarade på enkäterna som bestod av till största delen öppna frågor. Resultatet visade att nästan alla upplevde att de gav kostråd och flera sjuksköterskor nämnde att kostrådgivning var viktigt. Majoriteten av sjuksköterskorna ansåg att de hade tillräckliga kunskaper för att ge en basal kostrådgivning men ingen nämnde att de kunde mycket om vegetarisk kost.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how vegetarians and vegans ascribe meaning to the process of changing from a meat-based to a plant-based diet. Using Brenda Dervin's sense-making methodology, I look into the complex and dynamic ways vegetarians and vegans experience their worlds. In contrast tomuch of mainstream research which regard vegetarians and vegans as static, the paper tries to answer the following questions: How can you understand vegetarians and vegans from the sense-making term”verbings? That is, how do vegetarians and vegans make and un-make sense during their changing process? What kind of contexts in form of inner and outer effect is and has been important in their making and un-making of sense? How do my interviewees in this particular moment in time and space seethemselves and their changing process in relation to the rest of society? The results presented are based on six semi-structured interviews influenced by sense-making's life-line method. Four interviews were conducted with vegetarians and two with vegans. Their age ranges from twenty to thirty two, and the amount of time they have been vegetarian or vegan range between eight months to eleven years. As shown in other studies, vegetarians and vegans are phenomenons that are more complex than mainstream research gives them credit for. My findings support this claim in concluding that my respondents use adiverse set of both internal and external hows to make sense of their vegetarianism and veganism. Forexample, internal in form of emotions and external in form of facts. Furthermore, my results may help to broaden our understanding of lifestyle changes beyond dietary, like going from a sedentary to an active life.