Vegetarian Protein

If you are a vegetarian or thinking about becoming a vegetarian and are worried about how you will get protein into your diet without meat, don’t worry.  Believe it or not, there are plenty of non-meat foods that can introduce protein into your vegetarian diet so that you are not lacking in this area of your body’s nutritional needs.

Vegetarians should always have as wide a variety of foods as possible to ensure they get enough protein in their diet. If you eat too much of one food, you risk building an intolerance to it over time.  That’s why you should have a variety of foods that contain a high amount of protein included in your vegetarian diet.  Here is a brief list of vegetarian foods that contain protein:

Tofu
Quorn
Peanuts
Lentils
Soy beans 
Tinned baked beans
Red kidney beans
Poppy seeds
Sesame seeds
Fortified soy milk
Almonds
Figs
Haricot beans
Spinach
Brazil nuts
Chickpeas
Kale
Broccoli
Spring greens
White cabbage 

If you eat dairy product in your vegetarian diet, you will find that a lot of dairy product contain protein as well.  Here’s a short list of how you can get your daily dose of protein with dairy:

Cheese
Eggs
Milk
Yogurt
Butter
Fromage Frais

Dairy products are higher in calories than the vegan (non dairy) sources of protein so they should be eaten in moderation, particularly if you are trying to lose weight (or keep the same weight!). You can of course buy low fat varieties of cheese and drink semi-skimmed or even skimmed milk, low fat yogurts and spreads.

Protein is essential to human health. Our bodies—hair, muscles, fingernails, and so on—are made up mostly of protein. As suggested by the differences between our muscles and our fingernails, not all proteins are alike. This is because differing combinations of any number of 20 amino acids may constitute a protein. In much the same way that the 26 letters of our alphabet serve to form millions of different words, the 20 amino acids serve to form different proteins. 

Amino acids are a fundamental part of our diet. While half of the 20 can be manufactured by the human body, the other 10 cannot.  These "essential amino acids" can easily be provided by a balanced vegetarian diet as long as you take the time to research where you can get enough protein in your diet and then incorporate it into your vegetarian lifestyle.
