Protein and Dietary Restrictions
I read the book Diet for a Small Planet a lot of years ago. It talks about protein complementation or protein combining.
She converted to vegetarianism from a standard North American diet and studied how to do that and also get enough protein. So she worked at it and wrote this book relatively early on when she was still working at being vegetarian and in the foreword to her sister's later book, Recipes for a Small Planet, she said she regretted making it sound hard to get enough protein as a vegetarian.
If you don't have something wrong with you that makes it hard to get enough protein, it's NOT hard to get enough protein as a vegetarian. It shouldn't be hard even as a vegan to get enough protein, though you may have trouble getting enough B vitamins and healthy fats.
If you are vegetarian and not getting enough protein, the problem is not that you aren't eating meat. It's that you know too little about nutrition generally.
The two above links have some charts explaining the basic concept that some plant categories have too little of a particular amino acid and if you combine them with plants that have extra of that, you get a lot more usable protein than eating them alone.
It's a little like a jigsaw puzzle. Some foods just FIT together and improve your nutrition if you eat them together.
My recollection is her sister made a hand-drawn chart that listed the different groups and drew lines connecting the different ones you should combine and stuck it on her fridge. So it said stuff like "Legumes, Nuts and Seeds, Grains, (etc)" and she drew lines between the food groups that complemented each other.
So when she was creating new recipes for the book, she would reference her chart and make sure it contained two complementary foods. And that was it.
If you are vegan, you may need to work hard at getting enough B vitamins and healthy fats. I have initial notes elsewhere on this site, but if you aren't getting enough protein and are not familiar with protein combining, you should read up on that before you decide you are being "forced" to abandon vegetarianism.
In fact, if you eat EGGS, you should be able to readily remedy a protein deficiency with more egg whites. When one of my sons was having a protein issue, I actually made him sugar cookies regularly for the egg whites because egg whites are near "perfect" protein for humans and we can use 98 percent of the protein in egg whites.
I am not vegan. I have never managed to become a vegetarian. I eat a semi-vegetarian diet and have had an interest in nutrition for a lot of years.
I'm neither for nor against veganism. I think the jury is out on veganism, but I suspect SOME of the people abandoning it just aren't eating healthy and it's not necessarily, per se, because they are vegan.
What I am for is eating in a way that serves your nutritional needs and that's what this site is about.
This is POSSIBLY a genetic difference, not a disorder, and I just don't have the language I want for trying to effectively say this in a nutshell.
My belief that this MAY be genetic is influenced by having been married to a man who is ethnically half Norse -- AKA Viking -- and raising two sons with him who are one quarter Norse. They can all three suck down quantities of meat that would turn my stomach and I sincerely believe it is rooted in the traditional diet of the Vikings who had trouble growing plants.
She converted to vegetarianism from a standard North American diet and studied how to do that and also get enough protein. So she worked at it and wrote this book relatively early on when she was still working at being vegetarian and in the foreword to her sister's later book, Recipes for a Small Planet, she said she regretted making it sound hard to get enough protein as a vegetarian.
If you don't have something wrong with you that makes it hard to get enough protein, it's NOT hard to get enough protein as a vegetarian. It shouldn't be hard even as a vegan to get enough protein, though you may have trouble getting enough B vitamins and healthy fats.
If you are vegetarian and not getting enough protein, the problem is not that you aren't eating meat. It's that you know too little about nutrition generally.
The two above links have some charts explaining the basic concept that some plant categories have too little of a particular amino acid and if you combine them with plants that have extra of that, you get a lot more usable protein than eating them alone.
It's a little like a jigsaw puzzle. Some foods just FIT together and improve your nutrition if you eat them together.
My recollection is her sister made a hand-drawn chart that listed the different groups and drew lines connecting the different ones you should combine and stuck it on her fridge. So it said stuff like "Legumes, Nuts and Seeds, Grains, (etc)" and she drew lines between the food groups that complemented each other.
So when she was creating new recipes for the book, she would reference her chart and make sure it contained two complementary foods. And that was it.
If you are vegan, you may need to work hard at getting enough B vitamins and healthy fats. I have initial notes elsewhere on this site, but if you aren't getting enough protein and are not familiar with protein combining, you should read up on that before you decide you are being "forced" to abandon vegetarianism.
In fact, if you eat EGGS, you should be able to readily remedy a protein deficiency with more egg whites. When one of my sons was having a protein issue, I actually made him sugar cookies regularly for the egg whites because egg whites are near "perfect" protein for humans and we can use 98 percent of the protein in egg whites.
I am not vegan. I have never managed to become a vegetarian. I eat a semi-vegetarian diet and have had an interest in nutrition for a lot of years.
I'm neither for nor against veganism. I think the jury is out on veganism, but I suspect SOME of the people abandoning it just aren't eating healthy and it's not necessarily, per se, because they are vegan.
What I am for is eating in a way that serves your nutritional needs and that's what this site is about.
Footnote
I will note that some people from ethnic groups with traditional diets centered on meat report that veganism is a big problem for them and their traditional meat-based diet (like MOSTLY meat, a la Alaskan tribes) works vastly better for them. I am noting that because I said "If you don't have something wrong with you, it shouldn't be hard to get enough protein." and there is nothing WRONG with being a Native Alaskan, but it MAY mean your body processes plant-based protein differently.This is POSSIBLY a genetic difference, not a disorder, and I just don't have the language I want for trying to effectively say this in a nutshell.
My belief that this MAY be genetic is influenced by having been married to a man who is ethnically half Norse -- AKA Viking -- and raising two sons with him who are one quarter Norse. They can all three suck down quantities of meat that would turn my stomach and I sincerely believe it is rooted in the traditional diet of the Vikings who had trouble growing plants.
