Protein

Protein vs. the vegetarian diet

There is a myth that the amount of protein a person gets from the vegetarian diet, is not enough to meet their nutrient needs. This is not true, the human body gets plenty of protein from a meatless diet.

Complementary proteins not only taste great, but are as well good for you.
It is good practice and common for the vegetarian to use complementary proteins in meals. I practice this in cooking often.

In no way would I recommend not using complementary proteins when preparing meals. In fact I suggest the opposite. Use them frequently. I know there is fear among beginning vegetarians, and those who contemplate becoming a vegetarian, due to the myth about lack of protein in the vegetarian diet; I know, and I was one of them. It just is not so.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from an article written by Dr. Fuhrman’s colleague Jeff Novick, M.S., R. D. for the May 2003 edition of Healthy Times:

The “incomplete protein” myth was inadvertently promoted in the 1971 book, Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappe. In it, the author stated that plant foods do not contain all the essential amino acids, so in order to be a healthy vegetarian, you needed to eat a combination of certain plant foods in order to get all of the essential amino acids. It was called the theory of “protein complementing.”

Frances Moore Lappe certainly meant no harm, and her mistake was somewhat understandable. She was not a nutritionist, physiologist, or medical doctor. She was a sociologist trying to end world hunger. She realized that there was a lot of waste in converting vegetable protein into animal protein, and she calculated that if people just ate the plant protein, many more people could be fed. In a later edition of her book (1991), she retracted her statement and basically said that in trying to end one myth—the unsolvable inevitability of world hunger, she created a second one—the myth of the need for “protein complementing.”

In these later editions, she corrects her earlier mistake and clearly states that all plant foods typically consumed as sources of protein contain all the essential amino acids, and that humans are virtually certain of getting enough protein from plant sources if they consume sufficient calories.

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