Where do vegetarians get their protein? Don they have to combine certain foods to make a complete protein?
All whole foods, including grains, vegetables, and fruit, contain protein. If you avoid “junk” foods and eat enough of a variety of whole foods to maintain your weight, you should easily meet your protein requirement. The average Western diet contains too much protein, which may increase the risk of kidney stones and possibly other ailments. Vegetarians do not need to “combine” any foods. “Complete protein” is a myth. The protein in every whole vegetarian food contains all of the essential amino acids, the building blocks of protein that must be supplied by the diet. True, some vegetable proteins may have relatively more of some amino acids than of others, but there’s nothing that says we have to consume amino acids in the exact proportion used by our bodies. In addition, if a person’s diet is a little low in certain amino acids, the body adapts and retains more of those amino acids. If you ate enough of any one vegetable’s protein to meet your daily protein requirement, you would also
