On the off-chance that anyone is interested in eating more vegetarian food but doesn’t know where to begin, I’ve found Mark Bittman’s vegetarian cookbook to be pretty good. It contains hundreds of dishes, most of which have several variations. The effect of this is that you learn not just rigid recipes, but highly extensible techniques and templates. I’ve used this book for a couple of years and by now I improvise most of my cooking based on things I’ve learned from it.
On related note, “Diet for a Small Planet” not only contains a lot of important facts about the food industry, but is also an excellent cookbook, in case that matters to anyone.
I have briefly glimpsed through it (a vegetarian friend owns it) and greatly enjoyed its section on “here is how you match together staple foods to have a balanced diet,” since that is probably the hardest part about turning vegetarian.
It is actually not hard at all. Some recent studies (don’t have references, sorry) showed that you don’t need to get all of your essential amino acids in a single serving so there is no real need to stack your meals to contain a complete protein. The key is that on average you get all of your essential amino acids which, except for one or two (in recent debated studies), you can’t really overdose on.
Another study showed that it is actually really hard to not get all of your amino acids in any diet. Since just about every food you eat has some combination of amino acids in it, unless you are eating literally the same thing every meal of every day you are incredibly likely to get all of your essential amino acids on a daily (and even likely a per meal) basis.
The study I read indicated that the author couldn’t come up with a reasonable “average daily meatless meal set” that did not contain all of the essential amino acids throughout the day. The same goes for a vegan diet.
Unfortunately a while back, when vegetarianism and veganism hit off there was the incorrect belief that you needed to get complete proteins in a single sitting. While this has since been shown to be incorrect, it seems that it will forever fuel the fires of anti-vegetarianism debate.
I also don’t have references, but I believe this is only true for diets mostly composed of Real Food. I seem to remember that in the past, foods with gelatin as the main protein have caused fairly widespread amino acid deficiencies among those who ate a lot of processed foods. Not that I would recommend this in any case!
unless you are eating literally the same thing every meal of every day
This is (was) my diet; which was pretty low on lysine (but probably not deficient). I’ve now added some oats and quinoa which I believe have solved the problem (and am looking into amaranth flour).
If this thread can bear anything so prosaic:
On the off-chance that anyone is interested in eating more vegetarian food but doesn’t know where to begin, I’ve found Mark Bittman’s vegetarian cookbook to be pretty good. It contains hundreds of dishes, most of which have several variations. The effect of this is that you learn not just rigid recipes, but highly extensible techniques and templates. I’ve used this book for a couple of years and by now I improvise most of my cooking based on things I’ve learned from it.
On related note, “Diet for a Small Planet” not only contains a lot of important facts about the food industry, but is also an excellent cookbook, in case that matters to anyone.
I have briefly glimpsed through it (a vegetarian friend owns it) and greatly enjoyed its section on “here is how you match together staple foods to have a balanced diet,” since that is probably the hardest part about turning vegetarian.
It is actually not hard at all. Some recent studies (don’t have references, sorry) showed that you don’t need to get all of your essential amino acids in a single serving so there is no real need to stack your meals to contain a complete protein. The key is that on average you get all of your essential amino acids which, except for one or two (in recent debated studies), you can’t really overdose on.
Another study showed that it is actually really hard to not get all of your amino acids in any diet. Since just about every food you eat has some combination of amino acids in it, unless you are eating literally the same thing every meal of every day you are incredibly likely to get all of your essential amino acids on a daily (and even likely a per meal) basis.
The study I read indicated that the author couldn’t come up with a reasonable “average daily meatless meal set” that did not contain all of the essential amino acids throughout the day. The same goes for a vegan diet.
Unfortunately a while back, when vegetarianism and veganism hit off there was the incorrect belief that you needed to get complete proteins in a single sitting. While this has since been shown to be incorrect, it seems that it will forever fuel the fires of anti-vegetarianism debate.
I also don’t have references, but I believe this is only true for diets mostly composed of Real Food. I seem to remember that in the past, foods with gelatin as the main protein have caused fairly widespread amino acid deficiencies among those who ate a lot of processed foods. Not that I would recommend this in any case!
This is (was) my diet; which was pretty low on lysine (but probably not deficient). I’ve now added some oats and quinoa which I believe have solved the problem (and am looking into amaranth flour).