Do you find it hard to get enough protein?

midlandsmissus

I find that I have to make a concentrated effort to make sure I get enough protein in a day.

If I ate what I wanted to eat: soup, pasta etc. there's very little protein in them.

When I first turned vegetarian I ate whatever I wanted, and I found that I got very weak, pale,and ill very quickly.

I have to think about it everyday.

Even now I find it hard to get enough protein.

Do you ever find this hard?
Why arent there more protein supplements? The only ones I can see are the massive protein shakes for bodybuilders or the really expensive protein bars. Why cant you get protein in a pill like you can with all the other vitamins and minerals?

Any tips on how to get more protein? I couldn't eat baked beans every day. I tried to that and It gets very old very quickly. Nuts have so much fat in them, when I ate them every day I piled on the weight. I drink skimmed milk every day but I still feel quite weak and tired. Theres ten grams of protein in milk and you're meant to have 45 a day.There's virtually noe in soup and other things I eat.I'd say I'm still not getting enough, so any tips are very welcome!

brianthebard

45 is still below good levels-I know a lot of nutritionists will say that what you need but these people are still working with the old food pyramid!It should be 1g per kilo of bodyweight to maintain muscle. Firstly, you drink milk-would you eat eggs? 3 eggs contain about 20g of protein, depending on the size. Whey isn't that expensive, and would certainly be cheaper than protein pills. http://www.thesupplementfactory.com/p1/Whey_5lbs/product_info.html Its made from milk by products so I imagine you can eat it. Would fill you up more than pills too, plus its nice in smoothies. Hope that might help.

sweet-rasmus

What I do is cook up a pot of chickpeas, another of butter beans and perhaps one of kidney beans (take it in turns). Buy a load of small plastic food containers and freeze small aliquots of them in their own juices, so that if you feel you require a little more protein in your meal they only take about 10 mins to heat up, and you have enough for the one meal only and no leftovers. I suppose the small tins of beans/peas are good also, except they would do about two helpings. You don't want to bore yourself with these foods!

Cous cous is a great food which is high in protein which would be worth having with your meal in place of rice. It is easy and fast to cook, and your packaging will tell you of it's high protein content.

I'm sure there are many other sources, but these are what I think of when I need protein. The is no need to do your head in with baked beans

Tar.Aldarion

Fake meat if you are that way inclined.

From my sticky thread:

Tar.Aldarion wrote:

Protein:Many People believe that vegetarian and particularly vegan diets cannot
possibly provide sufficient protein.This is an old wives' tale.
Eight essential amino acids are needed to make a complete protein.Dairy products,eggs and
soya products(tofu,tempeh,soya drinks and desserts)all provide complete protein in themselves.

Combining whole grains(unrefined wheat,rye,millet,barlet,spelt,rice,quinoa)
with pulses(beans,peas,lentils)and supplementing with small amounts of nuts and seeds also
provides plenty of protein.All the essential amino acids are found in combinations
such as beans on toast,lentil curry with brown rice,musli with milk,hummus made from chickpeas
and sesame tahini,peanut butter sandwiches made from wholemeal bread.

So there are loads of things. Delicious ones like nuts and seeds are nice. Soya/tofu and so on.

rockbeer

Two words - cashew nuts!

Macha

midlandsmissus wrote: »

I find that I have to make a concentrated effort to make sure I get enough protein in a day.

If I ate what I wanted to eat: soup, pasta etc. there's very little protein in them.

When I first turned vegetarian I ate whatever I wanted, and I found that I got very weak, pale,and ill very quickly.

I have to think about it everyday.

Even now I find it hard to get enough protein.

Do you ever find this hard?
Why arent there more protein supplements? The only ones I can see are the massive protein shakes for bodybuilders or the really expensive protein bars. Why cant you get protein in a pill like you can with all the other vitamins and minerals?

Any tips on how to get more protein? I couldn't eat baked beans every day. I tried to that and It gets very old very quickly. Nuts have so much fat in them, when I ate them every day I piled on the weight. I drink skimmed milk every day but I still feel quite weak and tired. Theres ten grams of protein in milk and you're meant to have 45 a day.There's virtually noe in soup and other things I eat.I'd say I'm still not getting enough, so any tips are very welcome!

There's nothing at all wrong with protein shakes and they're not just for bodybuilders. You should try them. My personal favourite is this one. I mix it with yogurt...mmm...:

http://www.universalnutrition.ie/viewproduct/18

I use the chocolate flavoured one, mix in some peanut butter and ground flax et voila! Home made, cheap protein bars with good fats & fibre.

Kiddynamite

I just stuck on a pizza there, more than enough protein in that, bitta cheese sure.

midlandsmissus

Thanks very much for the replies. Wish I'd come on here sooner to get advice. Thanks again.

Rockbeer, are you a vegetarian?

rockbeer

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Rockbeer, are you a vegetarian?

More or less, but I don't use the term as I do eat eat fish occasionally. I actually think 'vegetarian' is better as a label for food than for people.

I used to be hardcore vegan once upon a time fwiw. I have a major problem with animal farming, and still think veganism is ideologically the right way to go unless you're going to catch animals yourself, but it didn't agree with me.

Why do you ask?

Tar.Aldarion

Bit random!

midlandsmissus

rockbeer wrote: »

More or less, but I don't use the term as I do eat eat fish occasionally. I actually think 'vegetarian' is better as a label for food than for people.

I used to be hardcore vegan once upon a time fwiw. I have a major problem with animal farming, and still think veganism is ideologically the right way to go unless you're going to catch animals yourself, but it didn't agree with me.

Why do you ask?

Oh no it's just that your name looked familiar...you're on the atheist boards aren't you? Right I'm off to buy a few cashew nuts

rubadub

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Why cant you get protein in a pill like you can with all the other vitamins and minerals?

You need trace amounts of minerals etc, but a fair bit of protein. I have 1gram vit c pills which are hard to get down. You would have to eat loads of them.

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Why arent there more protein supplements? The only ones I can see are the massive protein shakes for bodybuilders or the really expensive protein bars.

You can make your own protein bars cheaply, lots of recipies on lifting sites. I get unflavoured whey from www.bulkpowders.co.uk really cheap. I mix it in with oats and milk in the morning, and with strawberry nesquik & milk, I love the stuff.

rockbeer

midlandsmissus wrote: »

Oh no it's just that your name looked familiar...you're on the atheist boards aren't you?

I have been known to hang out over there, especially when I'm feeling argumentative - which if I'm honest is probably more often than I'd like

rubadub

Another one I make is protein mousse. Get unflavoured whey and mix it with milk or water, then add in dissolved jelly. Then whip it up, comes out nice & fluffy like mousse when it sets.

Tar.Aldarion

YOu'd need to find veggie jellie and see does it work as good.

lizzyvera

Whatever you normally do with pasta or rice, do with chickpeas or kidney beans. Like rich tomato sauce and cheese on them. Pesto. Sweet chilli sauce. I just used the tinned ones because I'm lazy. It's really yummy, and much more substantial than pasta, which is pretty processed and nutritionless.

Mentalmiss

One farmer says to me, ''You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;'' and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle". - Henry David Thoreau

Check out these 2 sites

www.charliesgym.info

http://www.thegardendiet.com/storm.html

These guys are body builders and they live on Raw Vegan Food.

Wopp

Hey,

I'm also trying to increase protein and eat kidney beans, Cashews and tofu etc. But what sort of portion sizes would you use in a typical meal in a day?

For a stir fry for example, i would have noodles/rice with all the veg and then a table spoon or two of kidney beans or cashews depending on what sort of fry it is. Would that be enough? Or would I need to be thinking of more?

Im about 80kg male, vegi for over 6 months now and starting to feel like i need more protein!

FollatonWood

Wopp wrote: »

Hey,

I'm also trying to increase protein and eat kidney beans, Cashews and tofu etc. But what sort of portion sizes would you use in a typical meal in a day?

For a stir fry for example, i would have noodles/rice with all the veg and then a table spoon or two of kidney beans or cashews depending on what sort of fry it is. Would that be enough? Or would I need to be thinking of more?

Im about 80kg male, vegi for over 6 months now and starting to feel like i need more protein!

Protein shakes are a good addition to up your intake. Pay no heed to the OP reference to 'bodybuilder' shakes - it's just protein in powder form, not magic bodybuilding powder!

As a rule, you'd need to be getting about 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. It's not that hard if you add in 2 shake a day (60g).

I put 200g of kidney beans or chickpeas into my curries.

blatantrereg

Protein shakes only make sense to me if you are doing weight training. It's easy to get enough protein in a vegetarian diet, or in a vegan diet without supplementation. Just think of vegetarian protein sources (like chickpeas, lentils, tofu, beans) as part of your diet in the same way omnivores think of meat and fish as part of their diet. Once you learn ways of preparing them that you like you might find you have a very tasty and more varied diet than you did as an omnivore - that is the case for me at least.

Personally I've been more concerned about iron than protein, but I get plenty of it too. One nice thing about the vegetarian protein sources is that they tend to be high in other nutrients that omnivores might rely on meat for - i.e.: Ones that you might be missing if your vegetarian diet is too much like a traditional meat-based diet only without the meat.

Frying chickpeas with any mix of garlic/chilli/cumin/soy/turmeric is quick and has delicious results. For zero preparation, fried chick peas in reggae reggae sauce (from a bottle) are also fantastic. Batchelors tinned chick peas are good for frying. Tesco own brand ones turn out disgusting if you fry them.

runawaybishop

blatantrereg wrote: »

Protein shakes only make sense to me if you are doing weight training. It's easy to get enough protein in a vegetarian diet, or in a vegan diet without supplementation. Just think of vegetarian protein sources (like chickpeas, lentils, tofu, beans) as part of your diet in the same way omnivores think of meat and fish as part of their diet. Once you learn ways of preparing them that you like you might find you have a very tasty and more varied diet than you did as an omnivore - that is the case for me at least.

Personally I've been more concerned about iron than protein, but I get plenty of it too. One nice thing about the vegetarian protein sources is that they tend to be high in other nutrients that omnivores might rely on meat for - i.e.: Ones that you might be missing if your vegetarian diet is too much like a traditional meat-based diet only without the meat.

Frying chickpeas with any mix of garlic/chilli/cumin/soy/turmeric is quick and has delicious results. For zero preparation, fried chick peas in reggae reggae sauce (from a bottle) are also fantastic. Batchelors tinned chick peas are good for frying. Tesco own brand ones turn out disgusting if you fry them.

Protein shakes make sense if you need more protein, nothing to do with weightlifting. Ideally you should get your protein from whole foods but that is not always possible and shakes are a cheap form of highly bio-available protein. One thing to be aware of with bean sources of protein is that they are roughly 50% bioavailable (i,e about 50% of their labelled protein is absorbed) so you need to increase your consumption accordingly.

Olivia86

runawaybishop wrote: »

Protein shakes make sense if you need more protein, nothing to do with weightlifting.

I take a protein shake every morning, just to boost my intake. If I get enough protein from food sources during the day then great, if not then at least I don't have to worry!

I add chickpeas, nuts, nut butters, chia seeds, nutritional yeast etc to meals for sneaky protein hits!

blatantrereg

runawaybishop wrote: »

Protein shakes make sense if you need more protein, nothing to do with weightlifting. Ideally you should get your protein from whole foods but that is not always possible and shakes are a cheap form of highly bio-available protein. One thing to be aware of with bean sources of protein is that they are roughly 50% bioavailable (i,e about 50% of their labelled protein is absorbed) so you need to increase your consumption accordingly.

I think our ideas about how much protein you need to eat in a day must differ!
Tins of chickpeas are cheap, readily available, and have long shelf-lives. Loads of other vegetarian protein foods for which the same is true.

Your sources are bad for the bioavailability of bean protein. There is an effect on its digestibility from phytic acid, but the reduction is less than 10%, not 50%, according to this journal article. I found non-credible pages where they say it's 50%. What I think they've done is taken figures from old tables of amino acid indexes.

runawaybishop

blatantrereg wrote: »

I think our ideas about how much protein you need to eat in a day must differ!
Tins of chickpeas are cheap, readily available, and have long shelf-lives. Loads of other vegetarian protein foods for which the same is true.

Your sources are bad for the bioavailability of bean protein. There is an effect on its digestibility from phytic acid, but the reduction is less than 10%, not 50%, according to this journal article. I found non-credible pages where they say it's 50%. What I think they've done is taken figures from old tables of amino acid indexes.

I have not stated how much protein I think you need to eat in a day. Whether it is 50 grams or 200 if you struggle to eat your protein from whole food sources a protein supplement is a cheap and easily available source. Being a bodybuilder has nothing to do with it. Chickpeas are relatively high in protein (9-10%) but you'd need to eat so many to make your protein requirements that you'd end up obese.

Your link doesn't load for me. The figures are not from amino acid indexs. Bio-availability (also known as Biological Value) measures how much protein is absorbed from a food. Most charts peg beans at ~50.

whey blended products, BV 100-159
whey, BV 104
egg, BV 100
cow's milk, BV 91
egg white, BV 88
beef, BV 80
fish, BV 79
chicken, BV 77
casein, BV 77
soy, BV 74
potato, BV 71
rice, BV 59
wheat, BV 54
beans, BV 49
peanuts, BV 43

If you'd like to use PDCAAS values, which are considered more accurate than BV

1.00 casein (milk protein)
1.00 egg white
1.00 soy protein
1.00 whey (milk protein)
0.99 mycoprotein
0.92 beef
0.91 soybeans
0.78 chickpeas
0.76 fruits
0.75 black beans[disambiguation needed]
0.73 vegetables
0.70 Other legumes
0.59 cereals and derivatives
0.52 peanuts
0.42 whole wheat

blatantrereg

runawaybishop wrote: »

I have not stated how much protein I think you need to eat in a day. Whether it is 50 grams or 200 if you struggle to eat your protein from whole food sources a protein supplement is a cheap and easily available source. Being a bodybuilder has nothing to do with it. Chickpeas are relatively high in protein (9-10%) but you'd need to eat so many to make your protein requirements that you'd end up obese.

Your link doesn't load for me. The figures are not from amino acid indexs. Bio-availability (also known as Biological Value) measures how much protein is absorbed from a food. Most charts peg beans at ~50.



If you'd like to use PDCAAS values, which are considered more accurate than BV

The link is a journal paper which says that chickpeas have pretty high protein bioavailability - the impediment from phytic acid is less than 10%, not 50%.

Chickpeas are about 15% protein. There's about twice as much carbohydrate in them, and a very small amount of fat. You wouldn't get obese from consuming them for protein. You don't need a huge amount of protein. If you are doing a lot of taxing exercise you might need quite a bit; but you would need more overall calories too.

They don't have all the essential amino acids that you need. Whey does; it's an excellent protein source. But you get the other amino acids from cereals and many other foodstuffs too. So chickpeas are viable as a primary protein source.

The BV measurement takes into account the levels of the different amino acids. Most vegetable protein sources don't have high levels of all the amino acids by themselves. Therefore they score low on that scale. But the ones that are low in beans are high in cereals and vice-versa. So vegetable protein sources are more useful than the scale suggests - so long as you eat a mixed diet.

The PDCAAS scale suffers from the same problem. It only works for evaluating foods eaten in isolation. This is discussed on the wikipedia page about it:

For example, grain protein has a PDCAAS of about 0.4 to 0.5, limited by lysine. On the other hand, it contains more than enough methionine. White bean protein (and that of many other pulses) has a PDCAAS of 0.6 to 0.7, limited by methionine, and contains more than enough lysine. When both are eaten in roughly equal quantities in a diet, the PDCAAS of the combined constituent is 1.0, because each constituent's protein is complemented by the other.

An informed vegetarian diet does not require protein supplementation. Supplementation might be useful if you are engaging in strength sports, mainly because protein-based recovery drinks are found to be superior to ones only containing carbohydrate. But it's unnecessary for normal day-to-day diets.

chinacup

Anyone here using spirulina? And if so have they found a good brand? Looking to find one that is guaranteed bmaa + contamination free, if it exists!

runawaybishop

blatantrereg wrote: »

The link is a journal paper which says that chickpeas have pretty high protein bioavailability - the impediment from phytic acid is less than 10%, not 50%.

Chickpeas are about 15% protein. There's about twice as much carbohydrate in them, and a very small amount of fat. You wouldn't get obese from consuming them for protein. You don't need a huge amount of protein. If you are doing a lot of taxing exercise you might need quite a bit; but you would need more overall calories too.

They don't have all the essential amino acids that you need. Whey does; it's an excellent protein source. But you get the other amino acids from cereals and many other foodstuffs too. So chickpeas are viable as a primary protein source.

The BV measurement takes into account the levels of the different amino acids. Most vegetable protein sources don't have high levels of all the amino acids by themselves. Therefore they score low on that scale. But the ones that are low in beans are high in cereals and vice-versa. So vegetable protein sources are more useful than the scale suggests - so long as you eat a mixed diet.

The PDCAAS scale suffers from the same problem. It only works for evaluating foods eaten in isolation. This is discussed on the wikipedia page about it:


An informed vegetarian diet does not require protein supplementation. Supplementation might be useful if you are engaging in strength sports, mainly because protein-based recovery drinks are found to be superior to ones only containing carbohydrate. But it's unnecessary for normal day-to-day diets.

Ok, i see the paper now but it is not discussing bioavailability, rather the interaction with phytic acid. They are anywhere from 8-20% protein, most ones you'll find in the shop are at about 10%. A normal adult male using chickpeas as a protein source to consume their minimum protein requirements would have to eat a lot of chickpeas, around 1.7k calories. Adding the rest of your essential food on top of that would have you at a surplus in no time at all.

I am not sure you are on the same page as me with regards to bioavailability. Some food sources have more readily available protein and people need to factor that in when calculating their intake.

In a perfect world no one would need supplementation. If, however, you are not in a perfect world they whey protein is a good supplement. Its not just for bodybuilders.

turnikett1

To be honest I think you'd have to TRY hard to not get enough protein! Nuts, beans/lentils, tofu, faux-meat, cheese, eggs off the top of my head... Given the diversity and options within these foods I find it really hard to believe that some vegetarians don't get enough protein

Understandably it's harder when vegan but FAR from impossible!

runawaybishop

turnikett1 wrote: »

To be honest I think you'd have to TRY hard to not get enough protein! Nuts, beans/lentils, tofu, faux-meat, cheese, eggs off the top of my head... Given the diversity and options within these foods I find it really hard to believe that some vegetarians don't get enough protein

Understandably it's harder when vegan but FAR from impossible!

An awful lot of people, even meat eaters, do not eat enough protein. Diets are extremely carb heavy these days. RDAs of protein are also very low and about what you'd need if you were in a vegetative state. For anyone even slightly active the requirements would be much higher (50% higher) - for someone involved in sport/heavy lifting etc they are about 100% (or more) higher. The myth about protein exploding your kidneys is still doing the rounds.

blatantrereg

The RDA is significantly higher than what journals indicate is necessary. 10% of caloric intake is plenty for adults. If you're trying to build strength then 20% is probably advisable, but any more is unnecessary. Steve Reeves' diet was about 20% protein, and he did very well in the days before steroids. There are other examples like this.

There is a big fad for high protein diets these days, and some real zealotry about them sometimes too. Not thinking of anyone posting here when I say that.

Not aware of any danger from following a high protein diet. Bad breath and body odour can occur - not sure if that is only from animal foods, or if it is to do with overall protein intake. Low protein diets are recommended for certain medical conditions including kidney and liver problems.

truedoom

i get more than enough protein.

but that's because i eat meat.

*legs it out the door*