A HEALTHFUL AND MEATLESS DIET

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THE BASICS

Back in elementary school, we all memorized the famous Four Food Groups, representing those categories said to be necessary for a well-balanced diet. Basically, that was sound advice, and it needs only slight modification to be applicable to a meatless diet. From Laurel's Kitchen (see the accompanying source list), here's an updated and revised version of the Four Food Groups, which offers a varied and safe way to nourish the body without including meat: [1] vegetables (yellow and leafy green), [2] fruits, [3] dairy products and eggs, and [4] grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Choosing three or more servings every day from each of these divisions will ensure the lacto-ovo vegetarian a supremely healthy diet. For a vegan regime, in which the dairy food/egg category is not used, it's necessary to combine plant foods carefully in order to ensure adequate protein intake.

A COMPLEMENT A DAY

Protein is probably the biggest bugaboo faced by the potential or neophyte vegetarian. But not to worry. Getting one's adequate share of daily protein is no problem for the conscientious vegetarian, even for the vegan. In fact, ensuring that you consume enough protein every day is now generally considered to be even easier than it was ten years ago.

But first, why is protein so important? Aside from water, protein is the most plentiful substance in the human body and is vitally important for building muscles, skin, hair, nails, and internal organs. Protein—a complex of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and usually sulfur—is also an important ingredient in hemoglobin (the substance that carries oxygen in the blood) and in antibodies, as well as in the production of enzyme and hormones.

We can't, however, obtain protein directly from the food we eat. Rather, we must collect the 22 amino acids that serve as its "building blocks," so that the body can manufacture its own protein supply. All but eight of those 22 acids are present in the body, and those eight are therefore labeled "essential" (since they have to come from the food we eat). The essential amino acids are isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. (Children require an additional one, histidine.) Unless all eight are present in the system at the same time, no synthesis of protein can take place . . . and herein lies the major difference between a meat-centered and a plant-based diet. Animal foods already contain all the necessary building blocks for protein: They are "complete" proteins. Plant foods, however, with the notable exception of the soybean, are "incomplete" proteins—low in one or more of the eight essentials. It's obvious, then, that anyone who eliminates meat from his or her menu must make certain that the plant foods are augmented in some way to make complete proteins. And that's done through the principle of protein complementarity, first brought into the limelight in this country with the publication of Frances Moore Lappé's now familiar Diet for a Small Planet.

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