Protein is an important nutrient and everyone from small baby to an ageing individual needs it, sourced through food we eat. Function of Protein is to build a strong and robust body that can fight diseases and maintain energy levels till we live. A fit body is capable of working for long hours with productivity quotient being high. On average women need 46g of protein per day and men need 56g. So everyone should make sure that their bodies are getting their daily dose of protein through the food they are eating.
There are 20 types of different amino acids which make protein. While some proteins are such that our body can make, there are some which it can’t and are thus produced from food we eat (called essential amino acids). Ideal food is that which includes all the nine proteins that our body makes through food we eat in equal quantity. But we don’t have to have all of them every day. Having them in rotation is good enough. In this post we will talk about various vegetarian food items rich in protein.
Rice & Beans: The most common, liked by almost everyone, cheapest, easily available easy to cook and you don’t have to go looking for recipes to make beans or rice as they’re commonly cooked in all vegetarian household. Beans as we all know are high on protein, low in methionine and high in lysine. Rice on the other hand is low in lysine and high in methionine. Mixed and it makes for a combo that offers optimum protein.
Bread: If you like baking and can bake your own bread with the following ingredients – wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, it will be great. If you know someone who can make it, place a permanent order for your loaf with such a bakery starting today!
Quinoa: This food is highly nutritious, full of protein; fibre, iron, magnesium, and manganese. People replace rice with it or we can also make fritters, muffins, cookies with it. For every cup of Quinoa you consume your body get 8 grams of protein.
Buckwheat: First of all it is not a type of wheat. For every cup of servings made with buckwheat, our body gets 6grams of protein. While Japanese make noodles with it, it can be ground into flour and several other things can be prepared. It can also be eaten in grain form after cooking. Besides being high in protein, it improves circulation and lowers blood cholesterol & glucose. Various recipes are available online.
Soy: Soy is full of protein and it can be processed in many ways to prepare different types of foods like Tofu, chunks, sometimes soy seeds are also fermented for further processing and adding it as one of the ingredients in food preparations. While choosing tofu, make sure you choose the hardest one. The harder/firmer tofu contains more protein than softer one.
Quorn or Mycoprotein: They are very high in protein offering 13 g for every half cup serving. It comes under mushroom family. Debates about it being vegan or vegetarian are common as it is made by growing a certain kind of fungus. It is supposed to be very tasty.
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