Veggies & protein

The list of upcoming events for the Orillia Veggie group is here.


I don't personally get asked the where do you get your protein from? question very often, but it is something that omnivores tend to ask. It's actually pretty ironic, because when you read the literature, you know that most North Americans actually get far too much protein.

As Mark Bittman (who isn't a vegetarian) wrote in the New York Times recently...

Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources.

Anyway, even high level athletes can get the protein they need from a vegetarian or vegan diet, and if you want to make a power-packed soup of lentils and chick peas, try this Moroccan Lentil and Chick Pea Soup recipe.