Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Non Meat Protein For Vegetarians

By Wayne Truter

While many people lament the nutritional disadvantages of a poorly planned vegetarian diet, few stress the health advantages of adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet. In this article, I will cover the major three nutritional advantages of becoming a vegetarian.

Consuming animal proteins might yield close to a 1:1 absorption ratio, while consuming plant proteins, such as wheat, might only yield 50% of the amino acids needed to build a "complete protein" or a protein that can readily be assimilated into the human body.

In order for vegetarians to absorb a healthy amount of protein, they must consume a variety of plant proteins to form complete amino chains. By eating vegetables, legumes, seeds, nuts, fruits, and whole grains, vegetarians can increase the amount of complete proteins they create by combining a number of varieties of amino acid chains.

Vegetarians must also consume more foods that contain proteins because plant proteins are generally harder to digest. While a nutritional label may suggest that pasta has 5 grams of protein per serving; you may only be able to digest 2-3 grams of that protein, which means you must complement the pasta with other sources of protein.

These vegans often cite how scientists have bred sheep over the years to generate unnatural amounts of wool for human needs. This breeding has resulted in the Merino sheep of today, which often has enough wool to equal its body weight.

As a result of this counter-evolutionary trait, the Merino sheep that exists today often has far more wool than it needs, which is evidenced by the high amount of sheep that die of heat exhaustion. In addition to overheating in hot temperatures, many sheep end up freezing to death after they are sheared.

The wool shearing process can also cause quite a bit of suffering for the sheep. Almost a quarter of all wool sheared from sheep is "skin wool," which is so close to the sheep's skin that it is actually must be torn off.

For non-vegan vegetarians, yogurt, milk, and eggs (which contain complete proteins) are all excellent sources of protein.

It means the popular mythology about vegetarian diets is false. Not only can a vegetarian diet be nutritionally sufficient, but it can also affect better skin health, prevent cancer, and increase your heart health.

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