As a vegetarian where do I get all my protein from? From three major groups of foods, legumes, grains, and nuts.
We all know what nuts are right? That hard-shelled fruit of a plant such as almonds, pecans, walnuts, cashews, and my favorite pistachio! So that one is easy, although you would be surprised to find out that peanuts are actually legumes too.
So what is a legume? It is another type of plant that encompasses a wide variety of vegetables, it can represent the plant or seed itself. They include vegetables such as alfalfa, clover, peas, lentils, carob, and soy.
How about those grains? Those are small, hard, dry seeds of plants such as rice, wheat, maize, and soybeans. Typically they can be easily stored, for use later, such as over winter.
All three of these groups are important for vegan’s to get the correct amount of protein building blocks per day, around 50 grams.
So make sure you're eating something in this family at each meal, and as you can see the three groups overlap in many ways, but if I used three I could make a nice pun off the Wizard of Oz. :) Besides Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and Tin Man were all vegetarian right?
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