Hello wonderful cook. 

Have you been wanting to eat more plant-based food for a while now but you're really worried about where you're going to get your protein from? 

Rest assured, you are not alone. Where do I get my protein from as a vegan is the million-dollar question. 

People ask me this all the time. 

In this episode of The Vegan Cooking and Nutrition podcast, I'm going to talk about where I get my protein from. This is episode number two of The Vegan Cooking and Nutrition Show. 

Early Experiences with Protein

When I was 16, my mum asked me where I was going to get my protein from as I wanted to be vegetarian. 

I didn't know what protein meant, so I went to the library and had a look and found out that if I wanted to get protein from plant-based foods, not that I knew what that term plant based meant, but that's what I was looking at. 

I needed to eat beans and legumes and grains and nuts and seeds. So my mum and I

sprouted mung beans and ate those and we were already eating rice and pasta and nuts and seeds. 

In those days, I hadn't heard of tofu. I don't think I'd even eaten it. 

Balanced Diet and Protein

Now some vegans say that if you eat a balanced diet, you get enough protein. 

That may be true, but in many cases it's not. All food has some sort of protein in varying quantities. 

For example, fruit has protein, but it may be minimal. It may be just one gram of protein per piece of fruit. And some veggies have more protein than others and veggies like artichokes, beetroots, bok choy, cabbage, capsicum, carrots, celery, cucumber, onion, they all have minimal amounts of protein. 

I believe that you can't just rely on having veggies. Let's say for example, ratatouille. That's a delicious dish, but it's just veggies. And if we were just to sit down and eat that, there isn't going to be enough protein in it. We need to add something to it like beans or serve it with some quinoa.

Protein-Rich Foods

There are foods that do have good quantities of protein in them. 

• Beans/legumes (including tempeh and tofu)

• Grains 

• Seeds and nuts 

However if I was to sit down and have just rice and veggies, I may not be getting all the amount of complete protein that I need. 

I'll talk about complete protein in the podcast #3 because that's quite a contentious issue, especially among vegans. 

I do make sure I eat complete protein because if you look at traditional foods you will see there is a combination of the protein sources. 

For example: 

Indian food, curry and rice or dhal and rice If you're just having a curry and rice, there's normally some legume in the or legume. 

Importance of Protein in Every Meal

When I was in my twenties, a friend who was a nutritionist said, "You can live so healthy on a vegetarian diet," (I was vegetarian then), "if you ensure that you've got protein in every meal." 

That suited me really well. If I don't have protein, I don't feel so great. I don't feel satiated. And I have noticed that if I don’t make sure that what I am eating has enough protein in it then I'll start to get a little bit run down. 

Example Meal

An example day where there is protein in each meal.

breakfast 

• bread and tahini and some sauerkraut and tomato 

  (grain and a seed)

   

   

lunch 

tempeh and salad  (beans)

Dinner

Summer time hot pot with lentils and quinoa (legume and a seed)

How Much Protein to have each day

When I was studying nutrition at Deakin University, we had to do our food analysis. And I put my food analysis in for what I had eaten in one day.

My results showed I was getting 3 x the amount of protein I needed in a day.

I was getting too much due to my portion sizes (I’m a big eater).

 The Australian National Reference Value (NRV) standards of how much protein we should be having as an adult until the age of 70 are 

42 grams for somebody my size

I work it out like this 

If your ideal weight was 55 kg, you would have 55 grams minus 10%  of protein per day  which equals 50g protein a day.

Then I can break that up into three meals. So I need 17g protein per meal

For example, a cup of quinoa is eight grams of protein. I would only eat ½ a cup of quinoa for a meal so that would give me 4g of protein, the vegetables would give me another 4g, lentils  4g and tahini 7g so I am having my quota of protein in that meal.

If you have my cook book  there is a break down of how much protein there is in protein rich foods.

You can buy my cookbook here.

If you don’t want to buy my cook book you can look on the backs of packets or online.

However, you don’t have to worry too much about quantity.

You just eat a proper portioned meal for yourself 

½ plate of vegetables and ½ plate of food sources that are high in protein (beans/legumes/grains/nuts and seeds).

Recipe

Each and every episode I share a recipe and share a Fun Cooking Tip  (FCT).

Tofu paneer/halloumi/fetta 

This recipe works well as a sub for all 3 paneer, halloumi and fetta.

1 block tofu (around 350g)

¼ cup nutritional yeast 

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup lemon juice

1 tsp salt 

1. Cut the tofu into cubes or strips and then mix the rest of the ingredients together and rub on the tofu. You can then marinate this for a few hours or cook straight away.

    

2. When ready to cook put all the tofu and marinade into a frying pan and turn the heat to medium.

3. Cook for four minutes on one side or until brown, turn over and cook on the other side until all the marinade has evaporated and the other side of the tofu is brown.

You can serve this with everything. I put it with Greek salad and spinach curry. I also put it in vegan omelettes and love it in a salad.

Here is my You tube video on how to make it 

FCT

Now here is the FCT, the fun cooking tip. 

If you haven't got cup measures yet, 

look out for the cup measures that are colour coded. 

I've got four sets of cup measures (of course I do). I have a cooking school and two of them are the industry standard ones, they're beautiful. They're stainless steel. 

However, you can't really read on them what size they are. 

I do have a set though that is made of melamine So you can put hot things in it. And it's colour coded. The 1 cup measure is pink, the half cup is blue, the third of a cup is green and the quarter cup is yellow.

 So I know if I need a quarter of a cup I've got to look for the yellow cup. 

Isn't that great?

When you're on the lookout shopping for cup measures, try to find the colour coded ones.

Bye for Now

I hope you got something out of this podcast and to help me get more people knowing about this podcast, please leave a comment and subscribe to my podcast and share with other. 

And until next time, I hope you cook sensational food. Bye.