Myth: You can get complete protein only from non-vegetarian sources…

MYTH: You can get complete protein only from non-vegetarian food sources…

Proteins are essential for your children as they provide

the BUILDING BLOCKS for body maintenance, repair and growth.

Proteins are made up of Amino acids.

There are 9 types of amino acids that your

body can not produce on its own.

They are called ESSENTIAL AMINO ACIDS.

Non-vegetarian food sources like

meat contains all these 9 essential amino acids.

Hence, they are considered complete protein.

However, you don’t need to get all your

essential amino acids from a single source….

Let’s understand this with an example:

Most beans are low in methionine amino acids and high in lysine amino acids.

While rice is low in lysine and high in methionine amino acids.

When you combine beans and rice, you

get all essential amino acids

Examples==

Vegetable khichadi-where you combine pulse and rice with some vegetables and also when you add nuts like peanuts to your khichadi, it enhances your protein quality. That is, your khichdi is high in both methionine and lysine amino acids.

Other examples are-

Idli, dosa, uthappam, handwo-all contains cereals and pulse combination.

Rajma rice

Dalfry with jeera rice.

TRUTH

You can take different vegetarian foods that are

containing different types of essential amino acids.

At the end of the day, you should get sufficient

amount of amino acids, that’s all that matters.

So, the truth is that you can also increase the quality of

plant protein foods by combining them within meals,

so that they form ‘complete protein’.

Don’t worry, your child can be pure vegetarian, and

still can be healthy and strong.

That all for today.

See you next Tuesday with another Tuesday tip,

Till then…..

Take care.

Providing simple solutions for complexities of life….

Dr. Bhumita Makwana

Your Dietitian & Cosmetic Clinician