August 16th, 2007
I recently got a book on nutrition for vegetarians and have been finding it quite interesting. I thought I would find all kinds of places where my nutrition needs work – It’s somewhat anticlimactic to discover that I’m pretty much hitting all my targets for intake of macro and micronutrients.
Husband and I have always followed the food pyramid, and our breakdown of daily food is usually pretty close to the recommended ratios of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. We definitely get our share of fruits and vegetables a day, we’ve always done the whole grains thing, and our natural interest in variety has ensured we’re getting the spectrum of vitamins and minerals we need. I’m a little shy on calcium and iron, actually, but these are easily remedied by the multivitamin I take every day. Most folks are low there too, so I’m in good company.
Turns out it’s not hard at all to get what you need as a vegetarian. For example, take protein, which everyone tells me will be hard to get enough of without meat. As the World Health Organization put it (and I paraphrase), If you’re getting enough calories, you’re getting enough protein. It’s true – one thing I did learn is that there’s protein in everything, all the veggies, wheat, and so on. You only need .8g of protein per kilogram of weight each day, which for me works out to about 44g. I get most of that before dinnertime. Easy peasy! And of course, as meat avoiders, we get very little cholesterol or trans fatty acids in our diet. (We rarely eat eggs, and our dairy choices are often lower fat options.) And that business about combining vegetable proteins at the same meal? Debunked by modern science.
And did you know vegetarians live an average of 7 to 9 years longer than nonvegetarians? Cool!
You two are certainly looking fit, healthy and happy.
Still, without meat I wonder if it’ll be worth it for me to live to 89 instead of 80…
Yeah, those are the 7-9 bad years of peeing yourself and nursing homes. I’ll skip those. Pass the steak!
Having worked in many a nursing home, I can reliably assure the reading public that nobody gets into a nursing home because of their sensible diet choices. . .