Are you thinking of reducing your meat consumption or even eliminating it? No problem, consuming meat is not essential to enjoy iron health. In fact, the consumption recommended by the Spanish Agency for Consumption, Food Safety and Nutrition (AECOSAN) is 2-3 times a week, since excessive and continuous eating can be related to health problems. The FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), for its part, reduces personal consumption of meat to 300 grams a week.
Whether you want to completely replace meat with plant foods or if you are looking to reduce consumption, what you should do is replace this with protein plant foods. “It is very common for many people to go from eating pasta with tomato and meat, to just pasta with tomato. Salad with tuna or cheese, just salad. When they go out to eat, they end up eating potatoes or more bread for lack of options. For this reason, when we talk about meat reduction, we must always do it in the context of an adequate substitution ”, explains Aitor Sánchez, dietitian-nutritionist and food technologist in his book Your diet can save the planet (Paidós).
“Animal protein is considered complete because it contains all the essential amino acids, however, it has already been shown that vegetable protein can be too. There are certain plant foods that have all the essential amino acids , for example, quinoa, soybeans, pistachios, chickpeas, black beans, or chia and hemp seeds ”, says Julia Jiménez, dietician-nutritionist and author of the book Another nutrition is possible (Zenith). “For those plant foods that do not contain a complete protein, we also have a solution. We can get complete proteins by combining cereals, legumes, nuts and seeds in our diet. This does not mean that they should go on the same plate, since our liver has a pool (a reserve of amino acids), which means that we can eat different proteins during the day, and it combines the amino acids itself, forming the complete protein within our organism ”, explains the expert.
And getting into the matter, we asked the expert for a few practical tips to make the correct substitution of meat for foods of plant origin. It gives us the following:
– Try to include legumes in the main meals . Also derived from these, such as tofu, tempeh, textured soybeans, soy yogurts …, since they are more dense in protein. Seitan, despite being derived from wheat and not from a legume, also has a lot of protein.
– Prioritize cereals and pseudo-cereals such as oats and quinoa , since they are higher in protein than others such as rice or wheat.
– Introduce nuts and ground seeds (chia, pumpkin, hemp …) in your breakfast and each of your snacks. Peanuts, being a legume, contain more protein than nuts. Also in its cream or peanut butter version.
– Nutritional yeast is a seasoning with a large amount of protein. Give it a try!
– You can also introduce isolated vegan protein in the form of shakes or incorporated into your yogurts, desserts or cakes.
For Aitor Sánchez, the recommendations to adopt a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet are not very different from those that would be given for another type of diet. The vegetarian person should consume the same amount of fruits, vegetables and vegetables as the omnivore. In the case of vegetarians, they will have to alternate between legumes, eggs and dairy. Vegans, for their part, would eat legumes and their derivatives in their main meals. Regarding the consumption of carbohydrates, this will be the same as that of the general population, and depending on the amount of physical activity we do. The expert points out that the consumption in vegans and vegetarians could be lower since legumes also contain carbohydrates. Regarding fats, necessary for the proper functioning of the body, the recommendation is the same as for the general population: choose those of little processed plant origin. Avocado, olive oil, and olives would be good examples.
One last note, don’t get carried away by ultra-processed veggies to substitute a steak. No matter how vegetable they are, they are still ultra-processed.
If you decide to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, you should supplement with vitamin B12.
