Vegetarians Who Train

Vegetarians sometimes choose meat-free diets for ethical purposes, to do with how animals are reared and slaughtered, or because they oppose killing animals for food. Others choose vegetarianism for health reasons. 

In others, a vegetarian diet can be a positive benefit.

In this article I'll look at the areas of nutrition that a vegetarian diet affects and talk about fixes, work-arounds, hacks and just plain advantages of being vegetarian.

1. Calories

One advantage of a vegetarian diet, for sedentary people, is that it typically contains less calories. Our brains and bodies evolved to enjoy calorie-rich foods - but now we're surrounded by calorie-rich foods, in supermarkets and restaurants, and it's all to easy to just plain eat too much food. Vegetarians run the opposite risk, that of eating too little food.

If you're trying to find sources of vegetarian calories to fill the gap left by meat fats and proteins, look to starchy tubers like potatoes, sweet potatoes and foods like turnips and swedes. All these foods are good sources of long-chain carbohydrates, which means slow-release energy rather than spiking blood sugar. If you tolerate grains well, look for good grain sources of energy too. Quinoa is one such source. Oatmeal is a traditional high-calorie grain in the West, found in porridge, flapjacks and more. It's also the least gluten-containing of the gluten grains and one of the highest in protein.

If you're a lacto-vegetarian (who eats dairy and eggs), look to dairy for extra calories too. Adding butter to a baked potato can make a radical difference to its caloric content as well as giving you some much-needed fat. Cream can be a valuable addition to vegetarian cooking too!

2. Protein

Vegetarians get sick of hearing about protein. But the people who keep on about it are right: vegetable protein sources are worse than animal sources. They're less complete, less bioavailable and a lot less plentiful. If you take meat eaters at their word, though, you'd have to ask how much they tailor their diets to maximise protein content. If they mostly eat muscle meats, you can call them on it with impunity; it's liver that contains the most protein, but most meat eaters avoid it because they don't like the taste and don't know how to cook it properly.

See Also: Protein Rich Foods For Vegetarians

That's still on the low side, but it's a lot higher than the average person, meat-eater or no. The recommended amount in the USA for women is just 40g a day - and most people fall short even of this miserly allotment! Dairy is a less good source of protein because it's lower in protein generally and because a higher lactose load is something to avoid if possible, even if you tolerate lactose well. A pint of milk a day won't do you any harm, though, and yoghurt, whose fermentation process reduced lactose load, is a good source of fat, calories generally, and protein.

If you're vegan or you don't like to eat eggs, your options are more restricted. Sources like soy and tempeh are of doubtful utility - they're rich in pseudoestrogen compounds that mess with your body's hormone balance, though whether that's worse or better than the growth hormones and other chemical gunk that pollutes a lot of our meat is open to question. The time-honoured method of extracting sufficient protein from a vegetarian diet is to match beans, which contain 3 of the 6 amino acids needed to build human protein, with cereals which contain the other 3.  Again, oatmeal is a good choice for the grain portion. Rice is very low in protein. 

Nutrition For Vegetarian Athletes: Advantages Of Vegetarianism, And Some Pitfalls

3. Vitamins

We've got used to thinking of vitamins as something you find in greens. And that's true - but B12 is something you find only in animal products. Even sources like yeast extract rely on eukaryotic microorganisms that are halfway to being animals. The richest sources of B12 are red meat and organ meats. But that doesn't mean you can't eat a nutritionally complete vegetarian diet. It's just harder.

Vegetarians sometimes face the problem that they eat too little Vitamin B12, and thiamin. Thiamin is essential for the release of energy from carbohydrates, which is ironic since the primary source of energy in most vegetarian diets is carbohydrate. The richest source of thiamin is from fish and meats, but plant sources exist: asparagus, squash and even bread are all good sources. In general, the B vitamin group is the one vegetarians are most likely to be short of. Vegans face Vitamin D shortage too, since dairy and meat are the best sources of this, besides sunlight.

4. Junk Food

Junk food is a major problem whether you're vegetarian or not. If you're vegetarian, you might assume that you're eating more healthily than the average omnivore simply because you're vegetarian; decades of anti-meat 'health' propaganda hasn't helped here.

But vegetarians can eat just as much junk as meat eaters.

Just like a meat eater, you need to focus your nutritional efforts on health first, which means eating vegetables in as wide a variety and as large a quantity as possible; then on strength, which means eating plenty of protein. Being vegetarian doesn't change that.

Honourable Mention: Nuts

Nuts are suitable for vegetarians and vegans.  They're a good source of protein: steak is 25% protein, while almonds are 21% protein. It's less bioavailable, but it's also cheaper, more portable, and vegetarian. Nuts are also a good source of fat, a nutrient lacking in a lot of starchy vegetarian and vegan diets. Walnuts are four times higher in Omega-3 oils than salmon; they also contain chemicals that reduce LDL cholesterol and improve reasoning skills, promote healthy sleep and fight inflammation. Oh, and if you're trying to fit more calories into your vegetarian or vegan diet, nuts might be able to help: 100g of mixed nuts typically contains 750 calories, making them one of the most calorically dense foods in the world. Many vegetarians and vegans find peanut butter or other nut butters make a great cooking ingredient (Satay, anyone?) and sandwich spread.

See Also: Diet-Friendly Meals for Vegetarians

Takeaway

Being vegetarian or vegan doesn't mean your diet's good or bad. You can eat a vegetarian diet that powers you on to be a world class athlete: Germany's strongest man, Patrick Baboumian, is vegetarian, as is 4-time Mr World Bill Pearl; but it's not being vegetarian that made those guys great. It's being savvy, making good nutrition choices and training intelligently; vegan, vegetarian or omnivourous, we can all do that.