My wife and I are trying to eat a little less meat, starting with 1 dinner per week. I’m having trouble finding vegetarian recipes that can fit my desired macros for dinner, which are 52/41/16 C/P/F. I like tofu, but the protein/fat ratio isn’t great for what I’m trying to get. I don’t really love the “fake” meat substitutes and would rather eat real foods.
Any suggestions on high protein lower fat veggie mains or resources for recipies would be greatly appreciated.
Try lentil, nut, and bean based foods. Maybe look up dals (there’s a bunch of different flavors like spinach and tomato).
Dal is a good source of proteins
Chana masala
Garbanzo beans, all day, every day. AKA chickpeas.
One of the best places to start is to look at what vegetarian recipes create “complete” proteins. These are proteins with the nine essential amino acids that our bodies can’t create and therefore need in order to function and actually absorb and use protein properly. Without complete proteins, you lose muscle while still eating regularly. More importantly, you need complete proteins for organ function, energy storage, etc.
Meat, fish, eggs - these are handy dandy protein sources because they contain all nine essential amino acids and are complete proteins on their own. But you totally can swap them out for vegetarian meals and still get a strong serving of complete protein through combos.
More often than not, you’ll find incomplete vegetarian protein sources that contain some of the essential amino acids, but not all required for protein synthesis. However, with a vegetarian protein combination chart, you can start to see combinations of vegetarian proteins that combine their amino acids together to provide all nine. Beans and rice, for example, is a big survival tool since it’s cheap and easy to make. By themselves they each lack a few amino acids, but together they form a complete healthy protein – beans provide some of the amino acids and rice provides the rest. As long as you find a complete protein combination that you like, you’ve got a good replacement!
There are some vegetarian options that are complete proteins by themselves, like tofu, but since you’re not too keen on tofu then it’s best to find combinations of what you do like. Check out this protein combination chart and look at the kinds of foods you do like. Eating less meat doesn’t mean you need to punish yourself, make sure what replacement protein sources you go with are things you actually enjoy!
One last note: there are some vegetarian proteins that contain all nine amino acids by themselves but still lack enough of one or two of them to technically count as a complete protein source, so make sure you check that they contain adequate amounts of all nine amino acids if going with a standalone option instead of just checking to see if have some of all nine.
Sweet! Thanks for this detailed response. I learned about vegetarian complete proteins when I visited Mesa Verde, the indigenous people would combine corn and black beans to get complete proteins. I appreciate the resources!
What’s wrong about the protein/fat ratio of Tofu? You could also try Tempeh or TVP (textured vegetable protein, mostly extracted protein from soy or peas).
Legumes are fine but also have lots of carbs.
Sadly the community is really small here, but theres [email protected] the community is much bigger on Reddit though.
TVP or soy curls is the way to go. Super cheap and packed with protein. Look for them at your local Asian or Latin grocery store.
We’ll look for these!
Not sure if all tofu is this way but the package we have is (if memory serves correctly) 8 grams of protein and 4 grams of fat per serving. If I need a little more than 40g of protein per meal, relying on tofu would put my fat intake over the edge. I could curb this by taking some fat out of my morning smoothie or post workout snack, but an even intake of fat help me stay satiated throughout the day (and keeps me from snacking).
It’s usually 2:1 protein to fat in Tofu. Remember plant fat is different than animal fat, most of it is unsaturated.
With Tempeh you will have 3:1.
The best will be TVP with around 40-50:1, but it’s the most work, because it needs to be soaked before frying/grilling.
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Protein is still better calorie for calorie in many ways, such as increased satiety, and the thermal effect (you body uses slightly more energy to process protein than fats or carbs).
But yes if you eat too much you will put on fat, workouts or not. Also be aware that most protein bars and shakes are more often than not just sugar bombs without even that much protein. Always check the labels
Thanks! I train 5 days/week. This reminds me of a scene in Mean Girls
You can try making seitan which is like, ridiculously high in protein. It’s basically gluten flour and flavouring. I don’t know how healthy in the long run eating that much gluten is though.
Otherwise, soy is your next best bet. Not sure if you’ve also cut out bivalves, they would be a good option if you eat them.
Obviously it’s better to get your protein from different sources. Also, what are you doing for your omegas?
We’re mostly just interested in getting a no meat dinner once per week to shake things up a bit. We eat plenty of fish, beef, chicken, eggs throughout the week. We love beans!
Eggs! Technically not a vegetable but most vegetarians eat them. They are a pretty good source of protein and ‘not meat.’
Peanut butter sandwiches are also a decent protein kick, along with a yogurt smoothie, but that’s more of a breakfast/lunch kinda meal.
Hummus. Hummus is life.
I really like tempeh. I mostly eat tofu though simply because jts so cheap.
I made seitan for the first time a week or two ago and it was really good and the macros are fantastic but I think tofu and tempeh are better quality protein.
It might not be easy to keep exactly the same macro ratios without using mock meats that are made to pretty closely mimic the taste and macros of meat. That doesn’t mean you can’t still get a great meal with plenty of protein, it just may have a bit more carbs or fats depending on your protein source
If you don’t mind the cholesterol, aged (preferably 2 years or more) cheese like parmeggiano reggiano and cheddar are great protein and fat sources. Good bioavailable calcium as well.
What about diary products? There are a lot of low fat options out there
- low-fat quark
- low-fat yogurt
- cottage cheese
- buttermilk
- low-fat cheese
