What Do Vegetarians Eat?

There are two questions I get asked often - "what's the difference between vegan and vegetarian" (you can find the answer on the website The Vegetarian Center) and the other one is "what do vegetarians eat?"

To me the second one seems such a strange question. Do people eat that much meat that they can't think of any of the other ingredients that may be on the plate? My stock reply usually is "everything you eat minus the meat". I've had some come back with "yes, but what else do you have?"

Now, I believe they are thinking along the lines of where I get my proteins - why they don't just ask that…….
Proteins are really very easy to get the trick is to have a good variety of beans, pulses, peas, lentils and rice and grains and have them in combination. You'll find a list that will get you started on my Protein page at my website or another good source is Protein/nutrition.

The favorite source of complete protein that I like to use is quinoa (pronounced keen-wa), cooked like rice it's similar to couscous.

Most of the time you don't have to be pedantic about combination - they seem to occur naturally as you are cooking, I certainly don't even give it a thought.

Of course, if you're one of the people asking the question you can always grab a copy of the book Living Vegetarian for Dummies - a good read.

Next time some-one asks me what do vegetarians eat, maybe I should send them to my website or hand out a card with this blog post address written on it !!