I, too, am avoiding all meat. I do eat organic dairy, though. Low carb is pretty tough for me as a vegetarian, especially since I am allergic to the corn found in a lot of veggie meats. I have since switched from Atkins to the Carbohydrate Addicts' Life Span program, which allows me one meal with some carbs. This seems to help me get through the rest of the day. Don't know if it will work as I just started last week...

any suggestions for someone who must be gluten free? finding this a challenge to be veg and still gluten free...no grains, not even oatmeal. Eliminating all grains even rice because of rosacea and other issues. I can't eat the veg burgers etc...becuase it seems they all have wheat gluten, textured something that includes gluten, etc....can't eat beans becuase of gi probs. any suggestions re protein sources that are not animal? I avoid them becuase of other physical concerns. Thanks, t

Wow, that must be tough. Are you vegan or vegetarian? Can you eat soy(bean) products such as tofu?

If you can eat tofu, I am loving it as a protein source AFTER it's been frozen. It's chewy and has such a different texture than normal.

Have you read Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman? He does not advocate completely vegan like Barnard and others (although you certainly can be). Unlike the others, he limits grains to 1 cup per day - not much - so if you look at his meal suggestions, you'd just eliminate the grains - and beans. He actually has a chart showing...guess what...broccoli has more protein per calorie than steak!!!! Spinach, likewise! Tofu is king, though, if you can tolerate it.

What if you ask a question on the forums of those doctor's websites? Google Eat to Live, and here is the url for the Barnard forum (PCRM):

http://www.pcrmfoundation.org/gethealthyForum.cfm

I don't personally know gluten cookbooks....are there some out there? I know here in my small town, there is a gluten-free vegan bakery that sells to Whole Foods market, and their items are found in the frozen foods dept. That said, I sent my dear hubby to buy a cake or cupcakes for my vegan friend at work, and a small cake was $40! Needless to say, she got homemade, yummy vegan cupcakes. So, it might take more work...but homecooking is probably your best bet. There must be some flours out there that are not grain or bean based....

Best wishes! Try contacting those veggie docs directly....or they usually have their dieticians or nurses monitor the boards. They advocate vegan eating, so if anyone can figure it out...also try McDougall and Lifestyle Centers of America.

I think I learned that from a book a vegan friend gave me. I tried getting my protein from broccoli after that but I found I was ravenous all the time. The problem is that broccoli has virtually no fat, and lots more carbs than steak.

Having to eat a gluten-free vegetarian diet is my own personal nightmare.

Ok for breakfast today I made almond milk and ate a nice ripe red pear. The almond milk went down fine ... I soaked the almonds two days in spring water (because nuts are easier to digest if soaked), popped about 1 cup in a blender w/about 2 c. spring water. Strained it through my little old strainer and it was nice and frothy. Tasted bland but good. Last night I saw you can add in a medajool date to the blender (I didn't have any and didn't need the sugar right now)...also can add a little pure maple syrup and touch of seasalt for flavor. I added a tiny bit...LOL too tiny to make a diff so I'd prob just have it as is next time. So far so good. No back pain. No gi symptoms.
Feeling my way and finding it may not be so hard after all.

Capmikee: "Having to eat a gluten-free vegetarian diet is my own personal nightmare." LOL. Hey as far as I'm concerned this is just a dream.

Terry

I used to make almond milk. That was a definitely a high point of those days. Then I discovered coconut milk.

I'm thinking that almond milk would have more protein than coconut. I do like coconut milk. What do you know about the nutrients? How do you use it mostly to drink straight or cooking? T

100g of raw broccoli has 34 calories, 2.82g of protein, and 6.64g of carbs.
16g of sirloin steak also has 34 calories, but has 3.16g of protein, and 0g of carbs.

So not only is that statement wrong, but you have to eat six and a quarter times the amount of broccoli to get the protein than you do from the steak, and eat over six times the amount carbs along with it.

I think you're right that almond milk has more protein. Coconut milk has more fat; they might work well in combination.

Uses for coconut milk:

Coffee whitener
Smoothie base
Ferment it to make coconut milk yogurt
Anywhere you would use cream

I didn't drink it straight very often, but I used it in a lot of recipes. It makes a great Thai-style curry.

Before I went low-carb, I spent a lot of effort trying to make dairy-free ice cream and dairy-free pumpkin pie. I struggled for a long time to make almond milk work in these recipes and it never did. Coconut milk did the trick.

By the time I started using coconut milk, I was learning to cook meat. From the perspective of a meat eater, fat is way more important than protein, so coconut milk was good for me because of its high fat content. As a vegetarian, protein and good fat are both hard to come by: all the proteins are common allergens and a lot of the fat is omega-6.

I went on nutritiondata.com to get some more details. I didn't see almond milk, so I tried to calculate from the entry for whole almonds. I assumed 1 cup of almonds per quart of water, so 8oz of almond milk would be the equivalent of about 1/4 cup whole almonds, maybe a little less.

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/...products/3085/2

1 cup of whole almonds contains:

31g total carbs
17g fiber - I would normally strain that out, so either way that makes:
14g net carbs

70.7g fat
5.3g saturated : 44.2g mono : 17.3 poly = 66.8g (I know, it doesn't add up, there are a few other things in there)
8% sat : 66% mono : 26% poly (out of that 66.8g)
8.6mg omega-3 : 17253mg omega-6
That's over 1:2000 omega-3mega-6 - not good!
So basically all of the 26% polyunsaturated fat is omega-6. I think 26% omega-6 is really too high, but it's better than soybean oil which is about 50% omega-6.

30.3g protein

Divide by 4 and you get:

3.5g net carbs, 17.7g fat, 7.6g protein

Okay now, 8oz canned coconut milk:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/...products/3114/2

6.4g carbs; no details on sugars, I'm assuming there's no fiber

48.2 g total fat

42.7g saturated :2 g monounsaturated : 0.5g polyunsaturated - adds up to 45.2.
94% saturated : 4% mono : 1% poly
No measured omega-3, so we can assume all the polyunsaturated fat is omega-6 - but that's only 1% of the fats, so I count that as a plus.

4.6 g protein

So, altogether, that's:

6.4g carbs, 48.2g fat, 4.6g protein

From personal experience, I can say that coconut milk is a more satisfying drink because of the fat. You might not always end up wanting a whole cup. Of course that means your protein intake from it will be even lower - maybe 2 or 3 grams. To make it to 60 or 80 grams of protein in a day, you'd have to eat something else.

I think you've way overestimated the protein in almond milk.

I think you actually need to consume the almonds to get the protein out of them.

You're referring to this, right?

http://www.bluediamond.com/index.cfm?navId=52


The Almond Breeze probably has less almonds, more water, and some other stuff added (starch and stabilizers mainly). But it's curious that it has MORE fat than protein, when the almonds I looked up were the other way around. Where did the fat come from, or where did the protein go?

None of the almond milks I've seen have more than a gram of protein. The protein stays in the ground almonds. You'd be drinking "chunky" milk if you wanted the protein. Some of the fat gets released with grinding. They have to go to a lot of trouble to extract protein from vegetable matter. If you look at vegetable based protein powders they've gone through a lot of processing to accumulate enough protein to make them worthwhile. They're usually called "isolates". It's more than soaking them in water.

That particular one I listed was Almond Breeze, unsweetened I think.

I don't think so. Protein PER calorie is what it said...

The example Nancy gave has the same number of calories in each food, and the steak still has more protein. It's possible the version you heard picked an extra-fatty steak to compare to the broccoli. For example, steak usually has most of the fat trimmed off - especially nowadays. Using an untrimmed steak for comparison would add quite a bit of fat, which would of course add a lot of calories.

But even so, I would still pick the steak. I had a little broccoli last night and I'm paying for it today with a painful rock-hard lump in my guts.

If you look at a range of greens and other non-starchy vegetables, you will find that the average protein content is somewhere around 25% to 35%. As a group they have more protein:calorie, making them richer in protein than nuts, seeds peas or beans.

A lot of protein is tied up in cell walls. Juices and filtered 'milks' will likely be lower in protein:calorie than the originals.