It’s important to think about the essential minerals and vitamins meat provides, and then adjust your non-meat diet accordingly.If you or someone you know has made the decision to eat less meat, the following tips should be considered. Deciding to simply cut back on meat is not a plan in itself; it’s important to think about the essential minerals and vitamins meat provides, and then adjust your non-meat diet accordingly. The Washington Post recently published an article detailing the drawbacks of meatless meals, and we’ve extracted the three most important things to remember:
- Eat more plant protein.
This means eating nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, peas and whole grains. This can be as easy as opening a can of chickpeas to sprinkle on your salad, tossing some frozen, shelled edamame and/or almonds into a vegetable stir-fry to serve over brown rice, slapping together a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, making some lentil soup or buying a container of hummus.
- Eat more seafood.
Seafood is a total package with high-quality protein, many of the minerals and vitamins that meat has, and other nutrients. So toss some shrimp or a salmon fillet on the grill, flake some tuna on your salad, or mix some chopped sardines into your pasta.
- Eat more eggs.
For just 140 calories, two large eggs give you 8 percent of the daily value for zinc, iron and B6, plus choline, vitamin D and many other nutrients. It is worth keeping in mind, though, that those two eggs have about the same amount of saturated fat as a three-ounce serving of T-bone steak.
ForMen takeaway: Don’t blindly cut meat out from your diet because everyone else is doing it. But if you do decide to, think about how you are going to consume those lost nutrients.
Curated from the Washington Post
