There is a lot of controversy surrounding protein from plants consumption and a plant-based lifestyle. What many fail to see is that plants have all the nutrition humans need to thrive. As humans, we can produce nine of the 20 amino acids ourselves, so the other 11 must be provided by what we consume. As long as you eat a wide variety of plant-based foods and consume enough total calories throughout the day, you are very likely to reach your daily calorie intake goal.
We cannot stress enough the importance of a variety of food choices. If all you eat every day is potato chips, chances are you are not meeting your protein needs. This is a huge mistake made by those who switch to a plant-based lifestyle. Here we’ve compiled a list of three protein-rich dishes. We make sure to keep these dishes in a continuous rotation in our home to ensure we are consistently eating an adequate protein amount.
Tofu Bowl
One of our favorite dishes is our Kale Buddha Bowl. It’s super easy to make and also has very few ingredients. These bowls keep in the fridge for about a week, so they are wonderful to make and can also be made in large quantities. Feel free to bring in other vegetables of your choice. Occasionally, we swap out the quinoa base for brown rice. So you can easily have 20g or more with this meal.
Lentil Stew
Not only is this lentil stew packed with fiber, protein, and lentils, but it will keep you warm during the cold winter months. We like to make this recipe in the Instant Pot because the lentils only take about 20 minutes to cook on the stove. This is a quick one-pot recipe. If you’ve ever had Bertucci’s Lentil Soup, this is what we tried to replicate. There’s little to do. A huge bowl of this stew contains almost 20g.
Chili Soup
This is one of our quickest dishes to make; it usually only takes about 15 minutes – you can never go wrong with a chili! We topped it with a few slices of vegan cheese. With 5g of protein per slice (and if you’re like us and dip more than one slice), you’ll get an extremely healthy dose of nutrition with this particular meal. This meal contains 20 grams of protein.