Help please?!?!?!?!?!?!

This is a perfect opportunity to educate your friend, she sounds ignorant!
Explain the health benefits of your diet, and she will probably want to be a vegetarian too!
You could also show her educational films such as Earthlings and meet your meat!
Otherwise, if she can't support your lifestyle change, you probably can't keep her as a friend, long term.

It cracks me up- you could be living on Red Bull and Slim Jims and no one gives a crap- but if you say you're a vegetarian, suddenly the populace is terribly concerned that you might not be getting enough isoleucine.

Tell your friend that protein deficiency (also known as "kwashiorkor") is incredibly rare outside of areas struck by famine. If you ate nothing but potatoes you would still get adequate protein, as long as you took in enough calories.

Hi Gwen. It is great that you are vegetarian! Have you ever heard of anybody with a protein deficiency? Really? Protein is found in MOST foods, and it is very unlikely for humans especially in developed countries to develop a protein deficiency, unless they have some sort of eating disorder. I hope this helps!:)

If your friends going to be like that, then just tell her she can't be your friend, say you think your healthly enough without meat, and just shut-up about it, girlies are supposed to talk about girl stuff not health problems, if she still goes on about it after you tell her, just tell her to piss off.

If your friend is more qualified than the world's leading experts on nutrition to make such a statement, then she should have a word with them. It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases: http://www.eatright.org/About/Content.as…

Plant-based foods contain all the essential amino acids and non-essential amino acids (building blocks of protein) in varying proportions, so as long as you're consuming a wide variety of leafy greens, vegetables, seeds, nuts, whole grains, beans/legumes, pulses, and some soy products throughout the day, and meeting your calorie needs - you'll be just fine on the protein.

Some foods, such as quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, tempeh, tofu, edamame and hemp seeds contain all the amino acids that your body doesn't produce and are thus considered "complete" sources of protein.

You don't even have to consume beans and grains on the same sitting to get a "complete protein" - the outdated "combining" myth has been debunked countless times.

See its hard to argue this point because im native american and am a firm believer od "You eat what you kill" but in this situation I guess I could help.
First of all as long as you eat vegetables your ok you will lose some needed protein but you want have that many health issues. Its mainly helping with muscles when it comes to meat. Secondly if you really want to make a point tell her of how the meat industry is causing animal cruelty to the animals they kill. Basically the inject them with chemicals that make it where the chickens are so big the cant walk or breath. This is to make bigger meat quantity. Honestly no food is healthy for you these days. Your just making a healthier choice then most.

(P.S. make sure you thoroughly clean your vegetables.)

Your friendly neighborhood native ;)

Unfortunately, not everyone is open to understanding why someone would follow a vegetarian/vegan diet. In my experience, even when I tell people great information about vegetarianism and cite credible sources, they still don't quite believe or accept it.

If you would like to try to tell your friend information about your new diet, as she sounds concerned, check out this link about getting enough protein and how much you really need:
http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/ba…

You can also tell her about some of the vegetarian sources of protein. I'm sure you know a lot of them, but here is a link to a list of them:
http://www.recipes-for-vegetarians.com/v…

Also, here is a link about following a vegetarian diet from the USDA's website:
http://www.mypyramid.gov/tips_resources/…

If this still doesn't work, just tell you that you've done research on it and that she shouldn't worry about your health.

Sometimes it's best to agree to disagree.

Hope this helps!

Linda from Recipes-for-Vegetarians.com

Recipes-for-Vegetarians.com

It's good you have friends concerned about your health. Yes, you can get protein, but you need to eat at least one, three is better, servings of lentils (beans, peas) every day. If you don't, you'll not be getting complete protein and your friend will be right.

You see, protein is made up of amino acids. While animal foods, meat, eggs, dairy, contain all the amino acids needed for complete protein, most veggies only contain some of them. You'll need to eat a variety of many veggies every day so your body can combine them into complete protein. One of those amino acids, lysine, is found only in legumes. You can explain this to your friend and assure her that you WILL eat beans at least once a day so you'll get complete protein. Then eat those beans.....

Here's a vegan website that she can look at and watch what you eat to be sure you're eating right. Won't that be fun? For your friend to point it out any time you miss something in your diet?

http://www.veganhealth.org/