Vegetarian Skallops

Fiber has five key health purposes if I recall correctly from my nutrition course: 1) Prevents constipation, 2) Prevents colon cancer, 3) Lowers bad cholesterol, 4) Helps control weight, 5) Wards off diabetes. And the day I wrote the post about counting my daily grams of protein, it occurred to me when people learn I'm a vegetarian and ask if I get enough protein, I should be asking them "Do you get enough fiber?" Being from south Louisiana, my experience has generally been that people will down meat before they pick up a fork and down salad. In fact, many people I know would vote meat and potatoes over quality fruits and vegetables. Anyway, as long as I was counting and am not so interested in counting calories because I am not trying to lose weight, I thought I'd better check our fiber intake along with our protein intake. Sadly, this takes a good bit of time; so I'm a week later typing this than the words been mulling around in my brain.

Last week we were talking about my being a vegetarian, and a patient asked me how I got my protein for the day. I told her it was rather easy. I've decided to prove it by keeping track of what I ate in a 24 hour period. I don't doubt that I meet my protein needs. Most people need an average of about 50g of protein, but being only 5'3" tall, I can survive with at least 10g less.