Go veggie but stay healthy

Just because something is labelled 'jay' doesn't mean it's necessarily good for you 

 Today is the official start of the annual Kin Jay (vegetarian) festival when many Thais, especially those of Chinese ancestry, embark on a 10-day purification ritual, abstaining from all animal products, alcohol and substances thought to over-stimulate the senses like onions, garlic, celery and certain spices.

They do so hoping to cleanse their minds and bodies and while one would assume that such a strictly vegetarian diet would be very healthy some of the food on sale during the festival needs to be approached with caution.

For people who generally give up meat only at this time of year, vegetarianism, and especially the strict jay variety adhered to during the festival, is unknown territory. How do I make it taste good without adding fish sauce? So what can I put in? But isn't garlic a vegetable? So why isn't this jay, then?

The dietary restrictions give rise to a seemingly never-ending series of questions. Doubts about which ingredients have to be avoided coupled with the ready availability of tempting vegetarian treats from stalls that pop up along practically every street, cause many people to buy food rather than cook for themselves over this 10-day period.

Dr Anadi Nitithamyong, an assistant professor at Mahidol University's Institute of Nutrition, thinks it is fine to buy takeaway jay food as long as you know what's in it. And because they taste so much like the real thing, one of the biggest traps, she says, is the range of ersatz meats _ "vegetarian pork", "vegetarian chicken", etc _ which are prepared especially for the festival.

"Mock meat is not unhealthy per se. It can be a good source of protein. However, there are some kinds, such as imitation meatballs or imitation sausages, which are made of konjac [aka glucomannan, a bland, rubbery substance made from the tuber of a perennial plant called Amorphophallus konjac]. This type of product does not contain much protein and can only replace real meat in terms of taste, but not nutritional value. So before you choose mock meat, make sure you know what it's made from," Dr Anadi said. This is a red flag for those of you who are allergic to soya beans, as many imitation meats are made from soya-bean protein.

Two other types of mock meats are generally available. One is made from TVP, a textured vegetable protein usually derived from soya beans. The other is composed of wheat gluten (aka seitan), better known here as mi kueng. Wheat gluten, Dr Anadi explained, is made by rinsing a ball of wheat-flour dough under running water for a while. The starch in the dough dissolves in the water and is washed away, leaving a lump of sticky, protein-rich gluten. Soya beans, by-products such as soya milk and tofu, and wheat gluten are all important sources of protein in a vegetarian diet.

As for TVP, Dr Anadi is of the opinion that eating properly cooked soya beans, the source of this processed convenience food, is a much healthier choice. She went on to make the point that plant-based protein can replace animal-based protein only in terms of quantity, not quality. The variety of essential amino acids in plant-based protein is not as great as in animal-based protein, she noted. Protein is composed of chains of different amino acids. Nine of these (some authorities put the figure at eight) are termed "essential amino acids" because they cannot be created from other compounds by the human body and so must be taken in as food.

Plant-based proteins may not have all nine. However, soya protein is regarded as a so-called "complete protein" because it contains adequate quantities of all nine essential amino acids.

"Soya has all the essential amino acids, in almost the same amounts as meat, making soya protein the nearest plant-based protein in terms of quality to animal-based protein. Wheat is also a good source of protein but it is low in lysine," she said. Lysine is an amino acid that is required for growth and bone development in children and which assists in calcium absorption as well as in the repair of tissue.

Of the nine essential amino acids, lysine is one of four "limiting amino acids" _ the other three are methionone, threonine and tryptophan. The term "limiting" is used because a deficiency in any one of the four will limit the usefulness of the others. Apart from in meat and dairy products, lysine is also found in nuts, seeds and oats.

reference  http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/health/258474/go-veggie-but-stay-healthy