The holidays are right around the corner with their arrival comes a series of typical meat-based dishes. For vegetarians, it may be difficult to maintain their diet through the next two months because of a lack of options as crop season dwindles.

Instead of sacrificing your plant-forward lifestyle to a holiday turkey, ham or prime rib, there are ways around it.

Since protein is arguably the most important macronutrient to consume, eating primarily animal-based protein is more practical for many people because those proteins contain all the essential amino acids. Health and wellness manager of JMU dining services Gillian Kelly said you can live a perfectly healthy life eating animal-based proteins and that theres no evidence becoming a vegan or vegetarian results in a healthier lifestyle. Rather, Kelly said plant-forward eaters typically cite animal rights and sustainability as purposes for abstaining from meat or animal products.

Protein can still be abundant in many meat-free foods, namely in tofu, beans and nuts. But in order to receive all essential amino acids or to become a complete protein they need to be combined with grains, JMU dietetics professors Michelle Hesse and Danielle Torisky said. Torisky said that depending on different laboratories' research, there are either eight or nine but at least eight amino acids that arent naturally occurring and therefore need to be consumed through food.

There are nutritional risks if you don't do vegetarianism with the right combinations of foods, Torisky said. Vegetarians need to get more nutritional bang for their buck.

One of the most common and cost-friendly vegetarian and vegan combinations that fulfills all your essential amino acids is a bean and rice mixture, Torisky said. Hesse said beans and rice can become heartier by adding cheese or a fried egg on top for vegetarians that allow for it the cheese incorporates calcium and vitamin D, while Torisky said eggs have been recognized by athletes for many years as the superior protein because of their protein-efficiency ratio. The darker the yolk, the more iron an egg has, Torisky said.

There are different branches of vegetarianism that make different ingredients edible. Pescatarians eat fish, lacto-vegetarians drink milk and ovo-vegetarians eat eggs. These exceptions open the doors for more ways to experiment, like having a milk base in your fruit smoothie or incorporating canned salmon into your veggie stir fry.

Despite this, vegetarian, and especially vegan, eating can become monotonous with the elimination of animal proteins. To combat that, Hesse said different herbs and spices can complete flavor profiles in plant-forward staples.

Basil, a sweet herb, pairs well with cheeses especially mozzarella cheese in caprese salads or sandwiches and with other herbs and spices like garlic, rosemary and oregano. In Indian cuisine, a vegan lentil and tofu dish can be jazzed up with the herb cardamom. Cardamom, also a sweet, fragrant ingredient, typically pairs well with turmeric, ginger and cumin, according to CookSmarts.

If you play your cards right, Hesse said, combinations really are endless with plant-based cooking.

After exhausting your favorite herb-spice combinations, plant-based proteins can be taken to another level by changing textures, Kelly said. She recommended a tofu scramble, which takes the usual bricks of tofu and breaks them up to give the ingredient a smooth texture which can very easily mimic scrambled eggs she said theyre offered in the morning in JMUs dining halls.

I think really, if you are going to be vegan or vegetarian, you're going to want to experiment with these different ways to make these different proteins, Kelly said. You can have that creativity in there and not get bored with what you're eating while also not necessarily having to always have on hand several different types of protein at your disposal.

In addition to protein combinations, a combination of differing colors of food on your plate is also crucial, Kelly said. Red and orange vegetables bell peppers, radishes and tomatoes are higher in vitamin A and C, which Kelly said aid eyesight and hair and skin health.

Green vegetables cucumber and leafy greens like lettuce, spinach and kale contain folate, which Kelly said is especially important for young women because of its prevention of neural tube defects during pregnancy. Hesse said theres not much differentiation in the nutritional values between leafy greens, but darker, leafy greens like kale, spinach and collard greens contain more vitamin K and C than lighter leaves like romaine and iceberg lettuce.

Despite the abundance of vitamins and minerals, plant-based food can turn on you if consumed in excessive amounts, Hesse said. Specifically, she said minerals like iron and fat-soluble vitamins like vitamins A, D and K can be harmful when consumed in very, very high amounts.

Too much of a good thing is not a good thing, Hesse said. With certain vitamins and minerals, consuming too much can lead to toxic levels, which creates a disbalance in the body and can make you really sick.

However, there are certain vitamins that Torisky said plant-based eaters typically lack in their diets specifically, vitamin B-12, iron and calcium. She said a way to secure B-12 for plant-based eaters is through fortified milks namely, almond and oat milk.

Torisky said iron consumption can be difficult in vegans and vegetarians that consume spinach because it has phytates and oxalates antinutritents that can adversely affect metal ions bioavailability that chelate or bind with spinachs iron, causing the mineral to leave your digestive system. Calcium can be hard to consume due to vegans absence of dairy, so Torisky recommends leaning on the cabbage familys collard greens and broccoli, which she said absorbs calcium well.

Down the line, Kelly said chronic issues like osteoporosis can develop as a result of deficient vitamin consumption. Getting a variety of colors on our plates at a younger age, Kelly said, is critical to prevent long-term defects.

All those colors kind of have a higher little bit of concentration of different vitamins and minerals that you're going to want, Kelly said. I mean, you walk in the produce section, and it's a literal rainbow.

When you walk into a JMU dining hall, youre greeted by little flags at different stations that Kelly said distinguish between vegan and vegetarian stations.

In order to prevent contamination among the dining halls plant-forward options, Kelly said the sections of food are situated so students concerned with cross-contact can rest assured that meat residue doesnt get into vegan or vegetarian food for example, Kelly said tofu is farther from the server than chicken so that while tofu can intermingle with the chicken, the opposite cant happen.

Certainly, we do everything that we can to avoid that cross contact in most of our situations, whenever it's possible, Kelly said. In any instance where we have the space to accommodate that, we will.

Its situations like this where Torisky said vegetarians need to be extra careful, but also, she said plant-based eaters need to do their due diligence with the latest trends and findings with the niche diet. She said it was recently found that quinoa can serve as a complete protein on its own.

Stay on top of the research, Torisky said. In order to keep it interesting, in order to just love your food life, if you stay on top of the science and stay open to new foods, then your food life is just going to become more and more enjoyable.

For on-campus vegetarians, Kelly said buffalo cauliflower and vegan chicken noodle soup are some of her favorite, unique dishes the JMU dining halls offer. Even for those with dietary restrictions, Kelly said she thinks its impossible for a student to say they cant find anything to eat on campus.

Dining doesn't have to be something that stresses [students] out or is a big concern in their life, Kelly said. [Dining] can just be something that makes them feel included and part of this great community that we have here at JMU.

Contact Grant Johnson at breezecopy@gmail.com. For more health & wellness content, stay tuned for the A Wealth of Health'' column every other Thursday, and follow the culture desk on Twitter and Instagram @Breeze_Culture.

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A Wealth of Health | Guide to plant-based eating - The Breeze