Perhaps the most frequent question vegetarians have to field is, 'Where do you get your protein from?' There is a simple answer to this - 'From my food.' The two assumptions that many people make are firstly, that vegetables don't have enough protein in them and secondly, that the protein they do have is of an inferior sort. The first assumption is unfounded. It used to be the general belief, but nowadays it is widely acknowledged that our daily protein intake need only be a fraction of what was once believed necessary. Furthermore, the quantity of protein in the kind of high-meat diets found in Europe and America may even have a negative effect on the human organism (and that's without considering the excessive quantities of saturated fats and lack of fibre such diets entail).
There is some truth in the second assumption, in that few vegetables have the full quota of twenty-four amino acids needed by the human body to synthesise proteins. Soy beans are, apparently, one of the few. However, rather than by eating soy beans or their derivatives every day, which I don't recommend - horrible things - the way to get your full whack of amino acids is to eat a little bit of everything. The key word here is 'variety'.
Adopt eating habits which involve eating a variety of different vegetables at each sitting. Indians know all about the importance of doing this (as a nation, they are the world experts on vegetarian living). A 'thali' is a traditional Indian workers meal consisting of a selection of different vegetable dishes, usually including two varieties of pulses, and a lot of carbohydrate - chappatis, rice or both. Some of the strongest, healthiest guys on Earth have grown up on thalis.
Many of the recipes in this site are for dishes which can be combined with others and a pile of rice or bread, to make a great balanced meal, inclusive of all proteins and a bunch of other things besides. (Us veggies should ask the meat-eaters, 'Where do you get your vitamins?')
Make two or three dishes at a time. You'll have some left over from each, which you can stick in the fridge. The next day, make another couple of dishes and have a little of each of them with some of what's left from the day before, and so on. Vegetarian dishes keep well for several days in the fridge. In practice you can have a couple of days a week on peanut butter sandwiches and still be healthy if you get into this way of eating. Don't forget that putting mustard seeds or onion, for example, into a dish also counts as adding variety. Soups too, offer a great way of combining ingredients.
The 'B12 issue' is another thing that often rears its ugly head when your relatives and friends are trying to convince you to 'be serious'. One common belief is that this vitamin is only found in dead-animal products. I've been lacto-vegetarian for over twenty years and have never especially gone looking for vitamin B12. I can only assume I'm getting enough from milk products. I've started to eat a lot less of these lately and I haven't noticed any ill effects. I can't speak from personal experience about a strict vegan diet, however, but I notice that the ingredients lists on 'Marmite' and 'Vegemite' (which, it is claimed, are 100% vegetarian) include vitamin B12.
I also heard recently, and this would be worth looking into, that grazing animals (horses, cattle and sheep) produce vitamin B12 in their digestive tract and this gets into vegetables grown organically, through the manure that's used as fertilizer. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? We could also get into the arguments concerning the use of manure from ill treated animals to grow vegetables here, but I'm just pointing out possibilities. I saw a site offering information on vitamin B12 at 'The Vegetarian Channel'. You could look it up - there's a link on my 'links to other sites' page.
Staying with the organic thing - is it worth paying more for organically grown veg? My unqualified answer would be 'yes' but I do have reservations. For a start there's the 'where does the manure come from' question and also, how do you know if food is really organic? Because it says on the label? COME ON. 'Consumer information' is just another word for advertising, dreamt up by advertising people and you should never, ever believe them. I'm not saying the stuff on sale is not organic -it's just not wise to be too complacent about these things. Their idea of what they can legally label as 'organic' and your idea of what you want to spend your money on and, by the way, tacitly condone, may be two very different things. There is also the question of the social and economic impact that a particular organically grown product may be having, usually on the producing country. Supermarket chains are not widely known for their commitment to social and political reform and pictures of happy farmers drawn in muted shades of green have their basis in the minds of the advertising people mentioned above, as much as in reality.
However serious these issues might be (and they are very serious) we are digressing a bit from the theme of 'nutrition'. I do have other reservations about organic produce, however, which are closer to our theme. One is that, organic produce, being more expensive and appealing to a smaller consumer group than non-organic stuff, may spend considerably more time 'on the shelves.' Vitamins are notoriously fragile and tend to break down quickly if veg. is left lying around in the wrong conditions.
Saying that though, when you consider the alternative - veg. chemically treated at every stage in its production, from seed to check out - buying organic makes sense. The best way to minimise the risks is to buy local. Find small-scale organic producers in your area and buy from them regularly. I think we have a moral obligation to support this kind of thing too. Imported, out of season veg. nearly always has a hidden environmental, social or political cost (often all three).
You could of course grow your own food. That's the ideal solution.
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