From an article on my website:
Vegetarianism and Protein Deficiencies Take for example a young lady I was friends with in Australia. She became vegetarian. Now she was cool. She only ate vegetarian things like potato chips (french fries for the Americans) and vegetarian pizza, yeah she was so cool and healthy now....
.... so healthy that she doubled in size in about 4 weeks. From a beautiful slim girl to a overweight, pasty, pimpled thing. All in the space of about 1 month - I could not believe it. In fact our friendship stopped soon after, I could not believe she thought she was doing the right thing when her body was falling apart before her eyes.
Most vegetarians I meet (maybe just the vocal ones) are doing it because it is 'trendy' in their circles or they had some emotional guilt towards livestock. They do not generally do much study and then eat a ton of bad foods, in bad quantities and in bad mixes. Since they do not eat much protein then it means that they often eat more fats and sugars to satisfy their hunger cravings.... ingesting fat+sugar = you'll become a fat lump.
Proteins are also necessary for your bodies survival. There are a bunch of protein molecules that your body needs to ingest. These are called essential amino acids in fact 9 of the 20 amino acids your body needs have to be ingested.
From the Northwestern University Website:
Protein from animal sources (meat, fish, dairy products, egg white) is considered high biological value protein or a "complete" protein because all nine essential amino acids are present in these proteins. An exception to this rule is collagen-derived gelatin which is lacking in tryptophan.
Plant sources of protein (grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds) generally do not contain sufficient amounts of one or more of the essential amino acids. Thus protein synthesis can occur only to the extent that the limiting amino acids are available. These proteins are considered to have intermediate biological value or to be partially complete because, although consumed alone they do not meet the requirements for essential amino acids, they can be combined to provide amounts and proportions of essential amino acids equivalent to high biological proteins from animal sources.
Plants that are entirely lacking in essential amino acids are considered incomplete proteins or sources of low biological value protein. These sources include most fruits and vegetables. A low biological value means that it is difficult or impossible to compensate for insufficient amounts of essential amino acids by combining different sources as with partially complete proteins.
Now comes the fun part. If you have an essential amino acid deficiency your body your body needs to get the essentials aminos from somewhere - your body begins to cannabilise itself. This leads to a condition known as Protein-Energy Malnutrition (PEM)
PEM has the following clinical features: weight loss, diarrhea, loss of lean body mass, muscle weakness, depigmented hair and skin, pressure sores, and depressed immune function.
WOW! Healthy now aren't we?
Protein is a needed part of your diet, not just any protein - a correctly balanced complete protein. Meat eater do not need to worry about this, just near starving people in underdeveloped countries surviving on grains and vegetarians.
Anyone who states that protein is bad or that we do not need it had better get out and do some reading before they become like those sickly hippie types I used to see at Uni, all being vegetarians because it was cool - all sickly pasty and energy less