Whenever I tell people I’m vegan (or raw or vegetarian), often the first question I get is, “Ok, so where do you get your protein?”

As soon as I hear this question, I immediately know that I’m dealing with someone who doesn’t know very much about plants. The idea that plant foods are somehow devoid of protein is nothing but a myth.

Myth #1: Plants are low in protein

Plant foods are generally abundant in protein. For example, lettuce gets 34% of its calories from protein, and broccoli gets 45% of its calories from protein. Spinach is 49%. Cauliflower is 40%. Celery is 21%. Beans range from 23% to 54% depending on the variety. Grains are 8% to 31%. Nuts and seeds are 8% to 21%. Fruits are the lowest at around 5-8% on average. While these percentages are high, vegetables are very low in calories, so you do have to eat a lot to get your nutrition’s worth. At the other end of the calorie spectrum are nuts, which are very calorie dense and high in fat, so you should not eat too much!

In fact, if you wanted to suffer from protein deficiency, you’d either have to seriously restrict total calories (starve!), or you’d have to eat a really unbalanced diet with based around processed, low-protein junk foods. But in those cases, protein deficiency probably won’t be your biggest risk. I cannot say I’ve ever met anyone suffering from a protein deficiency, vegan or otherwise. The much greater risk, at least in the western world, is consuming too much protein.

Myth #2: Plant proteins are incomplete

Another myth is the idea that you need to combine different plant foods to form complete proteins. The idea was that most plant foods only contained some of the essential amino acids, so you’d have to combine “incomplete” foods like beans and rice to form meals that contained complete proteins. This food combining idea was put forth in the 1971 book “Diet for a Small Planet “ by Frances Moore Lappé. It was a million-copy bestseller.

Unfortunately, many people still aren’t aware that this theory was later found to be false. Lappé herself recanted her original theory in later works that were far less popular. The truth is that most plant foods do contain all the essential amino acids, but furthermore, your body will store amino acids in a pool between meals, which means you don’t need to get all the essentials in a single meal.

Many people today are still under the mistaken assumption that getting enough protein from plants is difficult or impossible. It’s interesting how so many people really believe this to the core. I haven’t eaten any animal meat protein since 1989 (aside from a fish stint in Japan), and I’ve never had any protein deficiency symptoms. Don’t worry about getting enough protein. Just eat your veggies, and you’ll be fine.