8 High-Protein Vegetables You Need In Your Diet
Everyone’s going on a diet these days and very few of them include eating more meat. Vegetables have become the key to a healthy diet and a healthy life, so people have been paying more and more attention to getting the maximum result out of their daily greens. The main issue with having a veggie-heavy diet is that it’s not very easy to find vegetables that are high in protein, which is usually found in meat and dairy products. Thankfully, we’re about to give you a useful list that’ll solve that issue for you.
Sweet Corn
Sweet corn has a lot of protein in it. A full ear of corn nets you a whopping 5 grams of protein, which is going to be a huge boost to your intake. The best way to make corn still is and always will be throwing some butter on it and putting it in the oven or on the grill for about fifteen minutes. You could also add some canned corn to your salad of choice.
Brussels Sprouts
Mostly infamous for the fact that almost no child on planet Earth wants to eat this, they’re also a very good source of protein. In fact, next to having 4 grams of protein per cup, sprouts are also filled with other useful stuff like fiber, potassium, and folate. It’s not really a vegetable you can have with a wide array of dishes, but most autumn and winter casseroles beg to have sprouts added to them.
Asparagus
Like their rounder counterparts, the sprouts, this vegetable also boasts a decent 4 grams of protein per cup. And much like the Belgians have their sprouts, the best way to have asparagus is still “à la Flamande”, which means they’ve been cooked in water and served with a slice of ham, some parsley, a mashed hardboiled egg and melted butter. There’s no real wrong way to make asparagus, however, so you can pretty much do whatever and it’ll be good.
Artichokes
Artichokes aren’t very commonly used in a lot of dishes, especially not in large amounts, but they do have 4 grams of protein per large artichoke. That’s right – you only need one. The majority of the protein can be found in the heart so you could even get away with only eating half of one. I won’t judge, they don’t taste all that delicious.
Spinach
Popeye knew this already, but spinach is one of the highest protein vegetables on Earth. A cup will net you 5 grams of protein, but do note that this is a cooked cup. Uncooked that probably means you need to get half a truckload of it. You can add it to loads and loads of dishes though, so having a lot of it in the house is never going to be a problem.
Soybean Sprouts
Time for the heavy hitters. Soybean sprouts, or at least: some types of soybean sprouts, hold up to 9 grams of protein per cooked cup. You can just boil these for a few minutes or add them to whatever stir fry you’re feeling like. It’s easy to pop a handful of these into a dish and get some extra protein in your body.
Dried Beans
The best way to get your protein fix is to get some dried beans in your diet. Depending on which type of dried bean you’ll be adding, you could get 12 to 22 grams of protein per cup. Tofu, one of the more commonly known vegetarian alternatives for meat, is made of very high protein soy beans and can easily get you near those 22 grams per cup.
Lentils
One cup of lentils gets you 18 grams of protein, free of charge. Imagine how much protein one of those lentil burgers you can find pretty much everywhere would have. They’re also pretty versatile in their use, so they’re a nice alternative to dried beans if you can’t find any of those in your local shop and still want to easily get your high protein fix.