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SHARAN/As a plant-based athlete, I never lacked protein!
As a plant-based athlete, I never lacked protein!
Vegan chef Jatin Tiwari, 23, part of the National throwball team which won the Asia Cup in Malaysia, shares how he never had to worry about protein.
My family and I have been following the whole food plant-based lifestyle since eight years. Currently, I am a vegan chef by profession, but I have been into sports since I was nine years old. In my teens, I represented Mumbai and Maharashtra in boxing and India in throwball.
There was this ‘problem’ I faced at every place I trained or played – my vegan lifestyle. Everyone would tell me to eat non-vegetarian food to get enough protein. Of course, I was sure that I wasn’t going to eat meat and I started to look for a good protein source in my diet and I found this amazing ingredient – soya bean!
Soya bean has around 12g or more protein in every 100g. It was really easy for me to include it in my diet since so many things have soya like tofu, tempeh, soya chunks, soya milk etc. My mother used to make many litres of soy milk at home every week. I always ensured that I had a balanced diet which included lots of vegetables and fruits too. This diet really helped me keep my energy through all the training sessions and matches. My energy levels were as good, if not better than the other players. I had no side effects of consuming soy and my gut health was good too.
Now I don’t have as much soy as I used to. As a chef though I use it in both savoury and sweet dishes. There is
truly nothing that we miss when we are on a plant-based diet.
