The guide

I'm vegetarian. How do I get enough protein?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20268 sources

Eggs and dairy make it easy. They carry every essential amino acid with room to spare, and nonfat Greek yogurt, 1% cottage cheese and egg whites give you about as much protein per calorie as chicken breast. Aim for the same 1.2 to 1.6 g per kg a day as anyone, about 100 to 130 g at 180 lb, and put eggs, dairy, soy or lentils at every meal. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours.

Why vegetarians get the protein question

Tell people you’re vegetarian and you’ll hear the same question vegans get: where do you get your protein? It’s a fair question for a vegan who hasn’t planned meals. For most vegetarians it barely applies, because eggs and dairy are some of the best protein foods there are.

The trouble starts when meat comes off the plate and nothing takes its place. A vegetarian dinner of two cups of spaghetti has about 14 g of protein, sauce not counted. Swap the chicken in a sandwich for extra cheese and you’ve added more fat than protein. A vegetarian can run short by eating the meat-free version of a normal plate, with the meat left out and nothing put in its place.

This page is for people who eat eggs and dairy but no meat or fish. If you skip eggs and dairy too, our vegan guide is the one for you.

Do eggs and dairy make vegetarian protein complete?

Yes. We checked each food’s amino acids in USDA FoodData Central against the adult requirement pattern from FAO’s 2013 report on protein quality, and every egg and dairy food meets it with room to spare.

The amino acid that makes the difference is lysine. The adult pattern asks for 45 mg of lysine per gram of protein. Milk carries about 84, Greek yogurt 86, cottage cheese 81 and a whole egg 73. Whole wheat has 27 and peanut butter 31, which is why both fall short on their own. (Soy above is USDA’s cooked soybean record, and whole wheat is its whole-wheat pita record, since their own rows don’t add up. How we worked it out.)

That makes dairy like the one missing ingredient in a recipe. Add it to a plate of grains and the whole plate works.

Here’s the example we like best. A peanut butter sandwich, 2 tbsp of peanut butter on two slices of whole wheat, has 15.1 g of protein and reaches only 64% of the pattern, because peanuts and wheat are both low in lysine. Drink a cup of 2% milk with it and the meal has 23.2 g of protein, and every essential amino acid is over the line, with lysine at 106%. That’s by USDA’s amino acid rows, before digestion.

DIAAS, the newer score, also counts how much of each amino acid gets digested. In a 2020 review that pooled pig studies of protein ingredients, casein, a milk protein, scored 117 and egg 101, against 91 for soy and 48 for wheat. Those numbers use the stricter pattern for young children, and the authors work at Avebe, a company that sells potato protein.

Which vegetarian foods give the most protein per calorie?

Eggs and dairy split into two groups. The lean ones are nearly as efficient as chicken breast. The rich ones, whole-milk cheese above all, carry more fat than protein.

30 g of protein costs about 143 calories from egg whites, 174 from nonfat Greek yogurt or 1% cottage cheese, 250 from firm tofu, 340 from whole eggs and 386 from lentils. Cheddar costs about 528 calories for the same 30 g, more than black beans at 447.

That last one surprises people. Per calorie, cheddar has less protein than black beans: 5.7 g per 100 calories against 6.7. Cheese is a fine food and it tastes great on beans, but it works better as a topping than as the protein.

Eggs are a good example of the split. A whole large egg has 8.8 g of protein per 100 calories. The white alone has 21.0, more than grilled chicken breast at 20.2, because the yolk carries the fat. But the yolk also carries 43% of the egg’s protein, so whole eggs still pull their weight at breakfast. The per-calorie calculator ranks every food, and our rankings chart them per calorie, per dollar and by completeness.

What a vegetarian day at 180 lb looks like

For a 180 lb adult the range is 100 to 130 g and the meal line is 35 g.

All three meals clear the 35 g line, and the day lands inside the range with room for vegetables, fruit and anything else you like. Breakfast does the most work for the fewest calories, which is where eggs and cottage cheese earn their place.

meals.guide covers how vegetarians get enough protein at a meal from the plate’s side.

The nutrients to watch

The 2025 to 2030 US guidelines say “Vegetarian diets often fall short in vitamins D and E, choline, and iron”. They also say to “Monitor nutrient status periodically, especially for iron, vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium, and iodine”, and to “Significantly limit highly processed vegan or vegetarian foods that can include added fats, sugars, and salt.”

Iron. Iron from vegetables, grains and supplements “is harder for the body to absorb”, MedlinePlus says, and foods rich in vitamin C, like citrus, strawberries, tomatoes and potatoes, increase how much you take in. The RDA is 18 mg a day for women 19 to 50 and 8 mg for men. Beans with tomatoes or peppers on the same plate help.

Choline. The guidelines call eggs “choline-rich” in their advice for pregnancy, so the eggs on this page help here too.

B12. B12 “is naturally found in animal foods such as fish, meat, poultry, eggs, milk, and milk products”, so a vegetarian who eats eggs and dairy gets some. MedlinePlus still lists vegetarians among the people at higher risk of running low, and it notes that fortified breakfast cereals “can be a good source of vitamin B12 for vegetarians”. Adults need 2.4 mcg a day. Ask your doctor whether to check your level.

If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, B12 needs rise to 2.6 and 2.8 mcg a day, and your midwife or doctor should look at the gaps above with you. Our pregnancy guide has the protein numbers.

Should a vegetarian use protein powder?

You don’t need one, since eggs and dairy cover most days. But a scoop helps when breakfast is rushed. Whey comes from milk, so it fits a vegetarian diet, and one scoop has about 25 g of protein in 113 calories, 22.2 g per 100 calories. smoothie.guide compares whey and plant powders if you want a shake.

Can a vegetarian build muscle?

Yes. Vegetarians have it easier than vegans here, since milk is the protein many of the trials compared plants against. In a 2023 trial, 22 young adults lifted for 10 weeks on about 2 g of protein per kg a day, and a fully vegan group built as much muscle as the group eating meat. A 2025 review of the trials found soy built the same muscle as milk across 17 of them. A vegetarian with eggs, dairy and soy at hand has every option those trials had.

The protein needs a reason to become muscle, so lift at least twice a week. Our plants guide covers the trials, and the plant combos page shows which plant foods fill each other’s gaps on the days you skip dairy.