 I want to talk briefly about dietary proteins or the proteins that are in the foods we eat. Now if you're raising children you're probably aware or you've probably heard that proteins are a really important part of a balanced diet because they form sort of the building blocks of our children's growing bodies. And an example of that is the fact that protein makes up a large portion of the muscle in our children's bodies and our own. But proteins also play a whole bunch of other important roles in our bodies and our children's bodies. So for example when we get sick our immune system is activated and I don't know why my mother used to always make me wear a scarf when I had a cold, but so immune function proteins are a very important part of that whole system. And then proteins act as transporters in a variety of different roles in the body. Proteins also help us maintain the right fluid distribution in our bodies so the fluid stays where it should be because of the fact that the proteins keep it where it should be. So if we're thinking of proteins as the building blocks of our children's bodies then we can think of amino acids as the building blocks of the proteins. There are 20 different kinds of amino acids and we can actually make a lot of them but there are nine of them we call essential because we have to get these nine from the foods that we eat. Foods that are rich in protein you probably already know a lot of these but usually we think of the first thing we think of are animal sources of protein things like eggs and chicken red meat and fish. Dairy products are also a good source of protein things like milk and cheese and yogurt but there are also many vegetable sources of protein and those are things like tofu or nuts or beans and other legumes like lentils. The important thing to note is that the animal sources of protein tend to be complete that means that they contain all of the nine essential amino acids in sufficient amounts to support growth and repair and maintenance of our children's bodies whereas the non meat sources for example the dairy and the vegetarian sources of protein tend to be incomplete so they might contain all of the essential amino acids but usually not in sufficient amounts to support growth if they're eaten by themselves but here's the trick if you combine vegetarian sources of protein with other foods then you can end up with a meal that provides a complete set of amino acids so increasing the variety is the key and some of these dishes are actually the traditional foods that we think of like Mexican beans and rice or Indian dal and rice these foods naturally complement each other and provide you with a complete set of amino acids as with all diets variety is the key to a healthy vegetarian diet