I am an overweight vegetarian trying to work out if this diet will work for me. Is it ok to replace meat and fish with quorn if I make sure I stay under the 800 calories or would it be better to replace with pulses?

Hiya! This is not really helpful (sorry) , but slightly related if Quorn is not allowed 🙂 My partner is veggie and when he moved in, I switched to being veggie too(about 95% of the time) as it was easier. However, Quorn doubles me up with stomach pains, so I can’t touch it. I seem to be able to eat the soya mince, but i find it has a weird taste.I am not keen on tofu either.
I don’t know if Quorn is allowed, but I personally ( and I am not suggesting that everyone would agree) like the idea and challenge of trying to use less processed ingredients. I quite like the idea of myself being more imaginative with fresh food, as for many years I really didn’t like most veg and ate with very limited ingredients. I have trained myself now to like most of them, and instead of making a Quorn curry, I will do a vegetable one with lots of ” meaty” mushrooms, but add some seed and nuts for protein, along with quinoa ( I think this is a complete veg protein? ) i then use the leftover quinoa to make a tabboulah type salad for work the next day too.However this is more time consuming and I have not yet done a calorie counted version. I was going to add ” and not as convenient for sandwich or burger fillings” but you won’t be having any of those (sandwiches) lol.

Hi Kazza I have just started this diet one week ago. I have used Quorn sausages and calorie counted them into my allowance. They are quite reasonable as compared to most meats and are a tasty and lower fat alternative to ordinary sausages so if you can manage to weigh out your Quorn and count the calories, I see no reason why you should not include it in your diet. I have lost 4lbs already so I think I have got the hang of it!

Thanks for the suggestions. I am now a week into the diet. I have got my protein from cheese, eggs, nuts and pulses. I used quorn mince on a couple of occasions and it did curb my appetite. I have lost 7lb and not felt hurry so it is working.

I have found that Linda MaCartney sausages are really tasty, also I don’t like tofu but the supermarkets own lincolnshire sausages which are tofu are delicious.

I’m sure the book said Quorn was OK. As long as you cut the carbs and keep the caloriesaround 800, just about anything seems fine.

Quorn is great (if you can stomach it) but check the ingredients on products before you buy – the sausages in particular have a fair amount of wheat in them which is not what you want. The mince and fake chicken pieces are fine.

Some vegetarian protein products follow Chinese vegetarian ideas and use a washed gluten fibre. That’s what a lot of the non quorn pretend meat products are, like own brand vegeburgers and vege sausages. Not sure how that would sit with coeliacs or how it would affect the carb content. It might be that the carb is what they are washing out and it is the wheat protein that remains. Quorn is made from a mushroom like plant so there can’t be any problems with the actual protein for a vegetarian, unless you are allergic to fungi. You might want to check which eggs they use in the process as when it was launched they were unable to get enough cruelty free eggs, if that is an issue for you. The great thing about quorn is that it comes nicely portioned and it is low in fat, which keeps the kcal down. Fats are added to the burgers, for instance, to improve the mouth feel. It might be that I am way out of date on many of these products as it is a long time since my diet was vegetarian. We’ve been using quorn in the BSD, this week because we always use some quorn products. It seemed to be as satisfactory as the chicken we forgot to buy at the beginning of the week. Certainly much easier to cook! Of course, most pulses taste better as they actually have their own flavour. Quorn is a bit like tofu in that you need to add the flavours yourself.

So , looking through all the above, does ‘the diet book’ say that quorn is ‘yes ok’ on the BSD diet ?