Diet management is an extremely important part of kidney disease treatment, because the kidney damage (proteinuria and high creatinine) of many kidney disease patients is closely related to their unreasonable diet structure and habits. “Keep your mouth shut and your legs open” is also a prescribed action in the treatment of kidney disease. Many kidney patients have asked me whether they must be vegetarians if they have poor kidney function. Do patients with high proteinuria need to control their protein intake? I also met some patients who spontaneously ate vegetarian after the diagnosis of kidney disease, because they did not go through the correct dietary guidance, so in the process of controlling the diet soon appeared a series of signs of malnutrition, such as anemia, weakness, night sleep quality decline, etc. As a result, the kidney disease was not well controlled, but the decline in nutritional status was complicated by other diseases. How to manage the diet of kidney disease patients is a very important topic. If a person’s diet, on which he or she depends, is not well managed, it will directly affect the quality of his or her survival and the resistance of the organism. There are many misconceptions about how to eat for kidney disease patients, highlighted in the following aspects: 1, people with poor kidney function can not eat meat? 2, people with abnormal kidney function can not eat enough? 3, kidney disease patients can not eat soy products? 4, renal insufficiency patients are best to eat vegetarian? Most of those who have doubts about the above questions have a half-understanding of why kidney patients should control their diet. As kidney is the excretory organ of human body, it is necessary to control the diet appropriately when its function is impaired, but how to control it reasonably is very delicate, and improper disposal is very likely to be counterproductive. The following is a brief introduction on how to control diet reasonably for kidney disease patients. Not all patients with kidney disease need to control their diet! The vast majority of kidney disease patients can eat normally, but they need to get a good grip on their salt intake, which is about 5 grams per day for those with normal blood pressure. Those with high blood pressure and swelling need to keep their salt intake below 5 grams. Not so kidney disease patients can not eat meat! Animal protein is rich in essential nutrients for the human body. Such as: inorganic salts, especially iron (red lean meat), phosphorus, potassium, sodium, etc. more. Lean meat is also a good source of vitamin B1, B2, B12, PP, lean pork in the vitamin B1 content is quite high, and VB1 human body simply can not be synthesized. Therefore, these ingredients should not be easily given up by kidney disease patients. Patients with impaired kidney function can consume animal protein on the principle of “quantity out for quantity in”, and 1-2 taels of lean meat is necessary to supplement daily for poor kidney function. It is worth mentioning that many kidney friends ask me if I can drink meat soup without eating meat. There is also a popular saying “meat for three days, soup for seven days”, that is, the nutrition in broth is higher than the nutrition of meat in soup. Broth does not contain much useful nutrients for the human body, research shows that broth contains some water-soluble substances in lean meat, such as inorganic salts and water-soluble vitamins; there are also a small amount of water-soluble proteins and hydrolysis products, such as peptides and some amino acids; there are also some nitrogenous leachates, such as creatinine, creatine, myopeptide and purine, etc.. These amino acids and nitrogenous substances can make the soup taste delicious, the more they dissolve, the more soup taste, can stimulate the body’s gastric juice secretion, enhance appetite. But the vast majority of nutrients contained in lean meat, still remain in the meat, the nutritional value of meat is certainly higher than the soup. Therefore, to eat meat as much as possible, less soup, the purine content in the soup will increase the burden on the kidneys and induce gout. Soy products are rich in high quality protein and are perfectly fine for kidney disease patients! Soy foods contain more protein, which is a very good nutrition for kidney disease patients, especially those with combined massive proteinuria and hypoproteinemia. Soybean food mainly refers to soybeans, black beans and green beans and their products, generally excluding mung beans, red beans, peas, broad beans, kidney beans and other starchy beans. The latter has a high starch content, nutritional value close to ordinary grain, not as good as soy foods. It is a misconception among folk that kidney patients should not eat beans, equating soy products with starchy foods such as mung beans and peas. Theoretically speaking, when kidney function is impaired, the excretory capacity of the kidneys is reduced, and it is necessary to limit the intake of some proteins. The proteins involved here are mainly those foods with less essential amino acid content, such as: mung beans, red beans, peas and some animal proteins. However, beans have an average protein content of 35%, about 16% fat, and almost no starch. These beans can replace meat, also known as “meat grown in the ground”. In particular, various soybean products made from soybeans, such as young tofu, shredded tofu, dried tofu, and tofu skin, are good foods that provide protein. One way to help you identify whether such legumes are edible? It is that no matter how hard you try, it is not possible to make it into bean paste, cold noodles, vermicelli and other beans are edible for kidney disease patients. Is it possible for kidney disease patients to eat vegetarian? Patients with kidney disease, especially those with renal insufficiency are not recommended to eat vegetarian for a long time, but only require appropriate control of animal protein intake according to the state of kidney excretory function. It is not impossible for some people to cross the line of vegetarians consciously, but the habit of vegetarianism cannot be developed in one day, it needs a natural and gradual process. At the beginning, you can eat one day of vegetarianism for three days and eat normally for the rest of the day, and then slowly increase the amount of vegetarian food and the number of days you eat vegetarianism after your body has adapted. This is very important! No matter what habits to change, will lead to super all aspects of discomfort, if you change the original habits at once, completely do not eat meat, only eat and vegetables, do not know the science of vegetarian, a week or even a few days, you will feel weak, hungry, but will stimulate the appetite, eat more meat. For those who insist on vegetarianism, it is necessary to eat more soy and soy products without eating fish or meat. According to the protein content, 50 grams of soybeans is equivalent to 2 taels of pork ribs. 1 bowl of soy milk (300 ml) is equivalent to about half a tael of beef tendon meat. Half a pound of watery tofu is equivalent to about 2 taels of hindquarters. Dried tofu and lean meat can be replaced one for one. More importantly, soy proteins are fully complementary to animal quality proteins: the vast majority of cereals lack lysine, which is abundant in beans (not completely, but just at a lower level), but are rich in methionine, which is lacking in beans; just the opposite, a daily intake of adequate amounts of cereals and beans will meet essential amino acid needs; using the protein digestibility corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS), for example Soybean is 0.91 and beef is 0.92, and the protein quality of the two is very close. After processing soy into soy products, most of the anti-nutritional factors, including dietary fiber, have been removed, and the effect on the absorption and utilization of protein, calcium, iron, and zinc is not significant, and the use of gypsum/brine as coagulant also greatly increases the calcium/magnesium content. Vitamin B12 can be consumed from egg and milk, fortified foods and supplements, and fermented soy products and some algae also contain small amounts of vitamin B12.