❓Can eating vegetarian long-term "damage" your body or cause hypoproteinemia?

Hypoproteinemia is a medically defined condition with clear diagnostic criteria, usually caused by liver or kidney disease, or severe malnutrition (extreme dieting, digestive or absorption disorders, or certain wasting diseases). As long as a healthy adult hits their daily target for total plant protein — which isn't hard to do through everyday consumption of soy products, whole grains, nuts, and seeds — they won't develop hypoproteinemia just from not eating meat. Whether you're getting enough protein comes down to total daily grams and variety of sources, not whether those sources are plant or animal. A well-planned long-term vegetarian diet doesn't "damage" the body — in fact, plenty of long-term cohort studies show that vegetarians generally have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers compared to omnivores. What you actually need to watch out for is an unbalanced "pseudo-vegetarian" diet — like eating only vegetables while skipping soy products and whole grains, or chronically under-eating calories. That kind of pattern causes problems whether or not you eat meat; the root cause is an unbalanced diet, not vegetarianism itself.