Doug Kanter wrote:
[...]Take away
the cheese, and how much effort does it take to find the necessary proteins?
Is it still the grain & legume combo that does the trick?

It does the trick, but it ain't easy. You need the right combo of amino
acids, and plants just don't have the same range of these as animals do.
This means that you really need to know what foods contain what.
Grains and legumes are the core, but oddly enough other plants matter,
too, even letuuce and spinach. (That's why Popeye is such a powerhouse.
:-)) If you're serious, there's lots of good data out there. But bewa
there's more junk and danegrous data on the 'net than good stuff. Every
loonie now posts his idiocy on the web.

Also, many vegetarians and vegans overdo the carbs, mostly because carbs
don't have much in the way of amino acids, minerals, etc by weight, so
people eat more in order to get sufficient amounts of these nutrients.
IOW, whole grains are essential if you want to go vegetarian/vegan. (I
always think of aliens when I hear "vegan" - you know, those blue
fuzzballs from Vega IV. :-) Whole grains are essential in any diet,
actually.

Recent work on fats indicates that the wide-spread belief that animal
fats are bad for you is not only wrong, it's dangerously wrong,
especially when it comes to brain development in infants and toddlers,
and atherosclerosis in adults (-- heart attacks, strokes). There is
also some worrying evidence that low animal fat intake may be implicated
in the onset of MS. (MS is genetically conditioned - you develop it if
your genotype makes you susceptible to certain environmental factors.
Food is part of your enviuronment, as should be obvious.)

Me, I don't care what you eat, unless you get all religious about it.
But please note that children, especially infants and toddlers, need
animal fats and meats, and should not be deprived of them. You can
introduce a more vegetarian diet as they grow, but AFAICT a vegan diet
before puberty is completed is not healthy. Humans are omnivores, not
herbivores or carnivores.

The best advice is Aristotle's, still.