Archive for the ‘Protein’ Category
Good Sources of Protein
Plant based foods are great sources of protein, or amino acids, that help our bodies build and repair tissue. These foods help us synthesize the 8 or 9 essential amino acids that we can’t produce.
This list is not complete and is conservative in the percentage of calories from protein.
31% Spinach
27% Hemp Seeds
20% Broccoli
23% Peas
20% Cauliflower
14% Cabbage
16% Kale
17% Romaine
18% Chickpeas
15% Wild Rice
14% Flax Seeds
14% Sunflower Seeds
12% Celery
11% Blackberries
08% Peaches
07% Oranges
Some of the strongest animals on the earth including elephants and gorillas eat raw plant based diets, building massive muscle and strength on just fruits and vegetables.
The best sources of protein are the amino acids in fresh living plant foods. Bypassing the steps of breaking down the protein into usable amino acids, your body creates the protein more efficiently since the body spends a great deal of energy taking protein (found in animal and cooked foods) and breaking it down to usable form by the body as amino acids.
Other good sources are nuts (higher fat), seeds (higher fat), sea vegetables, and bee pollen.
And in comparison, cooked foods have lowered amounts of usable protein (up to 50% less) since the heat ‘bonds’ most of the proteins together. This makes them harder to synthesize and lowers the actual amount our bodies can use. It also takes longer (and more energy) for our bodies to process ‘cooked’ proteins into amino acids.
By avoiding animal and cooked foods in particular, you not only avoid the antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals and junk that are fed to cattle today to increase yield and control diseases, but you also allow your body to get the essential amino acids that it synthesizes into protein most efficiently, avoiding the ‘middle man’, protein. Animal protein also starts decaying the minute the animal is killed, further destroying the proteins and amino acids every minute in the cleaning, preparation, storage, transportation and again preparation until it gets to your plate.
The other problem with high protein foods is that they are normally rich in fat as well. It’s hard to find a high protein food that isn’t also naturally high in fat content. There are a few, but not many.
Fresh plant based foods are without comparison the best source of protein for your body.
Dangers of a High Protein Diet
Our protein requirements are minimal and a high protein diet, as most Americans consume, can lead to higher risks of disease and other health issues. Studies have shown that as consumption climbs over 5% protein from calories, so do the risks of disease.
Here are a just a few diseases that are associated with high protein, specifically animal protein diets:
- Osteoporosis - high animal protein diets have been shown to encourage calcium loss and make bones more brittle and fragile. Plant based diets have show to increase bone strength and avoid osteoporosis.
- Cancer - Hundreds of thousands of studies have linked animal food diets to most every cancer known to man. Fat is linked in part since animal based diets are normally also higher in fat as well. Often mentioned is also highly heated foods which not only combine or ‘bond’ the proteins and amino acids and become less usable by the body to synthesize, they are also carcinogenic. The FDA admits that all cooked foods contain carcinogens.
- Kidney Problems - Long term consumption of animal foods has shown risks of complete loss of kidney function. The longer term and more consumption of animal foods shows decline in normal kidney function. Kidney stones are one symptom of high animal protein diets.
Studies have shown increased calcium excretion in higher animal food diets. In addition to increasing the risks of osteoporosis, this also increases risk for kidney stones. Researchers in England found that when people added only about 5 ounces of fish (that’s about 34 grams of protein) to a normal diet, the risk of urinary tract stones increased by as much as 250 %.
In addition, so called ‘normal’ amounts of protein (according to accepted societal levels) have shown an amazingly high level of cancer.
What are the other risks of a high protein, animal based diet? How about obesity, high cholesterol and breast cancer?
Where Does Protein Come From?
So where do the building blocks, or amino acids, that make proteins come from?
Not many realize that the protein found in animal foods comes from the foods they eat, they are synthesized after breaking down the foods they eat. So when eating animal foods, you’re getting your protein essentially ’second hand’. Not complete and not from the source.
Can We Get Complete Protein From Animal Foods?
One of the classic and popular questions is ‘can we get complete protein from meat’?
This is a highly debated topic in the health community. Here’s a great well stated answer to the question along with health dangers of consuming animal foods including bone density, cancer and many more.
How Much Protein Is Needed?
How much protein is necessary?
This is a widely debated subject and often heated discussion in the health and wellness community.
In the example of mother’s milk, which consists of 7% protein, our requirements are moderate compared to the publicly accepted rates of a high protein diet. Eating a diet filled with a variety of fruits and vegetables will be more than adequate to meet your requirements. Many fruits contain 4-8% protein, and most vegetables range from 10-30% protein.
Although this number varies depending on many factors, on average, an adult male may need around 0.3 to 0.4 gm per kg of weight or 0.01 ounces per pound of weight. So a 150 pound person would require about 2.11 ounces of protein per day. This is extremely low and as you can see you can easily meet this requirement with any variety of plant based foods. Part of the reason the requirement is so low is that we efficiently recycle between 100 to 300 grams of our own protein every day. This helps build new protein by breaking down the amino acids we eat and synthesize every day.
Most American’s already eat between 10 - 30% of their daily intake as protein, which is high. This is largely an animal based diet that leads to many diseases and increased health risk factors as research has proven.
What Is The Protein Myth?
If you regularly hear how important getting your protein is, you know you’re listening to a myth.
You see, the human body requires a moderate amount of protein. If you eat the standard American diet (S.A.D.) you are more likely getting too much protein, along with excess fat and complex carbohydrates that is evidenced in our quite high and rising obesity rates.
Mother’s milk, the essential food for babies during their fastest growth spurts, averages just 7% of its calories from protein. This complete food allows an infant to amazingly grow by as much as 12 pounds in just 6 months.
Yes, healthy and complete protein is an important part of your diet. It was the first nutrient to be discovered and named and is vital to building, repairing and maintaining tissues in your body. Amino acids and are the building blocks of protein and 9 of the 20 amino acids that the body itself can’t produce is synthesized through the food we eat.
These amino acids can abundantly be found in plant based foods, where the animals get them, like cabbage, broccoli, cucumbers, tomatoes, kale and many more plant foods.
The myth can be traced to two incidents in history.
The first was a statement made by Frances Moore Lappe in her best selling book ‘Diet For A Small Planet’ where she indicated that plant proteins were ‘incomplete’. 20 years later she recanted her theory saying she was badly mistaken (and other research has disproved her original theory as well), but far fewer people read those less popular writings and believe the flawed theory to this day. We do need all of the essential amino acids and plant foods do have them. However we don’t need them at every meal, every day since our body stores and recycles them. You can easily meet your daily protein (amino acid) requirements on a plant based diet.
The second is the meat, fish and poultry industries.
In order to sustain growth and profits in the meat industry, their trade associations promote meat as the only good source of protein. You hear everything from cowboy commercials on Radio Disney brainwashing elementary school children that ‘real cowboys’ eat beef and steak that make them strong and build healthy bones, to magazine and radio commercials touting the virtues of lean beef as healthy and complete sources of protein. The poultry and fish industries also promote, although not as obvious. The virtues of chicken and fish protein as healthy is often promoted through so called mainstream articles written in health related magazines and publications. These articles are written by dietitians, doctors, researchers and reporters often funded indirectly by associations promoting these industries to make sure consumers continue to buy.
So knowing all this, how much protein is needed?
Animal Foods Increases Cholesterol, Cancer, Heart Disease
There is a correlation between the amount of animal foods eaten and high cholesterol, cancer and heart disease. The China Study points out that when there is an increased consumption of animal foods, there is an corresponding increase of bone fractures, high cholesterol, heart disease and cancer.
The study showed the higher the animal protein intake, the more degenerative disease was found. The lower the animal protein and higher plant based diet consumed, the less degenerative disease was found.
Obesity, Breast Cancer and High Cholesterol Linked To Animal Protein
According to the China Study, obesity, high cholesterol and breast cancer are all linked to a high protein diet, specifically a high animal protein diet like the diet consumed in the United States. Additionally, according to the research, American women are exposed to estrogen about 4-5 times more than other women throughout the world because of the way we eat, and American women happen to have about 4-5 times higher incidents of breast cancer.
Lower risk of disease was found with a higher fiber intake, higher plant based diet, and lower fat diet.