Protein myth revealed

Since as early as we can remember we have been told that we have to eat meat to get enough protein into our diets. That high animal protein diet is healthy and necessary if we want to grow big and fast. If that’s true, how do elephants get so big?

The truth is that protein does not create protein in our bodies, amino acids do that. Best source for amino acids is green leafy vegetables and other plant foods. And it’s in readily accessible form, which your body can easily assimilate. Most of the animal protein is destroyed during cooking anyway, and whatever is left, is difficult to digest. So if a huge piece of meat has 20 g of protein, after cooking it around 10 g remains, and of that your body might get out maybe few grams of protein. Compare this to green leafy vegetables such as broccoli, kale, collard or spinach, they may have only few grams of protein per average portion, but all this can easily be assimilated by your body, plus you get extra nutrients, vitamins and minerals (instead of hormones, antibiotics, chemicals and parasites which might be present in meat products).

Obviously it’s not only raw, green vegetables that contain protein - beans, legumes, nuts, seeds and certain grains have also easily accessible, high quality protein present. To this day we’ve been told that plants don’t contain the full range of amino acids, and need to be combined to get the “complete” protein. It’s a myth. Protein is made up of amino acids, often described as its building blocks. We have a biological requirement for amino acids, not for protein itself. Humans cannot make nine of the twenty common amino acids, so these amino acids are considered to be essential, which means we must get these amino acids from our diets. And we need all nine of these amino acids for our body to make protein.

Soybeans, quinoa (a grain), and spinach also are only few non-animal sources considered to have high quality protein, which means they have large amounts of all amino acids in easily accessible form. Other protein sources of non-animal origin usually have all of the essential amino acids, but the amounts of one or two of these amino acids may be low. If you eat varied, raw plant based diet, you’ll get more than enough protein.

You might wonder why we have been made to believe that meat is best protein source and milk is best calcium source if they’re not. Answer is simple: huge and rich meat and dairy industries has been funding lots of research done on protein and calcium. They’ve spent millions and millions on advertising and lobbying for this message to be indoctrinated. Obviously it has worked, still is, as majority still believe this message. Did you know for example that high-protein diet is depleting your calcium levels via urine and is number one cause of osteoporosis? Not to mention about proven scientific link between high animal protein diet and various cancers. And if that is not enough, think of animal welfare and poor creatures that are first being fed, drugged and then slaughtered by various cruel means so you can eat them.

P.S. Another myth – milk and other dairy products are not the best source of calcium, yes, you guessed right, plants are!

Yours truly,

Former meat and cheese eating monster