Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

Eat to Live 137

Keep in mind that we do need protein. We can't be healthy with-

out protein in our diet. On the other hand, plant foods have plenty

of protein, and you do not have to be a nutritional scientist or dieti-

tian to figure out what to eat and you don't need to mix and match

foods to achieve protein completeness. Any combination of natural

foods will supply you with adequate protein, including all eight es-

sential amino acids as well as unessential amino acids.

It is unnecessary to combine foods to achieve protein complete-

ness at each meal. The body stores and releases the amino acids needed

over a twenty-four-hour period. About one-sixth of our daily protein

utilization comes from recycling our own body tissue. This recycling,

or digesting our own cells lining the digestive tract, evens out any

variation from meal to meal in amino acid "incompleteness." It re-

quires no level of nutritional sophistication to get sufficient protein,

even if you eat only plant foods.

It is only when a vegetarian diet revolves around white bread

and other processed foods that the protein content falls to low levels.

However, the minute you include unprocessed foods such as vegeta-

bles, whole grains, beans, or nuts, the diet becomes protein-rich.

Green Grass Made the Lion

Which has more protein — oatmeal, ham, or a tomato? The answer

is that they all have about the same amount of protein per calorie.

The difference is, the tomato and the oatmeal are packaged with

fiber and other disease-fighting nutrients, and the ham is packaged

with cholesterol and saturated fat.

Some people believe that only animal products contain all the es-

sential amino acids and that plant proteins are incomplete. False.

They were taught that animal protein is superior to plant protein.

False. They accept the outdated notion that plant protein must be

mixed and matched in some complicated way that takes the plan-

ning of a nuclear physicist for a vegetarian diet to be adequate. False.

I guess they never thought too hard about how a rhinoceros,

hippopotamus, gorilla, giraffe, or elephant became so big eating only

vegetables. Animals do not make amino acids from thin air; all the

amino acids originally came from plants. Even the nonessential amino

acids that are fabricated by the body are just the basic amino acids

that are modified slightly in some way by the body. So the lion's

muscles can be composed of only the protein precursors and amino

acids that the zebra and the gazelle ate. Green grasses made the lion.