In order to plan out a proper diet it is important to understand all of the nutrients. Protein is a vital part of a healthy diet and needs to be properly understood. There are different types of protein each with its own nutritional value and digestive requirements. It is important to know the differences and similarities.
There are many debates as to how much protein people need to consume per day. However the bigger debate is what type of protein is best for you. To form a proper opinion it is necessary to understand the definition of protein and the different types.
Protein consists of compounds of twenty amino acids. Twelve of these are the nonessential amino acids that the body can manufacture for itself. The eight essential amino acids, those the body cannot manufacture, are isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, valine, threonine, methionine, tryptophan, and lysine. Proteins are further broken down into three types: animal, lacto and vegetable.
Meat used to be considered an indispensable source of protein because it contains all of the essential amino acids. Nutritionally speaking a protein is considered high or low quality depending on how many of the needed amino acids it contains. However by properly combining different sources of vegetable protein one can create a “complete” protein.
Food can be divided into high protein or low protein. High protein foods are those that contain at least 10% protein by volume. Meat is a high protein food but the problem is that the body cannot digest large amounts of meat at one time. Also meat by itself does not easily pass through the digestive tract. Even when eating meat it is still a good idea to consume a larger amount of nonstarch vegetables with it for better elimination.
Generally speaking people need about 2 oz/ 55 g per day for men and 1.5 oz/ 45g per day for women. By this we can see that huge amounts of protein are not needed for overall health. Obviously this will be a different case for athletes but still not in the range that used to be considered. Since the body cannot store unused protein it will be converted into urea which can form into uric acid and make the blood acidic.
The most important thing to remember in all of this is that digestion will always result in waste products and the more complete digestion is the fewer wastes produced. Since the body cannot utilize large amounts of protein and has difficulty digesting large amounts of animal protein digestibility becomes the most important factor. The quality of a protein becomes less important if it cannot be properly digested. So consuming more of so-called lower quality protein foods to better facilitate digestion, absorption and elimination may be the winning point to this debate.
Data for this article was taken from "The Food Combining Bible: Your complete guide to using the Hay diet for digestive health and a balanced approach to weight loss" by Jan Dries & Inge Dries, Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers LTD 2002, Text copyright © 2002 Jan Dries
