The Great Protein Myth
September 6th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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When I tell people I’m vegan, often the first question out of their mouths is, “Ok, so where do you get your protein?”
As soon as I hear this question, I do my usual eye roll and immediately know that I’m dealing with… well… someone who doesn’t know very much about plants. The idea that plant foods are somehow devoid of protein is nothing but a myth.
Myth #1: Plants are low in protein
Plant foods are generally abundant in protein. For example, lettuce gets 34% of its calories from protein, and broccoli gets 45% of its calories from protein. Spinach is 49%. Cauliflower is 40%. Celery is 21%. Beans range from 23% to 54% depending on the variety. Grains are 8% to 31%. Nuts and seeds are 8% to 21%. Fruits are the lowest at around 5-8% on average.
If you wanted to suffer from protein deficiency, you’d either have to seriously restrict total calories (i.e. starve yourself), or you’d have to eat a really messed up, unbalanced diet like nothing but low-protein junk foods and certain fruits. But in those cases, protein deficiency probably won’t be your biggest risk.
Personally I’ve never met anyone suffering from protein deficiency in the USA, vegan or otherwise. The much greater risk (in the USA at least) is overconsumption of protein.
Myth #2: Plant proteins are incomplete
Another myth is the idea that you need to combine different plant foods to form complete proteins. The idea was that most plant foods only contained some of the essential amino acids, so you’d have to combine “incomplete” foods like beans and rice to form meals that contained complete proteins. This idea was put forth in the 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé. It was a million-copy bestseller. Unfortunately, many people still aren’t aware that this theory was later found to be completely false, as Lappé herself recanted her original theory in later works that were far less popular. The truth is that most plant foods do contain all the essential amino acids, but furthermore, your body will store amino acids in a pool between meals — it doesn’t even need to get all the essentials in a single meal. So the theory of combining plant foods to form complete proteins isn’t even remotely correct. Of course, lifelong vegans already knew Lappé’s theory was wrong, as they weren’t suffering from protein deficiencies regardless of how they combined their meals.
Many people today are still under the mistaken assumption that getting enough protein from plants is difficult or impossible. I particularly love it when people explain to me why I should either be dead or suffering from protein deficiency symptoms. I haven’t eaten any animal protein in 8.5 years now, and I’ve never had any protein deficiency symtoms.
Plus I’m not dead. On the contrary, I feel fantastic.
So don’t worry about getting enough protein. Just eat your veggies, and you’ll be fine.
September 6th, 2005 at 4:01 pm
Steve, great blog. A question, though: can you reccomend some books to get me started on the path to vegetarianism/veganism? I’m looking for text that don’t necessarily tell me how to become one, but might tell me why I should restrict eating meat. I’d like to start with the basics. I’m looking for something that will talk about the ethical reasons as well as health reasons; something that gives a good argument in favor of a meatless diet. I’m sure there’s a definitive book out there, I just can’t seem to find it!
Thanks,
Justin
September 6th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Read Diet for a New America by John Robbins. John is the heir to the Baskin Robbins empire. He is vegan and a pulitzer prize nominee for his work. John’s book is supported by hundreds of facts and references and will give you a great understanding of how food affects your health and how food animals are treated.
September 6th, 2005 at 4:33 pm
Perhaps the best recent book I’d recommend is The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. This is perhaps the biggest dietary study ever done, which presents very solid evidence that the best possible diet for overall health, energy, weight control, and disease prevention is a whole foods plant-based one.
I’d also recommend all of John Robbins books, including Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution. The former is somewhat dated now, but it still provides an excellent overview of the health, ethical, and environmental effects of one’s diet. The China Study is more about science and health as opposed to ethical issues.
September 6th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
Steve
I have been a vegan for the past 20 years. I just went through some tests and my protein level is fine as well as all other markers But one thing though: my cholesterol level is very low. Like under 3. My girl friend is a meat eater and her level is at 9.0 Not surprisingly she takes Lipitor every day to control that. To be a vegan is the only way to go. Vegetarians are gorging on cheese and milk products and that too is loaded with bad fat.
Keep up the good work Steve
September 6th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
I’m looking into Pescetarianism, myself.
September 6th, 2005 at 4:56 pm
Great post. I, for one, was a sure believer that a person on vegetarian diet would be suffering from some sort of deficiency, whether it be protein or lack of energy. But this post changed my view. One thing is for sure, my mom was actually telling the truth that eating vegetables is all the protein you’ll ever need!
September 6th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
But what about the B12? As I am planning to move into veganism (almost there) I’m curious to see if anyone knows.
September 6th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
Great, thanks for the reccomendations!
September 6th, 2005 at 7:56 pm
Hey Steve, I’ve read you once lifted weights -don’t know if you still do- were you trying to grow muscle? did you? I would understand a vegetarian could, eating all those whey supplements, eggs, etc, but how could a vegan? Eating just nuts -high in fat- and legumes -high in carbs- sounds not so good, especialy for cutting. I once visited some pro lifter web page where he claimed the excessive protein intake fad to grow more muscle was fake, know something about this? None else that lifts seems to agree, thanks in advance.
September 6th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
B12 is easy to get if you know where to look. Natural sources of B12 have been destroyed by our agricultural practices. We used to get all the B12 we need from top soil (i.e. pick a veggie, eat it, get B12 from the soil residue).
Today vegans rely on B12 supplementation. Soy or rice milk, tempeh, tofu, fortified juices, supplements, fortified cereal, etc. Some B12 is found in meat analogues. Also, sea vegetables contain B12 but some say those sources are not as readily absorbed by humans, so it’s best not to rely on them.
The body needs very little B12, a years worth wouldn’t even fill a thimble, they say. And there are those who say the body will produce its own B12.
It’s so easy to get 100% of the RDA simply by eating fortified foods that I don’t give it too much thought anymore myself.
September 6th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
Steve, great blog and congratulations for not getting commercial in sharing the personal growth tips.
One of the best sites that I know of with ethical reasons for vegetarinism and lots of essays and quotations (and most important, some wonderful vege recipes!) :
http://www.kurma.net/essays/index.html
Quotations:
http://www.kurma.net/vegetarianism/index.html
Your 2 articles on rising early in morning are great! Incidentally this site also has a wonderful essay on “why” rising early in the morning is great with personal experiences of the author shared.
September 6th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
@Guillermo: I still do weight training on occasion, but not as much as I used to. I gained about 10 pounds of muscle in less than a year when I was more active at it. I’m not a bodybuilder though. I do weight training to maintain a degree of functional strength. I’m happy to maintain the ability to do 30 push-ups. I’m more into endurance exercises like running and biking.
One thing I noticed when doing weight training is that as a vegan my lifting endurance is much better than it was when I ate meat. So I can work out longer and harder. I used to do 2.5-hour workouts. But I noticed the biggest boost in endurance exercises like running.
Supplements and protein bars and shakes are entirely unnecessary and unhealthful. Take a hint from Brian Maxwell, the founder of Powerbar, who dropped dead of a heart attack at age 51. His company was sold to Nestle for $375 million, a company which uses more than 2.6 billion (yes, billion) pounds of sugar per year. Think your health is foremost on their mind?
Protein powders and shakes are about money and marketing, not health. Last time I checked, virtually all of the major muscle magazines were owned by supplement makers. The information they contain thus has a heavy pro-supplement bias.
Whey protein is among the more disgusting things you can put in your body. It’s illegal to dump into sewers because it’s 200x more toxic to water supplies than raw sewage, so instead they’ve engineered a way to feed the stuff to humans. And with clever marketing, people actually buy that junk and think it’s doing them some good. Most people who consume it don’t even know where it comes from or how it came to be developed and marketed. They buy it purely because of the marketing buzz with little or no knowledge of what it actually is.
Engineered nutrition isn’t. It isn’t intelligently engineered, and it isn’t nutritious. Human beings simply don’t have the technology yet to achieve the proper nutrient balances that nature has. Digestion is an extremely complex and delicate process, and trying to out-engineer an apple or a carrot isn’t yet possible. You can’t merely separate out macronutrients and consume them in an unbalanced manner without negative health consequences. The China Study has some great info on why this is so.
I remember reading a story about a guy who won the Body for Life championship, but he was disqualified because he didn’t use any EAS supplements. Instead he ate a raw vegan diet. Marketers of these products protect their own interests — they have way too much money at stake to be receptive to people and information which threatens their cashflow.
If you’re curious you can do a Google search on “vegan bodybuilding” to find a number sites on vegan bodybuilders. Jack LaLane was a vegan, for instance.
I think part of the reason you don’t see more vegan bodybuilders is that there just aren’t that many vegans with an interest in it. The last estimate I saw was that about 0.2% of Americans are vegan, so that’s a fairly small percentage of the overall population, only 1 out of every 500 people. Chances are pretty good that among the people you see weight training in a gym, none are vegan.
September 7th, 2005 at 2:46 am
> Take a hint from Brian Maxwell,
> the founder of Powerbar, who
> dropped dead of a heart attack
> at age 51.
I don’t know who he is, but ONE case means nothing. If one has bad genetics, he or she can eat right and exercise, and still “drop dead” at an young age.
One of my professors at university “dropped dead” at 48 with stroke, in spite of the fact that he was a health fanatic. In his family many people had heart problems in their youth.
Bodybuilders with huge muscles usually have heart problems, just like people with huge bellies. This happens because muscle makes the heart work a lot harder even while resting.
However, I’m not advocating PowerBars (I don’t even know what they are) or other chemical foods.
September 7th, 2005 at 2:52 am
While I agree that a vegan diet is much healthier than the average American meat and processed food diet, I would like to bring up something that a lot of people aren’t aware of. Many vegans and vegetarians consume a fair amount of soy products. Soy is known to be toxic and must be heavily processed to make it safe for human consumption. The processing itself is just as toxic as the soy is. I can’t digest soy at all. It makes me very sick. Here are some sources if you’d like to look into them.
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/soy.htm
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/soydangers.html
There are many other articles on the net about this too. Just do a google search on it.
September 7th, 2005 at 6:15 am
I’d like to point out a couple of facts:
1) There are plenty of animals that can be classified as vegetarians and vegans (i.e. herbivores). They appear to be perfectly healthy and do not suffer from problems associated with protein deficiency.
Regarding Lisa’s comments and the articles she linked:
2) Soy foods, along with rice, are a staple of many Asian diets. This consists primarily of soybeans, tofu, and soy drinks. Milk and other traditional dairy products were, up until recently, rarely available and consumed. This is first-hand observation, as I grew up in Taiwan and have travelled to China.
3) People in the more developed Asian countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea all have life expectancies that are the same as or higher than the U.S (74+). Other asian countries like China and Thailand have slightly lower expectancies (68+).
Reasonable conclusions that can be drawn are:
1. It is not necessary to eat meat (and/or dairy foods) to be healthy.
2. While soy may increase your risk for certain health problems, it is not as dramatic as those articles would lead you to believe.
Regarding the articles themselves:
Additionally, the articles contained numerous flaws in logic. In one article, the claim is that soy products are a miniscule percentage of the Asian diet. The article supports this claim by observing that soy products, in an area of China, account for 1.5% of the caloric intake, in comparison to pork at 65%.
A direct comparison of calories is invalid. Soy consists of carbohydrates and proteins, which contribute about 4 calories per gram. Pork consists of proteins and fats, the latter of which contribute 9 calories. Thus equal amounts of soy and pork do not have equal calories.
In addition, many vegetables and fruits are rich in nutrients and have relatively little calories. Thus, it is not necessary for soy (and other fruits and vegetables) to have a dominant contribution calorie-wise.
September 7th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Children require two additional amino acids not required by adults (histidine and arginine). Are these readily available in a vegan diet? (Genuine question…!)
I guess I’m suggesting that extra care must be taken when taking a diet that has been found to be suitable for adults and applying it to kids…
September 8th, 2005 at 6:01 am
Dr. Spock was updating his book on childcare when he passed away. One of the last things he revised in his book on the care and feeding of children was that he recommended all children be raised on a vegan diet, and felt it was the healthiest diet for children.
Great care is taken by vegan parents in planning their children’s diet.
September 14th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Erin says: “Great care is taken by vegan parents in planning their children’s diet. ”
@Erin… *That’s* the understatement of the year! ;>)
September 25th, 2005 at 4:22 am
So is soy protein powder ok for you? I’ve never trusted whey, despite the extreme amount of difficulty ive had in trying to find references which put forth its hazard to health. Still, id really like a protein powder type to consume in order to fill in for occasionally missed meal.
Thanks