What About Protein
If you eat spaghetti instead of steak, or leave the cheese off the burrito, will you get enough protein?
Protein is what your body uses to make muscle, bone, skin and almost every other kind of cell. However, your body needs less than you think--every day, you need about the amount that ten pennies weigh, but most Americans eat three to four times that much. There is concern that all this excess protein may overwork the kidneys and weaken the bones.
The Protein Myth
Over the years many people have come to believe that animal protein (protein from meat, poultry, fish and dairy) is of higher quality than plant protein. Fortunately, this isn’t true. Our biological needs for protein are easily met by eating a wide variety of plant foods. The once popular belief that one must carefully combine plant proteins in order for them to be as useful to the body as animal proteins has since been found to be untrue.5 The good news is that you can live healthy lives on a vegetarian diet.
Where Can You Get Your Protein?
The same place strong fast race horses get theirs—from eating plant foods. Any varied diet that provides enough calories automatically meets a healthy person’s protein needs. Many people, including some world-class athletes, like ultra marathon champion Sixto Linares and body-building champion Bill Pearl, choose to eat no animal protein whatsoever and enjoy excellent health as well as top performance.
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