What is the best protein food source?
Do we need meat for protein?
Can we be healthy without it?
Let's find out.
What's going on this is nutrition made simple on this channel we break down the science
of food for your every day use.
If you're confused about what foods are healthy and which foods are not then these videos are for you
Protein. we worry about getting more, about not getting enough, about getting the best.
Protein is an obsession.
And yet we know almost nothing about it.
So this is the first of a series of videos I'm going to make about protein.
We're going to cover everything we need to know in order to have a healthy diet and never
have to worry about protein ever again.
Sounds good?
In this video we're going to focus on protein sources.
which foods have it, which foods don't and how much.
Just to keep things interesting, quick question: Which food has the most protein?
Is it beef, hemp seeds, eggs or peanuts?
Assuming the same amount, say 1oz of each.
beef is about 26% protein very substantial amount so in a 4 ounce steak, about 1 ounce
of that is protein.
Now if I showed you these 12 foods in order of protein content from low to high and asked
you to guess which are animal and which are plant foods, most people would guess something
like this.
Animal foods being the best sources and having the most protein and plants with the least.
And yet reality is a little different. there is the beef with 26%, that's chicken, that's
eggs, and that to the left is milk.
In the middle here we have peanuts, 26% protein, same as beef, to the right of beef we have
hemp seeds with more than 30% protein.
And on the right we have seitan with 75%.
So am I saying we should all start eating seitan three times a day?
No.
Seitan wouldn't even be one of my top recommendations since it is technically not a whole food.
This is just to illustrate the point that protein is everywhere.
All animal foods have protein and all plants have protein.
The exact amount varies from food to food. it varies among the animal foods and it varies
among the plant foods.
But whether you eat animal products or just a variety of plant foods you're going to get
all the protein you need.
In fact studies have shown that vegetarians, pescaterians, vegans and omnivores all comfortably
exceed the recommended amount of protein. and on a personal note here are my protein
levels for the last decade or so. green shows the normal range.
Before 2011, to the left of the red line, I was eating meat, dairy, etc like most people and
after that I made the changes to my diet and dropped all those foods.
So you can see there's not much change and it's perfectly normal throughout even though
I haven't had a steak in seven years, no chicken, no dairy, and I eat fish and eggs less than
once a year in average, so basically never.
But I do eat 100g of protein, give or take, every day, so the bottom line is, we don't
depend on animal products to get protein and if we stop eating them altogether we're not
going to just keel over and die of malnutrition.
Now this reality is very surprising to many of us, myself included, 10 years ago I would have
been very surprised to find this information as indeed I was when I found it and the reason
it's so surprising is that we are taught from a very early age that protein equals meat. this
idea is all around us.
Chefs call meat "the protein".
Go to Chipotle, ask for rice and beans, the guy behind the counter will ask you, what about
protein?
Your plate is already packed with it.
Here's another quick example to drive this point home.
let's say I wake up and have a bowl of oatmeal and a peanut butter sandwich.
Couple hours later I snack on some almonds.
Lunch time: lentils, brown rice and some broccoli.
One banana for dessert.
How much more protein do you think I need over the rest of the day in order to meet my daily
requirements?
The answer is zero.
The oatmeal, peanut butter sandwich, the handful of almonds and that light lunch add up to
56 g of protein.
That's the daily requirement for the average man.
If you're a woman you've already exceeded your daily requirements by 10g and it is just
after lunchtime.
Now if you're very active you can have a bit more, if you lift a lot of weights you can have a bit more
and in the example you still have dinner and whatever meals in between to go so you're
going to eat more and that's fine, the example doesn't add up to enough calories for the
day plus the protein doesn't get absorbed 100%, we'll get into that in due time but the
point here is just how easy it is to get large amounts of protein. it's everywhere.
It's abundant and it's not a concern.
Now some of you may look at this example and go oatmeal?
Lentils?
This stuff doesn't fill me up.
First of all, it's is a lot more filling than you think because it's packed with fiber.
But let's say it doesn't fill you up.
Great, eat more.
That's exactly my point.
This is not a lot of food, we didn't have any steaks, no chicken, no fish, no dairy and yet it's packed
with protein.
Maybe you don't like one of those foods.
Maybe you don't like broccoli or lentils.
No problem.
Eat something else.
Tons of options.
You're not stuck with any one food.
now whether you're trying to reduce your intake of meat or not I highly recommend everybody
eat more legumes, that's things like chickpeas, beans, lentils, peas, they are packed with protein,
in fact they're probably the best protein source in nature and they're consistently
associated with lower risk of heart disease and longer life expectancy.
And we're not eating enough of them.
96% of people in the US don't meet their daily requirements of legumes.
So we really can't go wrong with more legumes in our diet.
Okay so today hopefully we've established that a) plants have protein b) all plants
have protein and c) they have tons of it.
Now I know some of you are probably jumping out of your seat going protein is not all
the same.
Amino acid composition differs, absorption differs,
bioavailability.
Bear with me.
We're going to cover everything we need to know over the course of this series so subscribe
below so you don't miss any of the upcoming ones. today we focused on the abundance of
protein in all natural foods, we will continue on the next one so stay tuned and I'll see
you very soon