The Cult of Protein
Our society is obsessed with protein. Everyone is so concerned about getting enough protein.
Any vegan will tell you that the most common question they get from non vegans is, “where do you get your protein!?”
The Cult of Protein
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, landmark nutrition scientist, biochemist, and Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University describes our society’s obsession with protein as a “cult.”
Protein is essential for life, that is absolutely true. But there are two main misconceptions that have led to rampant misinformation in our society about protein.
First, the more protein we eat, the better. And second, that animal proteins are superior to plant proteins.
Protein was one of the first nutrients to be discovered in 1838 by a German scientist, Gerhard Mulder. Mulder named protein from the Greek, “proteios,” meaning, “of prime importance.”
Protein was one of the first nutrients to be discovered, so at the time of its classification as “of prime importance,” it was basically the only nutrient that we knew of. It was so important because it was literally all we knew!
Mulder’s student, Justus Von Liebig, is famous for saying protein is “the stuff of life itself.” At the time, protein had only been discovered in animal flesh, and so it was generally theorized that “flesh made flesh.” In other words, we had to eat muscles in order to build muscles. Von Liebig even went so far as to theorize that vegetarians were incapable of prolonged exercise, because they lacked dietary protein!
We’ve since discovered, however, that all protein on earth is originally made by plants. But we’ll get more into that later.
Von Liebig’s student, Carl Von Voit, continued to carry the “protein torch,” so to speak. Von Voit found that the average adult male required 52g of protein per day, which is actually quite close to the current recommendation by the USDA and WHO.
Despite his experimental findings, however, Von Voit recommended that adult males consume 120g of protein per day, more than twice what his experimental results showed.
It’s not exactly clear why Von Voit more than doubled his recommendations, which was clearly not consistent with his own research, but this is where the myth of “the more protein the better” began.
Von Voit’s student, Max Rubner, who became a famous chemist in the 20th century, is quoted as saying “protein interchange is civilization itself.”
As you can see, the classification of protein as the king of all nutrients and animals as the only/best source of protein is the result of a single lineage of researchers. Mulder discovered protein, and Mulder taught Von Liebig who taught Von Voit who taught Rubner. After 100 years of this lineage of very prominent and famous researchers espousing the omni-importance of protein, the nutrition science field was saturated with bias. Their theories influenced the entire field of nutrition research for the rest of the 20th century.
This is how the “cult of protein” began.
And in the last 70 years or so, with the pervasive marketing arms of the animal agriculture industry, this cult of protein has proliferated to every facet of our society. Everyone is concerned about getting as much protein as possible, because marketing has incorrectly equated an overload of protein with optimal health.
This is how the “cult of protein” has been solidified.
And don’t get me wrong, protein is essential for life. I’m not arguing that it isn’t. But the manner in which it was discovered and investigated greatly distorted its relative value in the human diet. Protein is so abundant in all foods that the only way humans won’t consume enough protein is if they aren’t eating enough calories.
RDA
According to the USDA and WHO, the RDA (recommended daily amount) of protein for adults is 50g per day. This is actually greater than what we require, but these organizations increased the standard so that it will accommodate 98% of the population, since our protein needs change according to our age.
So we only need 50g of protein per day, which is shockingly low. One block of tofu has 300 calories and 33.5g of protein. 2,000 calories of broccoli has 166g of protein. It’s virtually impossible to not get enough protein as long as we’re consuming enough calories.
Bioavailability
And the idea that “flesh makes flesh” is an outdated, illogical, 19th century theorization. If flesh truly made flesh, how do all the herbivores that humans eat make their own flesh? Why are the animals with the largest muscle mass herbivores? This 19th century argument does not hold up to basic logic, and certainly not to advanced scientific research.
In 1914, researchers discovered that lab rats grew more rapidly when fed animal-based proteins than when fed plant-based proteins. This led them to theorize that animal-based proteins were superior to plant-based proteins, and led to a general assumption that more/faster growth was ideal.
All animals must continuously replenish their proteins from food sources. The more closely the ratios of amino acids in a given food match the ratios of amino acids in the eater, the more efficiently that eater will use the food to synthesize protein in their bodies.
The amino acid ratios of animals resemble the amino acid ratios of other animals much more closely than the amino acid ratios of plants. Essentially, animals are more like animals than they are like plants.
Humans, therefore, utilize animal-based proteins more efficiently than plant-based proteins. That’s why animal-based proteins have been labeled more “bioavailable” than plant-based proteins.
So it is actually true that animal-based proteins are more “bioavailable” than plant-based proteins.
“More bioavailable” simply means that animal-based proteins promote more efficient protein synthesis (and more efficient cell division and body growth) than plant-based proteins.
But the assumption that more bioavailability and more efficient growth is preferable is flawed.
As it turns out, efficient protein utilization is not inherently advantageous. In fact, "more bioavailable” proteins which promote faster body growth also promote undesirable growth (such as that of cancer cells and atherosclerotic plaques).
This is why processed and red meat are classified by the World Health Organization as class 1 and class 2 carcinogens, respectively. That means that processed meat causes cancer as much as cigarettes and asbestos. And red meat causes cancer as much as the sexually transmitted disease HPV.
Casein, the main protein in milk, is also widely recognized by researchers as a human carcinogen.
By contrast, the amino acid compositions of plant proteins — always a bit of a mismatch with ours — are also less efficient at promoting undesirable growth.
So it’s true that plant-based protein is slightly less “bioavailable” than animal-based protein. But this is actually a good thing! Our bodies are able to utilize plant-based proteins to effectively build muscle and other essential body tissues, without promoting undesirable cell growth such as cancer or atherogenic tissue.
Incomplete Proteins
There’s also a misconception that plant-based proteins are “incomplete.”
The incomplete protein myth traces back to the 1971 publication of Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé. Lappé was a sociologist that advocated for vegetarian diets as a means to solve world hunger.
In her book, Lappé popularized the myth that vegetarians could only be healthy if they ate particular plant foods in particular combinations that provided all the essential amino acids. But this is not valid science.
All plants contain all nine essential amino acids in varying proportions. As long as we eat a diet of varied plants, we will get all the essential amino acids we need.
Lappé retracted her incomplete protein idea in later editions, stating, "In 1971 I stressed protein complementarity because I assumed that the only way to get enough protein…was to create a protein as usable by the body as animal protein. In combating the myth that meat is the only way to get high-quality protein, I reinforced another myth.”
All plants are complete proteins.
All Protein Comes from Plants
And finally, if we’re going to be obsessed with a particular nutrient, why aren’t we obsessed with the original source of that nutrient!?
All protein on earth is originally made by plants. Only plants have the ability to extract nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen from the soil and air and synthesize them into amino acids.
Protein enters the food chain through plants. Plants are the original source of protein.
Animals then eat the plants. And then some humans choose to eat animals. But the animals are just the middleman. We can cut out the middleman and get protein from the original source: plants.
Conclusion
Protein is such a misunderstood nutrient. Its relative importance in the human diet has been overblown. The original source of protein has been misidentified. An incorrect paradigm emphasizing bioavailability is pervasive throughout our culture. And rampant misinformation about plant-based sources of protein persist in almost everyone’s conception.
Protein is truly a cult!
The bottom line is: protein comes from plants. As long as we eat enough calories, we’ll get more than enough protein. And plant protein is more health promoting than animal protein.
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