Day 24: Surprise- I get all the protein I need from a raw vegan diet!

“Where do you get your ___________?”

Insert: Protein, Calcium (the two most common).

Easily the #1 question I have been asked over the years.  It’s not necessarily our fault that we have become so distanced from our food and the natural world, but when you think about this, it’s a little silly: why would cooked foods and/or animal products contain any more helpful vitamins, minerals, or proteins than raw foods?  Raw food is perfection in its ratios of all of the above, packaged perfectly by Mother Nature for our consumption.

In the United States, we are constantly bombarded with messages to get enough protein, and that means more meat, right?  This might surprise you: protein deficiency does not exist in the US, or in other developed countries.  Protein deficiency results from starvation.  We are also contastly told to get enough calcium, take your calcium supplements!  WAT.  The United States consumes a huge amount of dairy; in fact we are the largest producer of dairy:

Americans consumed just over 30 pounds of cheese per person in 2000, more than doubling consumption from 25 years ago.

Source : DairyMax.org

If the Food Pyramid advises us to obtain calcium from dairy, and we clearly eat a whole lot of dairy, then why the boom in Osteoporosis?  Isn’t that dairy supposed to stengthen our skeletons?  Here’s the easy answer: Animal products acidify our blood.  This would kill us if we didn’t neutralize the acid.  What neutralizes acid in our bodies?  Phosphate.  Because we don’t naturally produce this, our bodies leech it from our Calcium Phosphate, aka: our bones.  So the acid is neutralized, and then you pee out the calcium.  Real great!  As you might be able to see, we have not been designed to eat animal products.  Still not convinced?  Read this article, which breaks down why we are anatomically herbivores, not omnivores, and certainly not carnivores.  We’ve been duped!

The point I’m coming to is that surprise! …We can and will obtain all the vitamins and minerals we need for optimum living from raw plant foods!  Who is telling us to eat more meat, aka: protein, and dairy, aka: protein & dairy?  The USDA.  Who profits from us eating more meat and more dairy?  The USDA and the special interests groups it’s in bed with.  It might then shock you further to hear that our protein and calcium requirements for healthful living are substantially minimal.  Even more shocking to the average SAD eater is the protein content in common fruits and vegetables, compared against animal sources:

Protein Content of Common Foods
(percentage of calories)

Source : The 80/10/10 Diet by Dr. Douglas N. Graham 

Hmmm.  Paradigm shift, my friends!  Dr. Doug Graham writes:

In his book The China Study, renowned Cornell University professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry T. Colin Campbell states that we require only 5-6% of our total calories to come from protein in order to replace the protein we routinely lose, and that “About 9-10% protein has been recommended for the past fifty years to be assured that most people at least get their 5-6% ‘requirement.’”

In addition to the safety margin, this recommendation assumes that people eat their protein cooked. Given that cooking substantially deranges protein and other nutrients, we can safely consume far less raw plant protein and still be assured of sufficient nourishment. Thus, you can see that 10% protein (maximum) is both sufficient and reasonable.

The fact that our protein needs actually run in the single digits (under 10%) often surprises people. Most all of us have unwittingly fallen prey to meat-industry propaganda that would lead us to believe otherwise. Truly, advertising has influenced our perception of reality so widely that the concept of “getting enough protein” is embedded in the culture.

Consuming approximately 5% of calories from protein is difficult to avoid if you are eating enough food to meet your daily calorie needs. All plant foods contain protein, and even if you ate a diet of only white rice, (not recommended) you would still end up with 8% protein for the day! But would it be the “right kind” of protein?

Thesis: I get all the protein, vitamins, and minerals I need from a raw food vegan diet.  I avoid calcium leeching, and other health issues and vitamin/mineral deficiencies that could arise from eating a cooked food, SAD diet… surprising as that is!

I invite you to do some reading for yourself:

The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell

The 80/10/10 Diet, by Dr. Douglas Graham

The Protein Myth: Do we need Meat to satisfy our Protein Needs?

The Comparative Anatomy of Eating, by Milton R. Mills, M.D.

The Perils of Dairy, a lecture by Dr. John McDougall

Study: Vegetarian Diets Healthier in Every Way than Diets with Meat