Can you pass the protein? I’ll have a little protein with that. I’m dragging a little, I think I need some protein. I’m really trying to bulk up, what are you eating for your protein?

Okay, I admit I was of the same mindset. I once recommended “one serving of protein and one serving of carbohydrate with every meal.” I lost 50 lbs on that advice and yet when challenged by a 11 year old girl with a simple question my “belief system” was stopped in it’s tracks. I took biochemistry in undergraduate and graduate school. I worked in the Biophysics Branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

While there, I even participated in research on protein crystal growth. We wanted to grow these crystals in the quiescent environment of microgravity (weightlessness) to determine the 3D structure – a lock and key approach to the many complex biological systems sustaining life.  Back then I studied the growth of hen egg-white lysozyme and also had my blood drawn weekly to extract hemoglobin to developed liquid-liquid chromatography techniques to resolve separation of from other model proteins like horseradish peroxidase and whale myoglobin.

My goal of telling you that is not to establish credibility or to boast. It’s for you to consider after we go through what should have been an obvious understanding to anyone that has studied biochemistry or protein chemistry in detail. It’s to demonstrate just how profoundly ignorant EVERYONE seems to be about this subject when it comes to food. I’m as guilty of it as anyone.  It’s as if there is a mysterious wall put up and we all just blindly follow the common explanation in a trance marching one by one over a cliff.

I had all of the information and background necessary and could not answer the simple question from that 11 year old girl on the spot:

“if you’re eating beef for protein, where do cows get protein, because they eat grass?”

I honestly couldn’t completely answer the question. I left that day back in 2009 and headed to attend my first TEDMED conference. There I met some of the most amazing scientists from  Nobel prize winning Biochemist, Kary Mullis, to Apple Co-Founder, Steve Wozniak. The list goes on and among that list was Cardiologist, Dr Dean Ornish and his wife, Anne. They’ve been involved in helping heart patients for years. His work has been featured and ridiculed, but it’s never been disproven. They run a successful practice in beautiful Sausalito California and were even named the 2012 top heart-healthy diet by U.S. News and World Report a few weeks ago.

TEDMED is about being vulnerable and asking questions. I’d been working on lowering my total cholesterol. It started at 240 and had come down to 220 with diet, exercise, and weight loss. I had a debate with a female, “rock-star” friend in late 2008 that convinced me to try Pescetarian (fish, dairy, and eggs only).  This did result in a change in my cholesterol taking it from 220 to 209.  My  “protein” was reduced to dairy (mostly yogurt and occasional cheese) and Fish (mostly salmon) – no “red meat” and no chicken.

Dean was quite clear, “Ray, cut the dairy and limit the servings of fish until you reach your goal and then, if you want, you can add some fish back, but it’s not necessary. I would steer clear of the dairy.”

Crap, I LOVE yogurt. I LOVE cheese. I was drinking WHEY “protein supplements.” Additionally, I LOVE eggs, but stick to egg whites. You know, I like lamb with mint sauce, but I’m a scientist and quite frankly I had never even considered eliminating ALL animal products.

This brought me full circle to that question posed by this very bright 11 year old girl in California: where would I get my “protein?”

Bohemian like you..

Dean didnt say it, but I was thinking it. No, not the V-word. Eat vegan? AYFKM? How would I get my protein? Wow, do I need to mix up vegetable protein sources to get complete protein?  I don’t want anyone to jump to conspiracy theories. I have mentioned I ate a completely vegan for fourteen months (for the record, a year after my 50 weight loss with using cold exposure) as a self-experiment and I can’t explain away the results:

My total cholesterol dropped to 135.

It was a self-test no different than the work on mild cold stress. I’m not here to simply “advocate veganism,” nor am I particularly motivated by pushing animal rights. I’ve hunted and I grew up with 200 head of cattle on our family farm. I am not a “reformed meat eater,” but a scientist that wants to understand the basic facts about nutrition. I am fascinated by what happens on a “plant-based diet” and I lived it completely for 14 months, so I do understand it – the difficulties, traveling, activist agendas, and ridicule. It was quite clear that I saw results with a plant-based diet that simply never happened when I was eating meat and dairy. Even my adult acne (mainly on my back and triceps) completely vanished.

Have I offended everyone yet?

My motivation is to understand why the explanation of the food I eat was clashing with what my text books taught, but most importantly this question from an 11 year old girl REALLY puzzled me. After all, some of the biggest animals, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephants, elk and even my own “protein” sources (cows, pigs, lambs and chickens), are all herbivores. Big fish eat little fish, but what do little fish eat?

I am driven by understanding the energy. We must follow the thermodynamics, because I don’t believe for one minute that the second law is wrong. To understand what I learned, I am going to have back up a little and help you learn, or refresh your memory, on the fundamentals of proteins in biochemistry. Let’s learn about proteins, but we’re not talking about Turkey or Tofu. We are going to discuss REAL protein not a classification for food.

Protein: it’s part of a complete breakfast.

Remember when I outlined carbohydrates? Do you recall that starch (bake potato) and cellulose (e.g. wood fiber) are the same thing: long chains of glucose or sugar? When we digest starch we break it down into units of glucose. The same is true when termites eat wood. We discussed long and short chained fatty acids, which also get broken down.

The energy in ALL of these molecules are in the bonds that hold them together. For example, fiber doesn’t have calories, because you don’t have the enzyme to break the beta-linkage between the glucose. Bacteria in the rumen (a stomach) of a cow CAN do it. The bacteria get the energy from breaking down the fiber and then the cow absorbs the resulting glucose. A baby calf grows 600-800 lbs in a year on grass we can’t digest.

Protein is also made up of a fundamental unit called an amino acid (see figure). These amino acids are the building blocks of all proteins from the “meat” we eat to enzymes, specialized proteins like amylase and pepsin, we used to break down food into absorbable nutrients. Scientists call these large strings of amino acids or glucose (as in starch/fiber) macromolecules. Plants, fungus, animals and bacteria – all living things – depend on macromolecules. Even a non-living virus is composed of genetic material and a protein coat.

A single cell contains between 100,000 and 1,000,000 different kinds of molecules and a little over half of these are macromolecules such as protein, nucleic acids (RNA/DNA) and polysaccharides (carbohydrates)

For today, understand that protein is to an amino acid as Starch is to glucose (sugar). Our body doesn’t need starch or protein. Our body needs glucose and amino acids. We don’t bolt  oyster protein onto our biceps after we slurp them down. Equally important is that pasta isn’t shoved into a marathon runner’s quads when he carb-loads before a race.

Digestion (we’ll study this further after finishing protein) breaks down these macromolecules from the plants and animals we ingest and it is the base units – the amino acids and sugars – that are then reassembled by our body into useful macromolecules. Protein is synthesize from amino acids in ribosomes of the cell cytoplasm and glycogen (remember it’s the animal version of “starch”) is manufactured primarily in the liver and muscle tissue from glucose in the blood.

Do you see the big picture here? We take in this complex food, with all the proteins, carbohydrates and fat contained within, and then it is completely broken down to its individual components (e.g. amino acids and glucose) during digestion.  At that point your body creates the specific macromolecule it NEEDS (proteins and glycogen) from these little lego-blocks.

This is indisputable and yet our idea of eating “protein, carbs and fat” does not really capture this at all. What REALLY is happening at the most basic level is:

1) The body needs ENERGY (carbohydrate, fat or protein are all used) to keep warm, move, build tissue, activate the many biochemical reactions of life
2) The body needs NUTRIENTS (amino acids, vitamins, phytochemicals and minerals) for components/catalysts (lego blocks) to create the 50,000-500,000 macromolecules that form each cell in your body.

The confusion comes in because dieting, particularly weight loss, is about minimizing macronutrient energy consumption (fuel), while continuing to provide sufficient micronutrients (service) for repair and function. It’s further complicated by the fact that protein is both a source of amino acid nutrients AND can be used as a back up fuel.

Lego of protein to understand

The best thing you can do, and I am not splitting hairs here, is to substitute the words “amino acids” every time you say, I need “protein.” Chances are you don’t “need” it, but at least it will help remind you what your body really needs. You likely don’t crave it at all – it’s a myth. The body does not store amino acids – cells grab them from the blood stream all the time. Our body needs 20 different amino acids to build all proteins and half, the 10 nonessential amino acids, our body manufactures without the need to ingest. The other half, 10 indispensable or essential amino acids, we must ingest in our food. The truth is, whether a body builder or growing child, you don’t need “protein” at all. You need amino acids so that the body can synthesize or manufacture its OWN protein.

Plant cells are made up of proteins as well. There is nothing more “plantish” then chlorophyll (the green photosynthesis lifeblood of leaves) and each plant cell contains the complex organic molecule chlorophyll along with MANY proteins. Insulin is a protein. Milk casein is a protein. Wheat gluten is a protein. Amylase is a protein. Egg whites are about 10% protein (13 different kinds, balance is water). Some are allergic to bee venom proteins. We all react to protein neurotoxins in snake venom bites. If you are allergic to pollen, strawberries, shellfish or cats…your body is reacting to PROTEINS.

Our body NEEDS amino acids, but it is set up to DEFEND against foreign protein. The entire immune system is based on recognition of protein which cloak a virus, attacking and then eliminating identified invaders from the body. HIV is a particularly difficult virus because it’s protein coat goes through a change as new copies are produced – like trying to chase a criminal with a mug shot that changes after each crime. Autoimmune diseases is simply when our immune systems starts think “us” is “them.”  It goes on a rant – attacking your own protein and destroying vital biological function.

Protein: useful in journal articles, useless for menus

The body and it’s ability to produce  unimmaginably complex proteins that literally create life is astonishing and we all should know better than to trivialize it. Scientists all know that we don’t “need to manage protein” in our diet and yet I was guilty of the same psychobabble as the rest of them. It was a convenient way of categorizing food that has reached it’s limit.  We don’t have to use this very imprecise word, protein, quoined in 1838.  It even confuses physicians and most nutritionists. We all just want to know what to eat and yet our NEW government plate no longer says “meat,” because that is simply not true and so they have gone in reverse semantically and now say protein.

On the next post, I will delve more into protein and continue to give you a new way to think about it. The answers will be obvious. Until then, please take a look at this amazing video, originally produced by a world-renowned medical illustrator that happens follows this blog.

Hi-res narrated version here: Harvard Multimedia site. 

 

Perhaps you too will see the astonishing beauty in the complexity of protein in all life. If you are familiar with cell biology, maybe you’ll even recognize some of the many chemical reactions that keep us alive. Make no mistake about it – no one that truly thinks about it would EVER ask: So, where are you getting your protein?  Protein is ubiquitous in everything we eat. We’ll discuss more about amino acids, but keep in mind that proteins lay at the very heart of our immune system.  The many chronic issues we face today could in fact be lurking in the massive quantities of foreign protein we are exposed to routinely.

Btw, I don’t want to debate vegan vs paleo vs slowcarb, etc… It’s boring and irrelevant and I have experimented with all of them.  What I am interested in are questions comments about amino acids and hearing what you have to think about this explanation. There is a lot to…digest…so, after some time for discussion, I will post Part 2 and we’ll explore the various sources of amino acids and how that may have impacts on health.

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Thanks!

Ray