Not all protein is the same
I’m reading The China Study at the moment and the third chapter contained some new news for me - not all the protein we eat is the same.
It turns out that there are hundreds of different types of proteins in our bodies which we synthesize from the food we eat. These proteins are made up from different combinations amino acids, and when we eat protein what we are really getting is the amino acids which we then put together to make the proteins we need.
There are many different types of amino acids and most of them we can synthesize ourselves, but there are eight that we can’t and therefore need to eat. These are the so-called essential amino acids.
When we eat protein we therefore want to make sure we are getting enough of these eight amino acids. If you want the closest match between a foodstuff and the what we need then your best bet is apparently (but unsurprisingly) human flesh. Animal meat is the next best bet and is still a pretty close match.
The eight essential amino acids can all be found in vegetable proteins as well, but not all in one plant, so if you are going the vegetarian route you need to make more of an effort to mix and match than if you eat meet.
The point of The China Study is to argue that despite the hassle of mixing and matching with vegetable proteins this is the better bet for long term health.
So the protein eating targets that you get from services like Dailyburn are a simplification, although probably a necessary one.
