Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (22 page)

Over the years the amount of protein recommended by authorities has gone up and down like a yo-yo. It wasn’t until nitrogen-balance
studies became available that we could actually measure protein requirements.

Today the recommended daily allowance (RDA) is 0.8 mg/kg body weight,
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or about 44 grams for a 120-pound woman and 55 grams for a 150-pound man. This is a recommended amount, not a minimum requirement. The assumption is that about 0.5 mg/kg is needed, and then a large safety factor was built into the RDA to almost double the minimum requirement determined by nitrogen-balance studies. Still, the average American consumes over 100 grams of protein daily—an unhealthy amount.

Only 10 percent of the total calories consumed by the average person needs to be in the form of protein. In fact, as little as 2.5 percent of calories from protein may be all that is necessary for the average person.
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Regardless of the many opinions on adequate or optimal protein intake, most plant foods, except fruit, supply at least 10 percent of calories from protein, with green vegetables averaging about 50 percent. High-nutrient diets that are plant-food-predominant, like the one I recommend, supply approximately 40 to 70 grams of protein daily in the range of 1,200 to 1,800, calories per day. That is plenty of protein.

Furthermore, the outdated notion of “high biological value” protein is based on essential amino acid profiles that grant eggs a 100 percent score based on the nutritional needs of rodents. It should not be surprising that the growth needs of rats are not quite the same as those of humans. For example, birds and rats have high requirements for methionine and cystine, the sulfur-containing amino acids. The sulfur-containing amino acids are important when growing feathers and fur. More recently, the essential amino acid profiles have been updated to reflect more closely the needs of humans. Human breast milk, for example, is lacking if we are considering the nutritional requirements of baby rats, but ideal when looking at human requirements.

Today, protein scores are computed differently from in the past. They are based on human needs, not rats’, and soy protein earns a higher score than beef protein.
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Using a computer dietary-analysis program, I tried to compose
a natural-foods diet deficient in any required amino acid. It was impossible. Almost any assortment of plant foods contained about 30 to 40 grams of protein per 1,000 calories. When your caloric needs are met, your protein needs are met automatically. Focus on eating healthy natural foods; forget about trying to get enough protein.

What about the athlete, weight lifter, or pregnant woman? Don’t they need more protein? Of course an athlete in heavy training needs more protein. I was on the U.S. World Figure Skating Team in the early 1970s. I often exercised more than five hours daily. Besides all the grueling work on the ice, I did plenty of weight lifting and running. With all that exercise, I needed more protein, but I needed lots more of everything, especially calories. When you take in more food, you get the extra protein, extra fat, extra carbohydrates, and extra nutrients that you need. I loaded up the backseat of the car with huge amounts of fruits, vegetables, raw nuts, and whole grains. I ate lots of food and took in more protein (and everything else) in the process. Your protein needs increase in direct proportion to your increased caloric demands and your increased appetite. Guess what? You automatically get enough. The same is true during pregnancy.

When you meet your caloric needs with an assortment of natural plant foods, you will receive the right amount of protein—not too much, not too little.

The RDAs are levels set by our government for various nutrients considered to be desirable for good health. But are they correct? Are these levels appropriate, and will even higher levels of certain nutrients benefit us? Difficult questions to answer, but first we must consider how the RDAs were derived.

The RDAs were first developed when the government began questioning the nutritional value of military rations distributed to our soldiers during World War II. Later, our government’s Food
and Nutrition Board looked at the foods they expected most people to eat. By analyzing the average diet, they came up with a suggested minimum and then added an upward adjustment to theoretically ensure optimal health.

The RDAs are biased in favor of the conventional level of intake. They are not based on how people should eat to maintain optimal health; rather, they have been formulated to represent how we do eat. They characterize the conventional diet: high in animal products; lots of dairy products and fat; and low in fiber, antioxidants, and other nutrients, such as vitamin C, that are rich in plant foods. The RDAs reflect a diet that caused all the problems in the first place.

So we see a tendency to keep RDAs for plant-based nutrients low while keeping RDAs for animal-based nutrients high. Take, for example, the most ridiculous recommendation from the RDA—that for vitamin C. Any diet utilizing an abundance of unrefined natural plant foods offers a significant amount of vitamin C. The diets I recommend, and consume myself, contain between 500 and 1,000 mg of vitamin C each day, just from food. If you consumed a diet only half as good as I recommend, you would still consume between 250 and 500 mg of vitamin C each day. The RDA of 60 merely reflects the inadequacy of the American diet and how impossible it would be to get enough vitamin C if you ate a diet so low in natural plant foods.

You can take 1,000 mg of vitamin C in the form of a pill to make up for how deadly deficient your diet is, but then you would be missing all the other plant-derived antioxidants and phytochemicals that come in the same package as the vitamin C. The government must hold the RDA ridiculously low because it would be inconsistent with the other absurd dietary suggestions and make it impossible to achieve such levels without supplementation.

Most of the dietary recommendations from our government have been discarded and updated over time. Such recommendations, such as the “Basic Four” food group guide, have always been at least ten years behind current science and strongly
influenced by food manufacturers. The current RDAs should meet the same fate; they are based on outmoded nutritional opinions that do not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Last, and most important, is that thousands of phytonutrients lack RDAs. There are subtle nuances and nutritive interactions that create disease resistance from the synergy of diverse substances in natural foods. Like a symphony orchestra whose members play in perfect harmony, our body depends on the harmonious interaction of nutrients, both known and unknown. By supplying a rich assortment of natural foods, we best maximize the function of the human masterpiece.

Remember the two main messages of this chapter. First, when food is refined and the macronutrients are removed from nature’s natural packaging, they assume disease-causing properties. Second, green vegetables ran away with the title and legumes and fresh fruits took home a distant silver and bronze in the nutrient-density Olympics.

Hunger is an experience that many people fear. It seems absurd that fear of starvation could exist in the most overfed population in human history. However, our obsession with food and eating is undeniable. People often react with abject fear when contemplating going without food for even short periods of time. Continuous eating not only undermines healthy weight loss, it is just plain unhealthy. Eating the wrong (low-nutrient) foods leads to what I call “toxic hunger” and the desire to overconsume calories. When we do not meet our micronutrient needs, we do not feel well unless our digestive tract is continuously at work. Toxic hunger overrides the natural instinct that controls appetite and leads to a dramatic increase in calorie consumption.

I have observed that a diet style sufficiently high in micronutrients can decrease sensations leading to food cravings and overeating behaviors. The sensations commonly and traditionally considered to be “hunger,” and even reported in medical textbooks as such, disappear for the majority of individuals after eating this micronutrient-rich diet. A new sensation, which I call “true hunger,” arises instead. Understanding the science and human physiology behind this important distinction is important.

When our bodies have become acclimated to a noxious or toxic agent, it is called addiction. Indulging in the addiction is mildly
pleasurable, but if we stop taking the substance, such as nicotine or caffeine, we feel ill as the body mobilizes cellular wastes and attempts to repair the damage caused by the exposure. This is called withdrawal. If you drank four cups of coffee or caffeinated soda every day, you would get a withdrawal headache when you tried to stop the habit. To feel better, you could take more caffeine (or other drugs) or eat food more frequently, which would help, because eating and digesting retards detoxification or withdrawal. Similarly, toxic hunger is heightened by the consumption of caffeinated beverages, soft drinks, and processed foods. It occurs predominantly after digestion ceases and the digestive tract is empty, and it can make a person feel extremely uncomfortable if he or she does not eat or drink a caloric load (to inhibit detoxification) for relief.