Dietary Protein
Technically speaking, dietary proteins, or proteins that come from food, are one third of the trio of macronutrients (defined as dietary fats/proteins/carbohydrates) that we consume every day from our meals. Each of which plays an important role in our bodies. Get the proportions of these three right, and you'll be feeling pretty good physically, mentally, and emotionally. Get the mix wrong, and your daily experience will not be optimized. Understanding how each of these three play a role in your health is essential. Not knowing the wiser will have you flying blind in life, missing the basic tools, understanding, and knowledge to easily change your state of existence on a day to day basis.
Every cell of your body uses proteins as its foundation if you will. Proteins are built up from amino acids. The human body requires twenty (20) amino acids to exist. Eleven (11) of which your liver produces, nine (9) of which it does not. These remaining nine are dubbed essential amino acids which one must acquire from food. Of these twenty in total, your body arranges them in different permutations to produce different proteins for different cellular requirements.
Essential amino acids all have names, but for this purpose that's not important to get into. Just know that they are responsible for everything from brain function, to hormone balance and production. Of course muscle growth, recovery, energy, and metabolism. Immune system health. Skin, hair, and nail health. So as you can see, some pretty important stuff.
Here is the thing, all these essential amino acids ARE readily available in meat, fish, and poultry individually. All protein sourced from animals. However, they ARE NOT all available from plant proteins. Rather, individual plants will only supply less than all nine required. And each different plant source will carry its own unique combination of essential amino acids. So for those that want to adhere to a vegetarian diet just know that you will need a wide variety of plant based proteins to get all essential amino acids in every day. Think not just beans alone, or rice alone. But beans and rice together. Every day. However, for non-vegetarians, eating a piece of chicken, or pork, fish, or steak, all by itself WILL provide you with all nine essential amino acids. No need to mix meats together.
One thing I forgot to mention in my post on dietary fats is that meat, fish, and poultry, all contain essential fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6 that are beneficial to cell growth, function, and restoration.
This begs the further issue with a vegetarian diet, the lack of sufficient protein QUANTITY from natural, unprocessed, plant based food sources. If one were to eat nothing but grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables every day then one would NOT be consuming enough protein for proper health. In which case, supplementing with protein would be necessary. Or, one could use tofu which is a plant based protein food made from soybeans, or soybean derived milk. However, both of these options require high level of processing. Processed foods are not generally thought of as beneficial to one's health due to the chemicals and large amount of procedures used to create a food source that is man made, not mother nature made.
In terms of protein sources, the closer it looks like at the grocery store to what you would forage or hunt in a the wild the better.
As a rule of thumb, try to make the amount of protein you consume to be about one quarter to one third of what is on your plate for each meal. Any piece of meat the size of a deck of cards will be around 4 ounces, or ¼ of a pound. Ideally, one should consume 0.5 - 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 150 lbs, your daily protein intake shall be 75 – 150 grams. Athletes should be closer to this upper limit. Weekend warrior sports men/women, or casual gym goers should be closer to the middle of this range. Non active folks should be at least get the minimum in this range.
One quarter pound of meat will yield roughly 25 grams of protein. Be mindful that there will be a lesser but significant amount of protein from dairy and nuts/seeds.
So following the above 150lb example, eating two 4oz pieces of chicken, a cup of milk, and an ounce of seeds or nuts will get you to a daily 75 g mark fairly easily.
It's not as hard as it seems to get your daily required amount of dietary protein in. It can also make for some very delicious meals. However, if you skimp on this macronutrient by not getting enough if it, your body will tell you by way of some form of an ailment, discomfort, and malaise to say the least.
If you previously have not been mindful of your protein intake, take stock of where it currently is. You may be surprised to be over or underestimating how much of it you ingest. Ditto for those that are mindful but not on a regular basis. It never hurts to check in and see if things have drifted.
That's all I got got for now. I've covered dietary fats, and proteins. Next and last up in the macronutrient trio is carbohydrates.
Cowabunga dudes and dudettes...!
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