When you think of a human being, do you think of protein? Probably not. But the truth is human beings are basically water, protein, fat, and minerals. While 62% of us are water, protein and fat are each around 16% of our composition, and minerals are only about 6%. Most of us understand the importance of water, and we have all been drowned in information and judgments about fat. But no one seems to talk about protein other than bodybuilders. And yet, it is protein that makes literally everything that happens in our body, well, happen. Protein forms all the amazingly complex little engines and machines and tools that biology is made of. It is proteins that allow everything living to be living.
Proteins have been on my mind lately because of the tremendous increase in the cost of living. Just this year so far, the cost of living has risen over 9%. Supply chain issues and the larger agenda of making the production of food sustainable for our ever-increasing population are endangering our traditional sources of dietary protein. This is a serious problem. Protein is the most important component of our food supply. Without solid protein sources, we will all wither away and die. Traditionally we got our needs met with meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, and fish. Each of these is being challenged with sustainability issues. The answer everyone is pointing to is plant proteins. But plant proteins come with a host of other nutritional issues.
Traditional protein sources are in fact only about 12% edible protein, with most of the food source being water. Yes, that fat juicy steak or the fresh ground beef is in fact mostly water. Plant protein foods like beans are also high in water, but the protein content is only 5-8%. Grains like corn, wheat, and rice, when cooked, only have 2-3% protein. Furthermore, the proteins in plants are incomplete. If we rely on just one plant source at a time, we get almost zero protein that we can use from that plant. Plants are simply not a good source of proteins for humans without a lot of processing, combining, and concentrating. The idyllic fantasy of returning to nature and living a healthy life out of our garden will in fact kill us slowly in a rather unpleasant manner. We would all develop kwashiorkor, the protein deficiency disease you see afflicting all those starving children in Africa.
In our prime, we all need 50 to 100 grams of quality protein each day. Here is the USDA nutrition calculator to figure out how much protein and other nutrients you need per day. DRI Calculator for Healthcare Professionals | National Agricultural Library I would strongly disagree with their fat consumption suggestions as they would have you avoid saturated fat and consume the inflammatory oil linoleic acid instead. This is insane to my view, but government guidelines typically run 20 to 30 years behind current research knowledge. Fortunately the accepted beliefs on needed protein amounts have not changed much in the last 70 years. The primary new understanding about protein is that we need more protein as we get older. Fifty years ago it was thought we needed less as we became less active. That is the problem with thoughts in the world of science – they are usually wrong. The only thing that counts is actual data on real humans. Our thinking is almost never as comprehensive as needed to really understand most problems.
So lets run with these numbers. If we need 50 to 100 grams of protein, that means we need 417 to 833 grams of flesh. Converting that to ounces, that means we need 14.5 ounces to 29 ounces of meat daily. Those numbers double if we are getting our protein from beans and quadruple if we are trying to get our protein from cooked grains. That would mean eating a minimum of 58 ounces (or almost four pounds) of cream of wheat or oatmeal to get our protein just from grains. I looked up the numbers for rice, and the amounts come to 14 to 28 cups of cooked rice a day. That is a lot of rice. The ratio of protein to carbohydrates is around 1 to 10. I suppose you could eat 5 to 10 cups of rice three times a day, but I suspect that is not likely to happen for most folks. Eating beans gives you better results with only needing 4 to 7 cups of beans a day. The bottom line is that there simply is not enough protein in natural plant foods to sustain human life. That means, as the world agenda is to move away from meat as a source of protein, dietary protein scarcity will be commonplace.
The more immediate concern I was considering is all the supply chain issues and production plant closures that have happened because of the pandemic and now the Ukraine crisis. We are seeing this as price inflation, but significant disruptions in the availability of various foodstuffs will likely be inevitable. To me, most foods are optional, but protein is not optional (and possibly butter as well.) That is why I have been looking at the price of protein. According to the government calculator above, I need 91 grams (3 ¼ ounces) of pure usable protein a day. That means 27 ounces of steak or 2 ½ pounds of cooked beans a day. My issue is that my body does not do well with all the carbs in beans, so I need the more concentrated protein sources without all the carbs. In terms of pure usable protein, steak is running about $5 per ounce while hamburger is about half that. Fish and cheese, though pricey, actually has a higher percentage of protein (20 to 22%), so protein per ounce is about the same as hamburger. Your best buy for protein is chicken and eggs, coming in at about $1.50 per ounce. Remember, these prices are not price per ounce of the product, but price per ounce of usable protein contained in the product.
Trying to figure out the price per pound of vegetable sources is difficult, because vegetable protein is incomplete. Each source is lacking one or more essential amino acids, which renders the protein valueless. But what one vegetable source may be lacking in, another may be just fine but lacking in something different. That means you can mix different sources together to get a usable source of protein. I used to do that back in the late 70’s when I was a strict vegetarian, but I got really sick because of the high carb levels with that type of diet.
If you are desiring to plan ahead by stocking your pantry with protein foods then this guide will give you some pointers. Some can be found canned, but not many and the cost of canning increases the price quite a bit. Meats will stay usable if frozen for quite a while, so that is an option. But for really long-term storage, you want to look at freeze dried or simply dehydrated foods. Now these tend to be really expensive, like 10 times the price of the fresh food. There is one exception to this that looks pretty good to me. That is spray dried egg whites and whole eggs. Searching the net I find that these can be found for around $2 an ounce. That is better than most fresh meat prices for usable protein. Only fresh eggs are cheaper and they certainly don’t last that long.
I found a commercial producer of egg white where I am able to get it cheaper, but I have to buy 100 pounds. If any of you are interested in this, drop me an email and I can see about getting some for availability in the office at $1.50 an ounce in 1 pound bags. That makes it the same price as fresh eggs for protein.
I have been spending a lot of time lately trying to figure out a good recipe for egg white bread. Yes, that is bread that is almost all egg white. There are lots of wonderful videos of this on youtube, and the results look amazing. The problem is pure egg white bread sticks in your throat when you try to swallow it. It is gag city. The taste is fine, but it just does not want to slide down the throat. I have been experimenting with different amendments to the recipe to make the bread softer and easier to swallow. I have achieved this to some degree already, but my recipes so far want to collapse. It is still usable, but very dense. I continue to experiment.
This newsletter is just to present a bit of understanding about how important protein is in our diet and how fragile this supply is right now. Plus my inner shopper liked to find out what I was really getting for my grocery dollar.
Take care,
David