What Kind of Protein is Best?

There is a lot of confusion about "superior" and "inferior" proteins—so called "complete" and "incomplete" foods. At the beginning of the century, researchers doing animal experiments discovered that rats could live and grow on a single food such as eggs. Eggs, like meat, fish, and cheese, were therefore dubbed "complete" proteins. Vegetable foods such as rice, legumes, seeds, nuts, corn, and wheat were called "incomplete" since on their own they were unable to maintain life and growth. What all this meant is that the so-called "complete" proteins contain all the eight acids which humans cannot make for themselves in adequate amounts. But what they didn't take into account is that vegetable food—say, corn— together with another—say, red beans—also contains the eight essential amino acids and, provided you eat one vegetable together with another, you are getting the full complement of the eight essential amino acids in good balance. Better still, you are getting them without the fat that accompanies protein from animal foods. The idea that we need animal foods in order to be healthy is simply untrue. Populations numbering in the millions in different parts of the world have lived and developed enviable health and strength for thousands of years on a purely vegetable diet.

The best—and often the cheapest—sources of protein are the unrefined, unprocessed vegetable foods—complex carbohydrates complete with their natural fiber content, vitamins, and minerals—whole grains such as rice, wheat, oats, barley, legumes including lentils and beans; mixed seeds or mixed nuts; fruits, and vegetables from salad greens to carrots and potatoes. Eaten together in salads and casseroles, bread and soups, they provide low calorie menus without the danger of high fat from the intake of animal foods. The Lifestyle Diet provides 15 percent of your daily calories in the form of protein. It allows you to eat four ounces of meat, fish, or poultry (preferably fish) three times a week. On the days when you choose not to eat these foods you can have instead four ounces of mixed nuts or two eggs. It completely eliminates all cheese except those such as cottage cheese and curd cheeses made from low-fat milk.

If you prefer, you can take all your protein from vegetarian foods. The question of a vitamin B12 deficiency on a vegetarian diet is always brought up as evidence of the need to eat meat, although long ago biochemist Schweigert of the American Meat Institute researched the question and discovered that the need for B12 rises and falls with the amount of protein eaten. B12 is available in dairy products and eggs included in the Lifestyle Diet. In this kind of protein-economical diet it is correspondingly low. Schweigert also discovered that the whole wheat grain is a usable source of B12 provided it is not processed into white flour. If it had not been, then the millions of people in different countries who have lived almost exclusively on a vegan diet (vegetarian with no milk, dairy products, or eggs) would have suffered B12 deficiencies.

Health Concern: FAT?

The term "fat" includes fats from meat, fish, poultry, and dairy products as well as vegetable oils and the nuts, seeds, and grains from which they have been extracted. There are two basic kinds of fats—saturated, occurring mostly in animal foods (although some vegetable fats such as the kind that coconut contains fall into this category too), and unsaturated, in the form of vegetable oils such as safflower, corn, and sunflower, and in seeds and nuts. Fish tends to contain more unsaturated than saturated fats, meat more saturated than unsaturated.

Whether saturated or unsaturated, all the fats you eat rapidly form a film around blood cells and platelets, creating a kind of sludge which causes them to stick together. This clumping significantly interferes with circulation by clogging blood vessels and even temporarily closing down small capillaries. As a result, your cells do not receive all the oxygen and nutrients they need to function efficiently. They only run at about 80 percent capacity. This interferes with cell metabolism as well as with the efficient elimination of cellular and tissue wastes.

The chemical structure of an unsaturated fatty acid differs from its saturated brother in that at least two of the carbon atoms in its formula are free. This means that they have no hydrogen atoms attached to them, as the molecule of a saturated fatty acid does. It was long thought that while saturated fats were bad for you, unsaturated fats were good. For unsaturated fats have been shown to reduce cholesterol levels in the blood, and therefore were believed to be helpful in preventing arteriosclerosis and coronary heart disease. That is the reason we have been encouraged in the last thirty years or so to include plenty of polyunsaturates in our diet by switching from butter to margarine and vegetable oils. The catch is that although unsaturates do this, like all fats they still raise triglyceride levels (another factor linked with coronary heart disease) and they also create the same clumping as the saturated fats do, which leads to tissue anoxia.

Women have also lately been encouraged by poorly informed writers to include lots of polyunsaturates in their diet for their beauty's sake. Unsaturated fatty acids are an important constituent of skin and muscle tissue and so it was thought, quite wrongly, that we need more of them. For what we have not been told is that the chemical structure of unsaturated fats with their free carbon atoms makes them extremely unstable compounds, and that when an unsaturated fat is exposed even to the smallest trace of a catalytic agent it begins a process of autooxidation which results in the fat molecule's breaking down to produce what are known as free radicals.

Free radicals are highly reactive particles which, if left unchecked in the presence of oxygen molecules, will form toxic peroxides. These peroxides can damage and destroy cells. They have also been implicated as a primary cause of the aging process itself. When a cell, or the genetic material of a cell, is destroyed by free radicals, the result is something known as a lipofuscin pigment granule—often referred to by biochemists as a "clinker." With age, ever more cells are damaged or destroyed as tissue degenerates, leading to increase in the number of these pigment granules. This is something you want to avoid in every way you can if you don't want to look and be old before your time.

To some extent, the presence of sufficient amounts of an antioxidant such as vitamin E in the system may prevent this from happening, because it minimizes the damage done by free radical chain reactions by breaking the chain. Vitamin E, like other antioxidants, helps block the oxidation that turns fatty acids into harmful peroxides. The more unsaturated fatty acids in your diet, the greater will be your need for the vitamin.

An interesting dietary survey that was done at the University of California at Irvine looked at over 1,000 patients and examined the degree of wrinkling and crow's-feet, frown lines, and other indications of skin degeneration such as damage to the collagen and elastin fibers and the irregular pigmentation characteristic of old skin. The subjects ranged in age from seventeen to eighty-one and 76 percent of them were women. Cadvan Griffiths, M.D., the professor of surgery who carried out the study, discovered that there is an undeniable link between marked clinical signs of aging and the intake of unsaturated fats in one's diet. Those who regularly and frequently included polyunsaturated fats and oils in their diet had marked signs of premature aging. Some looked as much as twenty years older than they were. Very few of those who had made no special effort to eat more polyunsaturates showed any clinical signs of premature aging. Evidence is also accumulating that links free radical reactions to the etiology of cancer, senility, atherosclerosis and hypertension—all of them disorders generally associated with aging. This is all the more reason to limit the amount of every kind of fat you eat to no more than you actually need.

Drink to your health vitality

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, vegetable juices offer abundant health and longevity. Reams and reams of papers containing research data areavailable to prove that, with the right combinations and regular, sustained intake, these healthy liquids improve the condition of your body in leaps and bounds, and help cure a wide range of ailments.

The eating plan that follows, suggests that you drink two vegetable juices per day. These will depend on the availability of fresh produce and on the state of your health from time to time. The Daily Health Juice (recipe below) is for everyday consumption, and the recipes that follow are for specific ailments, as are the teas and broth of beans and onion.

As far as your weight loss is concerned, vegetable juice can help you achieve your goals far more readily and speedily than you ever thought possible. It regulates the appetite, improves your looks in general (cabbage and lettuce juice are excellent for hair and nails and carrots improve the skin) and it provides your body with loads of essential nutrients, minerals and tissue salts. Spinach is great for regularity and tomatoes keep your electrolytes (minerals required for a regular heartbeat) normal. Juices will cleanse and protect your body, which will not only improve your health, but also ensure that all your systems function at optimum efficiency, aiding efficient weight loss.

Vegetable juices are concentrated nutrients, especially mineral salts, so essential for glowing health. If the juices don't taste good, that's just too bad. Here I have to rely on the old adage: If it tastes this bad, it has to be good for me!"

Herbs can play an important part in improving your health, so here's a good way of consuming them: simply put them through the extractor together with your vegetables and they will release their health-promoting benefits directly into your vegetable juice. Ginger (excellent for digestion and to alleviate nausea) goes well with most yellow vegetables and parsley (beneficial as a kidney cleanser and diuretic) tastes divine in just about any combination. Buy a good herb book and read about all the specific benefits of herbs so that you can use them appropriately. That way you can truly have a medicinal pantry!

Daily Health Juice - large quantity

750 ml carrot juice

100 ml spinach juice

250 ml apple juice (or, when in season, grape juice)

50 ml lettuce juice

25 ml parsley juice

50 ml green bean juice

All juices must be freshly extracted, even the apple juice. Store in 5 small containers in the deep freeze. This is sufficient for 5 days' intake. Defrost at room temperature or in the fridge. Drink as indicated on the eating plan. Yes, some vitamins will be lost in the freezing process, but most of the fibre and minerals will remain completely intact.

Daily health juice - single portion

It is of course far better to enjoy your vegetable juices fresh - as fresh as can be, and usually chilled. Since standing tends to make the juices lose nutrients and taste bitter, have them as soon as extracted and use chilled vegetables to begin with. The bother of having to clean your machine is a small price tag for great health. And as for the pulp, it makes terrific compost. If you are really the prudent type, freeze the pulp and use it at a later stage in soups and stews.

1 large carrot

1 large spinach leaf

1 apple

2 lettuce leaves

10 sprigs parsley

4 green beans

Push everything through your juice extractor. The leaves are more manageable if you roll them into a little ball before pushing the funnel of your extractor through. Drink at once.