Protein Confusion: How Misleading Science Damaged Human Health
The great protein myth has destroyed the lives and health of many people. Overconsumption of protein is possibly the single greatest cause of disease in humans; still to this day, disease industry experts push sick, overweight, and tired humans to consume more and more of what is creating their sickness.
The Dangers of Excess Protein
Proteins break down into acids in the body. Acids burn and damage cells. Any excess protein leads to inflammation, edema, and eventually to tumors and organ failure. Nearly every disease label of the medical industry can find its roots in the overconsumption of protein foods.
The sad truth is the human body cannot even utilize complete proteins. There’s no such thing as a protein deficiency. The body uses amino acids, which are the constituents of protein, to build its own proteins. Your human proteins are not cow proteins, chicken proteins, or fish proteins; they are unique to the needs of your body structure.
How the Body Really Uses Protein
Animal tissues add an additional disease-causing acid burden to the body because the unusable complete proteins must be broken down into amino acids, causing more work to be done by the stomach and digestive tract. The more the cells work, the more acidic cellular waste they create as part of their normal functions. In addition, many of the amino acids found in animal proteins will be damaged or destroyed in the cooking process, so the body must work even harder to expel the excess waste, adding even more burden to the body. All of this burden and all the excess acidic cellular waste and excess acidic protein waste are what lead to symptoms of disease.
How Much Protein Do Humans Really Need?
Lessons from Breast Milk
How much protein do we actually need? And how did we get so far off the mark as to create epidemics of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, strokes, and rampant mental illness, depression, and anxiety?
Humans have the greatest need for amino acids in the time from birth to 18 months when rapid growth requires human protein to be created out of amino acids. Human breast milk contains only 1.1 grams of protein in 100 grams of milk. It contains 3 times that in sugar, (3.5 grams of carbohydrates). The growing infant, which doubles its weight in 180 days, requires only roughly 1-2% protein.
Once fully grown, we recycle up to two-thirds of our protein wastes to meet our needs. The fully grown adult requires far less than the infant, and yet within mainstream circles it’s standard practice to recommend a high-protein diet.
We have confused marketing with science to our great detriment and we still to this day continue the trend. We confuse medicine with science and then mindlessly parrot “trust the science” without even a basic understanding of what true science is.
“In the early 50s nature failed the test of American medicine. It was found that breast milk contains 60% less protein than the infant needs. A “formula” was created with 2 1/2 to 3 times the protein plus added salt. Today we know that it wasn’t nature but science that flunked: The devastating consequences soon appeared: kidney damage, hyperacidity with osteoporosis, dangerously high phenylalanine and tyrosine content in the blood, poor protein metabolism and increased acceleration with consequent stressful disparity of physical and mental growth. An attempt has been made to transfer advertising concepts of growth and weight gain rates to actual human beings—and it fell through. There was a harmful habituation to the wear and tear of a high-protein diet. The frugal use of protein was not learned. From birth on, the child was being burdened with both “stress conditioning factors” (Selye), high protein and salt. Important developmental phases were shortened by accelerated growth and this, according to Portmann, works against the development of the “supertype” (Wellek), that human type which is most needed in our time who is not just able to analyze but also grasp the whole of a phenomenon in its form and essence.”
When we fed infants on a high protein formula the devastating results were obvious, yet 70+ years later we are still stuffing ourselves and our children with protein, destroying their bodies and our own and fueling epidemics of preventable and reversible dietary diseases.
The True Cost of Protein Overload
Uric Acid, Gout, Kidney Stones, Inflammation, Pain, and Accelerated Aging
“It is a matter of experience,” wrote A. Fleisch, president of the Swiss Wartime Nutritional Commission, in his book Nutritional Problems in Times of Shortage (Basel, 1947) “that increased protein consumption also lowers the number of calories taken in.” The stimulating qualities of protein—especially meat protein— lead to over-estimation and over-consumption, which are not justified by nutritional physiology because they lead to “luxuriant combustion”—an inefficient “burning off” of excess. There must be another, especially stimulating, irritative effect of eating meat above and beyond the irritative effects of excess protein (specific-dynamic effect) and the extractive and general products of roasting. This irritative effect, which has since been isolated, is caused by uric acid, a very strong irritant on the sympathetic nerves. And so in meat we have a strongly hypermetabolizing three- to four-fold irritative effect.”
Proteins increase uric acid in the body leading to gout and kidney stones. Additionally, fat blocks the body’s ability to expel uric acid, and many high-protein foods are also high-fat foods. So when we consume the double hamburger with cheese, the cheese pizza, the macaroni, and cheese, or any other SAD diet staple, we double down on the acids. We first burden the body with acids then we make it even harder for the body to expel those acids.
History of protein misinformation
“In the late nineteenth century. Baron von Liebig was the first person to separate foods into proteins (nitrogenous substances) and carbohydrates/fats (non-nitrogenous substances). Since the muscles are composed chiefly of protein. Liebig concluded (incorrectly) that proteins supply muscular energy and the amount of protein consumed must be related to bodily activity. In fact, it is actually the non-nitrogenous foods that supply the best fuel for muscular activity.
Liebig’s Mistaken Assumptions
Liebig was one of the first scientists to make a recommendation for protein intake. He determined the body’s protein requirements by measuring the actual amounts of protein consumed by a group of men engaged in physical activity who ate a heavy diet. He reasoned that by measuring the protein intake of men who ate more than average and worked harder than usual, he could arrive at a safe recommended allowance of protein for all people. This is truly a bizarre method for establishing a standard and is somewhat akin to clocking race car drivers in order to establish a safe speed for school zones.
Based on this experiment Liebig determined that about 120 grams of protein daily would satisfy the needs of a moderately active adult. To obtain 120 grams of protein, a person would need to consume about 17 eggs or a pound and a half of meat or twenty ounces of almonds per day.
Dogs vs. Humans: Why Early Experiments Misled Science
Following Liebig, Voit in 1881 performed a series of experiments on dogs and likewise determined that we should consume between 100 and 125 grams of protein a day. Doubtless, dogs can safely consume 125 grams of protein per day. The protein requirement for a growing puppy is five times as great as that for a growing baby. Voit, it should be noted, did not adjust his results to account for the differences between humans and dogs despite the major differences between our species.
From the very beginning, we can see that protein requirements were artificially determined and excessively high. As early as 1887, experiments in Germany showed that 40 grams of protein was a sufficient daily amount. This comes to about one-third of the previous recommendations. However these old standards of Liebig and Voit were already firmly fixed in the minds of the medical establishment, and the belief persisted that a high-protein diet was conducive to health. So why lower the recommendations?
How Recommendations Stayed Too High
After many more experiments proved that a daily protein intake of 30 to 40 grams was entirely sufficient, the establishment finally revised its recommendations down to 60 or 70 grams. Although only one-half of the early estimates, this figure is still over 50% too high, even by conservative nutritional standards. Today, with the support of the meat, dairy and egg industries, the protein allowances still remain around 70 grams per day. It should also be noted that a typical American meat-eater consumes about 93 grams of protein daily—more than anyone else in the world on the average.”
The Path Back to Health
Give your body a break. Step away from the protein and watch your health return, your weight stabilize, edema and gout disappear, pain and inflammation cease, headaches and migraines disappear and your body will start to look and feel years or even decades younger. Return to the natural human diet and thrive, lose weight effortlessly and maintain your natural lean healthy radiant body with ease.
Learn more about our natural foods in What is the Natural Human Diet?
Learn more about the purpose of disease, how disease is created, why it is created and how we can reverse disease by returning to feeding our body in alignment with our physiology, Read The Nature and Purpose of Disease Series
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Eat fruit and be well my friends.
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