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Most people seem to think that plants are devoid of protein. Even many ardent vegetarians believe that they have to eat beans to make sure they get enough protein. The truth is, all plant foods have plentiful protein. Take a look at the following chart:
What do the percentages mean?
The calories in food come from protein, fat, and carbohydrate. The numbers above reflect what percentage of that food's calories come from protein. For comparison, here are some common foods, showing how much of the calories comes from protein, fat, and carbohydrate.
While we're at it, many medical authorities recommend diets that are high in carbohydrate, and low in fat and protein. The chart on the right shows the rough proportion of calories in diets recommended by Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Michael Klaper, and Dr. Neal Barnard.
Are you alarmed because you're seeing for the first time how much carbohydrates are in plant foods, and you thought carbohydrates were bad or fattening? Then here's more detail about carbohydrates.
How much protein do you need?
The first clue to how much protein you need comes from what nature designed for us. Human milk is 5.5% protein. It's designed to nourish us at the point in our lives when we're growing the fastest and our protein requirement is as high as it will ever be. Obviously, if nature wants us to have 5.5% when we're growing, we can easily do with less than that once we're already grown.
It is interesting to note that cow's milk is 29%. Cows grow much faster than humans, and grow to be much larger, so it's not surprising that their protein requirement is higher.
We can also ignore nature and look at official recommendations. Experts disagree on exactly how much protein you need, but the range of recommendations is between 2.5 to 8.0% of your total diet. Even the highest recommendation (the U.S. RDA, at 8%) is easily obtained on an all-plant diet.
In practical terms, no, it's not. But even if it were, it wouldn't matter! Have a look at the chart again. All foods contain so much protein that even IF plant protein were inferior somehow, you still easily get more than enough protein by eating only plant foods.
Don't you have to "combine" proteins to make a "complete" protein?
No. That's an outdated theory that was descredited decades ago. Unfortunately, myths die hard. Here's more on "complete" proteins.
Meat isn't in the chart. How much protein is there in meat?
It varies wildly depending on the meat. Bacon is only 5%, while light Turkey is 79%, although the average is around 50%. But remember, more is NOT better in the case of protein -- it's worse. Our bodies weren't designed to handle 50% protein, and that's why we suffer from cancer, osteoporosis, kidney failure, and other degenerative diseases when we eat meat every day.
A final thought
It's odd that people think we need to eat animals for protein, but the animals that we eat consume nothing but plants! Where do pigs, cows, and sheep get their protein? From plants. Does anybody ever worry that cows or sheep aren't getting enough protein? The cows and sheep certainly don't.
When I bring up this point, people often counter, "But humans aren't cows!" What is that supposed to mean -- that only humans need protein and cows don't? Nonsense. All animals need protein to grow and maintain body tissues.
Consider something else. Many people eat animals because they think that there are some magical nutrients in meat. But realize that meat is simply flesh... and humans are simply flesh. Look at your own arm -- you're nothing but walking meat. Anything that you might expect to get from eating flesh you already have, because you're made of flesh.
About the percentages for the different foods
Protein percentages were derived from the bible of nutritional data, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Handbook #8: Nutritional Values of Foods in Common Units.
Foods for each category were averaged. For example, not all vegetables are 23% protein; we took several common vegetables (such as Potatoes, 11%, and Broccoli, 37%), and reported the average, which was 23%. Other types of foods were averaged the same way.
I thought lots of carbohydrate was bad?
Not true at all. Your body was designed to run on mostly carbohydrates. And as you can see from the charts at the top of this page, all plant foods are mostly carbohydrates -- not just potatoes and bread. In fact, as you can see above, the ONLY way to avoid carbohydrates is to eat only meat, which is the only food without carbohydrates. And since meat has no carbohydrate, all that's left is dangerous amounts of protein and fat.
If you were trying to avoid carbohydrates because you thought they were fattening, then either (1) you probably WEREN'T avoiding carbohydrates, because you now see that all plant foods are mostly carbohydrates (even broccoli and beans), or (2) you were really avoiding carbohydrates the only way possible, by eating lots of meat. But that meant you were overdosing on fat or protein, or both.
The only problem with carbohydrates are with those that are heavily refined -- like white sugar and white flour. White sugar is empty calories with no other nutritional value. White flour has had vitamins and minerals removed, and is deficient in fiber. (Better is whole wheat flour.)
References
Handbook of the Nutritional Value of Foods in Common Units, by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, 1975 [commonly referred to as Handbook No. 8 and No. 456]
Diet for a New America, by John Robbins, 1987
The McDougall Plan, by Dr. John A. McDougall, 1983
The McDougall Program, by Dr. John A. McDougall, 1991
Eating for the Eighties, by Janie C. & Neil J. Hartbarger, 1981
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