Why Protein Is Necessary For Your Diet
Protein isnecessary to repair the body and also helps keep us feeling full longer.
You can see why the new weight loss diets emphasize protein, because you protein will help keep away cravings and have less calories per gram than fat does and unlike carbs, protein doesn’t turn to fat as quickly.
When you eat proteins you really hire a Simon Legree to crack the whip on lazy calories, making them buckle down to honest toil instead of picking daisies as they drift to your fat depots.
Nor is the weight loss aspect of proteins their sole claim to fame. They stimulate the general efficiency of your body, replace worn out tissues, furnish materials for zippy gland hormones and build vigor and stamina.
Many people still have a vague impression that a high-protein diet is unhealthy. Doctors used to think so too, but the newer knowledge of nutrition has pretty generally knocked the props from under this idea. One supposedly dangerous effect of protein was its action on the kidneys.
Various ailments of these vital organs were laid to heavy eating of protein. In recent months, doctors have discarded this superstition so completely that today high-protein diets are prescribed for some—not all—kidney ailments.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer, spent several years living with Eskimos on an exclusive meat diet. According to theories then current, he should have been struck down by all manner of ailments, from Bright’s disease to scurvy. He was so uncooperative with theory, however, as to thrive on his all-meat, high-protein diet.
His “unbalanced” eating habits failed even to raise his blood pressure, and he was downright stubborn in his insistence that he never felt better in his life. Later he lived on the same diet in New York, where physicians could clap stethoscopes on him.
They couldn’t find a thing wrong with him. Since then there has been abundant evidence that high-protein diets can be continued indefinitely without ill effect, except in certain cases of disease.
Experiments leading to the belief that protein was dangerous to kidneys were performed, in large part, before the all-important effects of vitamins and minerals were well understood.
Another supposed danger of proteins—that they rot in the intestines and produce poisons absorbed by the body—is much more theoretical than real. We have all hear about detoxing diets that advertise to empty 20 pounds of rotted meat from our colons. Although, detoxing diets will empty out your colon, much, if not all is food that you have eaten within 24 hours - not the 10 years that they often claim.
An inflamed, diseased colon can conceivably absorb toxins through its walls. That a normal colon will do is extremely doubtful. The theory of poison absorption is the popularly horrifying one of “autointoxication.” Curiously, no one has ever satisfactorily demonstrated the presence in the blood, or the. specific identity of, the postulated poisons that stage these Borgian Blitzkriegs. One famous experiment by Dr. Walter Alvarez of the Mayo Clinic has demonstrated that every symptom attributed to “autointoxication” can be produced by stuffing the rectum with cotton.
The symptoms are real, but the causes are more mechanical than chemical.
Meat is by no means the only excellent source of protein. Other animal products—milk, eggs, cheese—are outstanding. A protein is considered biologically complete if it furnishes liberal amounts of the amino acids needed by the body.
Protein, should be just one part of your healthy diet as carbs and fats are also important. If you eat a well rounded diet you should be getting enough protein and don’t need to try to fit extra in. Although protein is good for you, over doing it, like over doing any food group will just add to weight gain, not weight loss.









