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Protein in the Diet, Kind and Quantity Needed or Not
Typed document. Date unknown.
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Milk contains one third less protein than any other mammal milk. At no other time in the postnatal life of the human (barring certain pathological states of obesity which are exceedingly rare) does the body double its weight in six months. And all this takes place on a low protein and relatively high carbohydrate (lactose) diet. This is an irrefutable fact and cannot be argued by the protein propagandists.
Again, it is an accepted conclusion that protein represents the “building blocks” of the body. During growth an ample supply is necessary. Then maturity is reached the building process slows up and continues to slow as we grow older and as a result the diseases of middle age increase. There is no logical evidence that an older person needs as much protein as a growing youth. One of the penalties of a high acid diet (protein) is the loss of teeth, a little joke that nature plays upon man to keep him from chewing meat when it is most harmful for him.
You ask whether it is too much protein or the wrong kind of protein? The wrong kind is infinitely more dangerous and produces rapid pathological destruction. When you heat or cook an animal protein you convert it from a hydrophile colloid to a hydrophobe colloid. It is very difficult for the liver to metabolize a hydrophobe colloid, mainly because nature never equipped it with the proper facilities. Pottenger’s great work on cooked and uncooked proteins has shown the high degree of toxicity of the wrong kind of protein on carnivorous animals.
Excess of protein leads to a supersaturation of protein acids in the body (each cell included). To reduce the saturation it is necessary to withdraw protein from the diet. The body will use these excess acids in the metabolism and gradually get rid of them.
It is very difficult to restrict protein practically to zero. Vegetables and fruits contain it. (Witness the elephant and the ox). Hindhede definitely proved, after the first World War, that whole wheat supplied ample protein for the working man. But certain vegetable proteins are as harmful as animal proteins, especially nuts, seeds and legumes.