Protein Powder and Weight Loss - Page 3

I know that this is a bit off topic, but I'm confused by how this comparison between herbivores and carnivores in the animal kingdom relates to humans exactly. Other than the fact that if you distill it down to the points that are relevant it looks like we dont' really fall into either category...(hence the term omnivore i guess).

alot of the physiological aspects of herbivores and carnivores that you enumerate are just as likely to be a result of the hunter / hunted relationship as they are to be a result of the type of fuel that each uses.

In terms of carnivores, humans have no ability to digest cellulose, our stomach acids have pretty low ph, we chew in one dimension (up and down, vs. around in circles)

But we are also related to herbavores...we sweat through pores and we have fairly herbivore type teeth.

I'm not sure how any of this relates to humans being better suited to being vegetarian or not though. I think it's quite clear that throughout our history we've been omnivores, eating whatever was available to us, cause we had to in order to survive. Since we now have the luxury of deciding that maybe we'd like to cut meat out of our diet completely we may find that that is in fact more healthful for us, but if it is indeed more healthy for us it has little to do with some notion of human's being more naturally herbivores than carnivores.

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"There aren't evil guys and innocent guys. It's just... It's just... It's just a bunch of guys." -- Steve Arlo

Vegan is not just a lifestyle, it's a religion!

I don't understand what the beef is with vegetarianism,

(ha , get it beef... )

You can ingest as much protein as you can stomach with soy protein powders. Whether or not it's necessary is another thing but, if you feel it is, maybe the psychological boost is worth it. It's cheap, and I believe about 90% protein.

Another issue I didn't see brought up about meat is that it is an inefficient use of land and resources to grow grain to feed an animal, which only partially uses that food energy to get big and fat, mostly uses it just to heat its body and exist, which you then kill and feed to your self.

As Americans we have no sense of what our lifestyle costs the rest of the world in resources. Our greed will come back and bite us in the ass sooner or later. Just like our demand for cheap energy keeps us embroiled in conflicts in the Middle East which in turn led to Sept 11.

Actions have consequences.

It seems we're drifting off topic a bit and I'm afraid I may have started that trend. Having said that, perhaps a discussion of protein sources isn't so far off topic from protein requirements since the idea that we need so much protein is largely tied to the assumption that we're biologically dependent upon animal-based foods to obtain the necessary amounts of protein.

For starters, we are animals. Any assertion to the contrary requires that biological classifications be discarded. Even a passing glance at the teeth of an omnivore will uncover striking differences from human teeth, the extended and exaggerated canines being the most obvious.

Which physiological aspects, specifically?

There seems to be confusion, or perhaps an attempt to create confusion regarding herbivores and ruminants. All ruminants, (to the best of my knowledge) are herbivores but not all herbivores are ruminants. Humans fall neatly into the herbivorours, non-ruminant classification.

These remarks about the jaw movement are simply inaccurate. Humans do possess a jaw which moves side to side as well as up and down and if you watch someone chew who doesn't know you're watching, you should be able to see the side to side motion. It's less pronounced than in a ruminant, but it's clearly there. The jaw of a carnivore is restricted exclusively to up and down chewing motions. That's why cats and dogs look so awkward when they attempt to chew grass.

Agreed, and we display many other herbivorous traits as well. What we don't seem to display are the traits common to carnivores and, though it's a finer line, we do differ from other examples of omnivores within the animal kingdom.

It would seem that you're suggesting that there is no connection between natural diet and healthful diet. I assume that this is analogous to the idea that burning gasoline in diesel engine is perhaps not the intended fuel, but should work just as well.

Cannibalism is also a well documented part of human history but I would assume that few would agree that this serves as a good reason to go back to eating other humans.

Every creature on the planet has a natural diet. Humans probably have the greatest choice of diet but that doesn't mean that our physiology doesn't fit more closely into one specific dietary catagory than into another. Because we are such a successful species, the choices we make have a great impact on the environment around us. Because our bodies are designed for a specific kind of fuel, altering that fuel adversely affects our energy production and our health.

Once we begin to understand the body's natural dietary preferences we can begin to realize that over-consumption of protein is just as damaging as over-consumption of sugars (simple), carbohydrates or fats. Researching our "natural" diet is simply another aspect in re-assessing the assumed need for all of this supplimental protein. Statistically, those who design their diets to comply with what physiology suggest, have fewer problems with becoming over-weight to begin with. This would seem, to some, to be a better choice than attempting to counter the problem of excess weight through increased protein intake. Natural prevention rather than unnatural treatment.

First of all, I wasn't trying to claim that Humans aren't animals, simply that comparing us to herbivores and carnivores doesn't work because we're omnivores.

For instance sleeping patterns. I came away from your original post with the feeling that you'd implied that eating only vegetables will cause you to require less sleep, because herbivores sleep less than carnivores. Unless there is some research to show that this is the case, my instincts tell me that the herbivores that slept late all got eaten hundreds of millions of years ago and that's why we don't see alot of sleepy deer. Barring some evidence one way or the other both explanations are equally plausible.

Another example is explosive power vs. stamina, again playing to the notion that if you eat like a herbivore you will be eating the more natural diet of a stamina athlete. Again this trend (which has many counter examples, a hunting dog being the first that springs to my mind) could just as easily be explained by the notion that a quick explosive burst from a carnivore is more likely to be successful in overcoming it's prey, while the prey needs to be able to attempt to avoid preditors possibly all day long.


This is true. Usually when one says herbivore they think of ruminants or other cellulose digesting animals. This of course is not all herbivores, there are also frugivores and folivores (fruit and leaves respectively). Interestingly Humans could really only fit into the frugivore category, as our digestive times are too short to get more than 1-10% of the energy out of fiber without major adaptations like increased cellulose digesting bacteria or adding a fermentation phase to digestion.


Agreed. But, I have read one theory that says the reason that it continued in the areas that it was prevalent was because it provided a much needed source of protein.

I guess in my mind the fact that humans have been hunting and eating meat since our genus was distinguishable (around 2.5 million years ago) makes me feel that eating meat is a natural part of our physiology. Noting similarities with a strain of herbivores does not in my mind mean that we've been somehow running our gasoline engines on deisel for however many millions of years, it just means we have some similar characteristics.

Now, I do feel that meet has historically played a very different role among human fuel sources in the past than it does now. I'm sure it was a much smaller part of our diet in the past (although, there are cases of human societies who subsisted solely on meat, eskimos aparently used to do this), and this I do believe is a much healthier way to eat.

Although, maybe we are just now encountering the long term effects of the necessary choices made by our ancestors millions of years ago. They had to eat meat to get enough protein to live, but they died in their 20s or 30s anyway, so they never got colon cancer from too much meat. Now we're finding that too much meat is causing those problems? That's definately plausible, but it's not cause we're naturally herbivores, Homo Sapien is quite clearly an omnivore and has been through it's whole history.

also there is a very interesting site on this exact topic I found
here.

__________________
"There aren't evil guys and innocent guys. It's just... It's just... It's just a bunch of guys." -- Steve Arlo

:: walks through eating a steak sandwich, sans lettuce ::

Forgot to note. I agree with you completely here. I think the stupid atkin's diet thing is ridiculous. My college rowing coach had us do it for 3 days while still training (some research papers about carbo-purging before carbo-loading being more effective) and I just about died. I had uncontrollable urges to grab a jar of jelly and eat it with a spoon by the second day.
Plus, now that I'm into cycling it makes it hard to find high carb energy bars at a normal store.

I have read that taking a smallish amount of whey protein shortly before a workout can help one maintain muscle mass and cut fat. This intuitively makes sense to me since a decent amount of energy during a workout comes from breaking down protein. Seems like if it can break down what you just took in instead of your muscles that would be better. Of course I haven't done too much research on this so it might be fallacious. That's the only protein supplimentation I think might have value...

__________________
"There aren't evil guys and innocent guys. It's just... It's just... It's just a bunch of guys." -- Steve Arlo

I wasn't sure if you were or not so I addressed it. I'm glad we're on the same page as far as being animals goes.

I may have left this open to reverse interpretation. I'm not trying to say that if a herbivore eats like a carnivore that the herbivore will take on the sleep patterns or energy production characteristics of a carnivore. My point was simply that humans tend to stay awake for more than half of the day and perfer to eat daily. This is consistent with herbivorous habits. Carnivores tend to sleep for more than half the day, (21-hours in the case of lions), and gorge themselves, then wait for longer periods before eating again.

Hunting dogs may be able to run with greater stamina than the standard human but they tend to rely more on pack-tactics to capture their prey. Dogs actually tend to tire more quickly than standard prey animals which makes their social tendencies necessary for survival. I agree that the ability to produce explosive burst of energy is advantageous for hunting and that prey animals benefit from the ability to exert for longer periods.

I agree that we don't extract nutrients as well from highly fiberous plant matter. But I disagree that this is due to digestive time in the human digestive tract. Our digestive tracts are quite long and compared to carnivores, the food tends to pass through very slowly. The fiber in our diets plays an important role here in keeping things moving through the twists and convolutions so it's still important but more as a digestive aid than a nutrient source. The fact that animal-based foods begin to decay so quickly that they actually rot inside the human colon has been scrutinized as one key factor in the development of colon cancer.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that's how cannibalism started in many areas. I have my doubts that this is why it endured for as long as it did. Some cannibalistic human cultures still exist today despite the fact that they have sufficient protein sources available. They simply see nothing wrong with it. It's something that has been practiced for generations and people tend not to question their diets as long as they like the taste and don't make connections between health issues and what they eat.

I have little doubt that early humans did eat some meat. The percentage of meat verses plant sources is the subject of current research. In the stereotypical image, early man subsisted almost entirely on animal-based foods which has some obvious problems. Firstly, man isn't a good hunter by nature. He has none of the physiological hunting tools provided to predatory animals, (i.e. claws, piercing canines). This means that before he became skilled at making even rudimentary weapons, living soley on meat would have meant starvation. He had to find other food sources which were only supplimented with the occassional kill or find.

One key factor in even natural predators is that they weigh risk factors into the hunt. A simple scratch or cut might mean death before man knew of bacteria, infections and basic first aid. Just as a venomous snake will usually bite quickly then flee from his prey, it's unlikely that early man would have gone after animals large and powerful enough to pose a true threat unless he was very, very hungry and could find no other source of food. From what I can find on the topic, researchers are starting to re-write the menu of early man with a list of food sources that are primarily plant-based. Picking a handful of berries burns fewer calories and presents fewer risks than trying to kill an animal.

It's interesting that you bring up Eskimos. According to a book called "To Cherish All Life," by Kapleau, Philip, (Harpur and Row, San Francisco, 1981), the Eskimos, Laplanders, Greenlanders and Russian Kurgi tribes currently stand as the world's populations with the highest consumption of animal flesh. They also stand out as the world's populations with the shortest life expectancies, often no more than 30 years.

One might be quick to conclude that other factors are to blame for the short lifespan so the book goes on to point out that the Russian Caucasians, Yucatan Indians, East Indian Todas and Pakistan Hunzakuts subsist on little or no animal flesh, live in equally harsh conditions and display life expectancies of 90 to 100 years.

According to "Food Reform: Our Desperate Need", Robin Hur, (Heidelberg Productions, 1975), the longest life expectancies in the world can be found in the Vilcambas of Ecuador, the Abkhasians in the USSR and the Hunzas in the Himalayas of Northern Pakistan. All of these cultures subsist on either vegetarian diets or diets in which animal products account for no more than 1.5% of their total caloric intake.

I find it interesting that living in America with our medical technology and easy access to doctors and hospitals, that we aren't among the longest lived people in the world but apparently, we're missing something. It's equally curious that these people display such long lifespans despite the fact that they consume far less protein than Americans do, yet don't seem to suffer from protein deficiencies.

Our physiology and sleep habits more closely match that of a herbivore than carnivore or an omnivore, the diseases most responsible for mortality in developed countries are all tied to meat consumption and the world ecology is showing tremendous strain from the production of all the animals required for man to continue as an omnivore and yet because man has an omnivorous history, you conclude that this is his natural diet?

I wouldn't be so sure if I were you. Certainly every creature needs enough protein to survive, but research of the last 50 years has clearly shown that for humans, plant protein is superior for good health. Doctors have known for a long time that diets heavy in meat are primary factors in heart disease and cancers as well as many other diseases but, not being nutritionists, most fail to see the larger picture. They still thrive on the idea that man needs to concentrate on protein intake despite the fact that most of them have never treated a single case of protein deficiency.

"The grading of forms, organic functions, customs and diets showed in an evident way that the normal food of man is vegetable like the anthropoids and apes and that our canine teeth are less developed than theirs and that we are not destined to compete with wild beasts or carnivorous animals."

-- Charles Darwin (Biologist, Author, Vegetarian)

also there is a very interesting site on this exact topic I found
here.[/QUOTE]

I'll have to check it out. Thank you

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:: looks at steak sandwich, deep in thought ::

Lance eats meat. End of topic.

When Lance's mother found out he had cancer she hired a nutritionist. One of the first things the nutritionist did was take Lance off red meat, cheese and other fatty foods. Topic still open.

he also only has one testicle, are you going to remove one of yours?

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http://www.cyclecoach.com

ROFL!

A truly dedicated gram counter. Eliminating redundant organs might be carrying it a bit too far?

Just a few kinda random thoughts.

I don't know about this vegans are underweight idea. If only it were so easy to lose weight by going vegan!

I've been a vegetarian for about 11 years and have been eating mostly vegan for the past year or so. Neither dietary change prompted weight loss in my case. I'm 5'5" and currently about 142 lbs. I'd like to lose a little weight, but I have been around this weight ever since puberty stopped (I'm now 31). I have a fair amount of muscle mass, even when my lifestyle has not been very active. Going mostly vegan hasn't made any noticeable change to my body composition.

I don't worry at all about getting enough protein. I just try to eat a healthy and balanced diet, and I have no doubt that I get enough. Though I bike and love it, I don't race and don't consider myself an "athlete." But if I were to make the move to serious training and racing, I wouldn't worry about protein then, either. I mean, if I ate a diet consisting solely of potatoes, I'd be over the high end recommendation of 8% of calories from protein!

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- Liz

Just out of curiosity, I looked at some of the foods in my diet that I figured would be the lower protein items, and I found that my breakfast cereal is 13% calories from protein (and the soy milk I pour over it is 18%), my bread is 12%, and my pasta is 11%.

I imagine that the biggest threat to getting a good percentage of calories from protein overall (in a vegan diet or any other diet) would be empty calories in the diet.

If I were to start training really seriously, my ideal diet would have the following characteristics:

I'd cook for myself as much as possible, using whole foods.

The bases of my diet would be grains/starches, legumes, and vegetables.

I'd elimate all added fats and sugars. (Note, this does not mean I'd eliminate fat period--it means my fat would come from whole foods like nuts, which also provide protein and nutrients, rather than from oils.)

Really, that's my ideal diet now, as it's good for many reasons. I'm just not great about actually getting close to it.

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- Liz