Greenpeace has lost its moral compass

Twas the 14 essential amino acids that I was taught about jo8 and that some foods contain only some of them. This basic science was around long before 1971.

Complete or not - there really isn't much protein in lettuce is there? Of course plants contain proteins because they contain living cells but the % is tiny compared to an egg, or some yoghurt or a chicken nugget.

And here are several protein deficiency diseases that afflict children who are badly malnourished i.e. only fed starchy, vegetation-based foods like rice.

www.notmilk.com/protein.html

Sorry it's another link. Children can become malnourished on any restricted diet. Basically, the evidence suggests that if you eat enough calories from a variety of foods (plant based) you will have no problem with protein deficiency.

The problem in poorer countries is that people can't afford a varied diet. They can't afford meat either. And huge multinationals are taking control of land rights thereby reducing the local population's access to healthy food still further.

The other problem as I see it is that people don't want to let go of their eating habits and they look for reasons to justify them.

michaelbluejay.com/veg/protein.html

This is a very good link for anyone who likes links (sorry j08)

Why would anyone want to give up the adaptability of omnivorousness?

"It is not the strongest that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." - Charles Darwin

Just think panda and you'll get the idea.

Looks like a load of rubbish I'm afraid nightowl In fact it is a load of rubbish - the issue is not the getting of calories from protein. Shows a lack of GCSE level science in the 2nd paragraph.

and "To find the percentage of protein for a sample, multiply the protein grams by 4 and divide by the number of calories."

Is unutterable nonsense. You would divide by the weight not the calories to get a percentage. Calories is a measure of how much heat the food would produce if burned.

LOL

One for Ben Goldsworthy I think JessM

The small calorie or gram calorie (symbol: cal) is the approximate amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius.

Apologies Faye I have posted a link you have already posted.

I suppose thatbags people would only want to give up the adaptability of omnivorous if they could not accept the widely held belief that animals exist for our use. It's a fundamental difference in ones view of the world I suppose. I would say 'each to their own' if I didn't care so much about the animals involved.

I don't understand why vegetarians get so much flack. People are always asking them why? And then giving umpteen reasons why they are in the wrong. I was pescatarium for 20 years and even now only eat meat on the odd occasion. But I was for ever having to justify my dietry choices. Why??

Like you Nightowl I really don't care what other people eat but I do care about the welfare of the animals involved.

Quinoa and soya beans both have more protein than beef.
"I think, therefore I am" translates in my opinion to "I think, therefore I know I do not need to be cruel to other sentient beings in order to survive."
I have four grandchildren one of whom eats fish but no meat. The other three are vegetarians, from 20 down to six years old. They are all fit and healthy. The six year old dances everywhere. In fact she is going to dance on stage this year in the local pantomime. She has the least variety in her diet of all four of them, but has lots of energy.
11 year old grandson can run 5k in less than 28 minutes and plays in football matches two or three times a week. He's the one who eats fish.
The thirteen year old and the twenty year old are both taller than me - I'm 165 cm. The 20 year old is heading for a first clas degree.
Somehow I do not think there is anything wrong with their health, fitness and intelligence because of their restricted diet. When the twenty year old did her GCSEs she gave a talk on vegetarianism. When she asked if there were any questions, not one of the class could think of anything to ask as she had covered the subject so fully. She got top marks for it, and a grade A in her English. Shame some of you cannot take things in as well as her clasmates.

Thank you Aka. I don't get it either.

Jess I don't understand your point about the 'issue of getting calories from protein'. The article is pointing out the dietary requirements of protein as a percentage of our daily calorie intake. If you follow the reference for working out the percentage of protein it comes from a report from the US Food and Drug Administration. Based on their figure that 1gram of protein yields 4 calories. Hence multiply by 4 to get protein calories, divide by total calories.

Most of the references are from sources such as the WHO and scientists. You can't discredit all of them.

Bags, we do not live in Darwin's times. Yes, the fittest means the most suitable in that particular niche, but we think better than pandas. Pandas are having problems now, and are only being able to survive because man helps them, or not in the case of Scotland.
We have electricity to help us preserve food now, and can heat food to stop us succumbing to toxins in food.

Ditto Jendurham for my children and now grandchild. I can't imagine living any other way.

DD's partner became vegetarian a few months into their relationship and said he had never considered what meat eating really entailed before that. He is very keen on fitness ( has a degree in sports science) and does weight training. I haven't noticed any reduction in his muscle development

I don't know how Jess is qualified to challenge the FDA scientists but she may have a Masters at least or a Ph.D in Nurtional Sciences or a similar discipline Nightowl.

My husband was diabetic, type 1, from the age of eleven, so obviously he saw many nutritionists over the years.
His diet when I met him was based on high animal fats and no carbohydrate. He was only supposed to have carbohydrate when he was having a hypo. Many diabetics suffer from arteriosclerosis caused by high animal fats.
We became vegetarian as a family in 1976. It was a few years before he told the nutritionists, but it was quickly noticeable that he had fewer hypos. His cholesterol was never higher than 4.0. He did not put on weight. When he eventually told the nutritionist/dietician she said it would not do him any good, but it would not do him any harm.
The glycaemic index diet was initially developed for diabetics, but nobody told them because it is possibly a better way for everyone to eat.
Books on the glycaemic index suggest that it is not necessary to eat animal products and that you can get all essential amino acids from plant proteins, so long as you eat plenty of legumes. Legumes stabilise your blood sugar.
I do not know if any of you saw the One Show, but they tested the public on Quorn, which is a complete protein, and which I do not like anyway. However, 75% of those who tasted the pork, beef and Quorn chilli, I think it was, could not tell which was which. Even Jay Rayner said he liked it.
The protein content of seeds is about 25%. They also provide iron, zinc, essential fatty acids,and a range of vitamins and minerals. Many of the sesame seeds and pine nuts that we eat in this country come from the far East, so obviously they can be grown there. They contain vitamin A, which is what this thread began about, but seems to be about attacking vegetarians now.

For me it's not about whether it's necessary to eat animal foods? It's nice to eat animal foods and we can, so I do. If other people want to be vegetarians, that's fine, but can you please stop lecturing the rest of us?

Not nice to eat animals foods

just finished my eggs and bacon, and am about to throw my wilting week old lettuce in the bin, as you say,or did you pontificate? "we are at liberty to eat what we will". The bin by the way is a compost bin, don't want to start a war of quotes from somebody or other who thinks they know best, because that is what, or the way they do it.

QED thatbags, thanks

No problem at all with people making individual choice not to eat meat. It think if done on ethical grounds it is admirable.
I also agree that if you are relatively wealthy (in world terms) you can get a brilliant nutritional balance as a vegetarian.
What I take issue with is when it becomes a mission and vegetarians say what other people in other cultures should and should not eat. And do not recognise that a mother in rural Cambodia cannot nip down the supermarket and buy some high protein grains and pulses.
The point about the article nightowl is that calories in the diet and protein in the diet are two different issues. Calories are a measure of energy provided by food. The calorie is a measure of heat energy produced if you burned the food and measured the heat produced (yes aka that is the precise definition). Calories are mainly obtained by carbohydrates like starches and sugars. So you can have a calorie rich diet if you eat white rice every day. Their molecules contain carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
Protein molecules are complex molecules made up from amino acid molecules (complex in their own right) and they contain nitrogen as well as those other elements. Yes you can burn protein and produce calories. But we don't need protein for its calories. We need it to repair tissues, grow new cells and, if a child, to grow. A zero protein diet would mean that we could not produce the billions of new blood cells, gut cells etc that we need to make every day. etc etc There are other things that proteins do, but I won't go on.
You could have a very high protein diet and "burning" some of the protein to produce energy (calories) but it is not a normal way to get calories from diet.
So your article is banging on about a red herring - calories obtained from protein. And the statement about the % is nonsense.

jess I don't think you have understood the article. I do know what calories are thanks, and protein is part of our calorie intake. I also understand what protein is. So does the author of the article and his sources (for the article, not protein) are extremely sound.

Anyway, I'm off shopping now, it's all been said.

Jess you are confusing me. You state 'calories are mainly obtained by carbohydrates' ??? Are you specifically talking about the diet of people living in poor or third world counties? In the developed word about about 30% of our calorific needs are supplied by fats, which (without looking it up) are calorie dense to the tune of 3-4 times the number of calories per gram of a carbohydrate.

Not sure I follow you, nightowl. What was to be demonstrated?

I was referring back to my post of yesterday at 18.23.47 thatbags. Peter Singer's point that people eat meat for no other reason than they can. And they want to. Now I really am off shopping.

OK. I see now. Thanks.

Seems like a good reason to me. There's also the fact that it is very nourishing, but I wouldn't eat it for nourishment if I didn't like it, unless there was nothing else, of course, and I wanted to stay alive.