From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue May 14 2002 - 09:51:18 MDT
On Tuesday, May 14, 2002, at 10:39 am, Dossy wrote:
> I can imagine eating 16 ounces of cooked ground beef. I can't
> imagine eating 16 ounces of cooked brown rice. It's absorption
> of gut juices causing it to expand would probably rupture my
> tummy. Not a great way to live, or die for that matter.
You don't eat it raw. Cooked rice has already expanded and will not
expand any more. I have never heard of anyone having problems with rice
expanding in their stomach. There is an urban legend about feeding
uncooked rice to birds causing them to explode, but this myth has been
debunked.
My point is that veggies have more protein than people think.
Pre-packaged food typically give large meat servings as main-courses,
but show small side-dish servings for veggies. It makes the veggies
look protein deficient in comparison. But if you eat larger amounts of
veggies, you get more than the "recommended" serving size, and they
start looking like reasonable sources of protein.
For example, I'm looking at one-pound box of plain (not whole-wheat or
health-food) penne pasta. It only has 7 grams of protein per serving.
That sounds wimpy, but they claim a "serving" is a quarter-cup! I'm
going to eat the whole box which makes two cups of cooked pasta. I am
supposedly eating 8 servings on a single plate, so I am getting 56 grams
of protein from one pasta meal. This doesn't even count adding tofu or
legumes or corn or fake-meat sauce. This could be my whole day's
protein, and we don't usually think of pasta as being a protein source.
It is trivial to eat enough protein. If you want to eat modern fake
meats made from wheat gluten or tofu, it gets even more trivial. When
looking at a calorie restricted diet, I determined that wheat gluten has
the highest protein/calorie ratio I could find of any food (including
meat). An eight-ounce cut of fake steak (seitan veggie strips) contains
55 grams of protein and only 250 calories. If I ate one of these for
each of my three meals, I would get 165 grams of protein and only 750
calories. I could be overdosing my kidneys on protein while wasting
away from a lack of calories!
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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