From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Mon May 13 2002 - 16:18:01 MDT
On Mon, 2002-05-13 at 14:19, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Some veggies (legumes primarily) have *more* protein
> than beef does.
This is more wishful thinking than fact for two reasons. First, only
the very best veggie specimens have protein levels that even approach
the same protein densities as beef; saying that a veggie diet can have a
*higher* protein density than beef is real stretch and predicated on the
assumption that the meat is low grade and that the veggies are
anomalously good samples of their species.
Second, in the real world the protein densities of those veggies is
substantially lower than their theoretical maximum which you are
assuming. If you sample your average bag of legumes, you'll find that
the actual protein density falls below the theoretical maximum by at
least 10 percentage points on average. In other words, while the
theoretical density of some of the very protein dense legumes can reach
as high as 30-35%, sampling your average crop will show a real yield of
around 20-25%. Only under improbably optimal conditions do you ever get
protein densities that look remotely like what is regularly advertised
for veggie proteins in these kinds of diet discussions. I'm not saying
that it matters (20% protein is as good as 40% for most intents and
purposes), but that your facts are not based on any kind of practical
reality.
Farmers and similar track protein yield information pretty closely as it
is important to their business (and which is the primary reason I know
anything about the above).
Cheers,
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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