Take Control Of Your Energy - The Better Protein

When someone says ‘Protein’ chances are that you are thinking ‘meat’. And yes, meat has become the main source of protein in diets influenced by Western culture. But at what cost? And why? There are some fascinating findings about the impact the high meat consumption has on our society and on our earth. Fortunately, there are lots of other sources of protein. The challenge is simply to start introducing them into your diets for variety. You don’t have to give up meat. Just eat less of it and substitute it with other protein, coming from plants.

According to some of the latest research available, livestock (cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs, etc.) production contributes to the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. In fact, it is estimated that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. Apparently, expanding population and incomes worldwide, along with changing food choices, are causing a fast increase in demand for meat, milk and eggs.

Now already, grazing for cattle uses a quarter (26%) of the land surface of the Earth!

Cows - Man's Traditional Business Partner, not Man's Food:
Compost, Ethanol, Yoghurt, Cheese, Transport, Ploughing, Capital Investment

Think about what that means as populations increase. Existing land available for human settlements is not enough. So then more forests are cut down, which in turn affects our environment negatively as well. While this problem is at the moment mostly visible in South America, it affects all of us, because it affects our environment. In addition, about one third of all land used for agriculture is used to grow feed crops for livestock. On top of everything, about 70% of land in dry areas of the world which is used by cattle, goats or other livestock has become degraded because of overgrazing, which results in erosion.

Scientists estimate that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of all transport (cars, SUVs, buses, trains, ships) combined. For those of you who don’t know this: greenhouse gas is the type of gas that is heating up the athmosphere of the world and changes our climate.

Also, the sheer quantity of animals being raised for human consumption also poses a threat of the Earth's biodiversity. About 20% of all animals alive are Livestock, and the land area they now occupy was once habitat for wildlife. By increasing livestock, to meet our human demand for meat, we are reducing the land available to wild animals.

I thought I’d add this information to this piece on protein, just to give everyone a bigger picture! Also, I want you to understand that – apart from the negative effect that too much animal protein has on our health – this is the reason why I encourage everyone to shift slowly to using more and more plant protein.

I’m not saying that you must stop eating meat. All I am saying is that we women have a huge impact on the food choices of our families. So we can reverse the negative impact of a diet high in animal proteins over the next couple of years, to help Earth and our bodies recover.

The meat industry is currently under a lot of pressure, because of the criticism against it, both because of the impact of cattle on increasing greenhouse gases, as well as because of the killer-diseases afflicting people living the ‘Western’ lifestyle. Plant and animal protein are both made of essential amino acids, but diets high in animal proteins have been linked to an increase in cancer, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. However, you don't need animals to get plenty of protein in your diet. There are plenty of plants that can be eaten to ensure you get ample amounts of protein each day.

As women who want to create a world where there is more love, greater beauty and more abundance, it should not be our intention to cause strain to anyone. However, if we slowly but surely change our shopping habits to include one portion of animal protein less and instead add one portion of plant protein into our shopping baskets every week, we are informing the market to change. In this way, cattle and other livestock farmers will have time to shift their production to include other products over time, without causing them economic distress.

I’m not going to talk about the forms of animal protein available in detail. You know them all: meat, chicken, fish, eggs and dairy products like cheese.

Instead, I’m going to focus on talking about plant protein, because this is an exciting new discovery for many of us!

Soybeans

Soya is known to have the highest content of protein per 100g, even more than any source of animal protein! I saw soya for the first time about 20 years ago. At that time it had been introduced as a ‘cheap-and-nasty’ meat substitute. I ate it once or twice, when my mom tried cooking it, but didn’t like the taste or the texture. Now I know that the brand that was available then was adding a lot of artificial flavouring to the soya to make it taste ‘like meat’. The next time I ate soya was in a vegan restaurant, while I was a student. There was tofu in my salad. I didn’t know that this was soya and had never tasted anything so tasteless and rubbery! Needless to say, the word ‘tofu’ filled me with apprehension ever since that experience. But things have come a long way since then!

In China, the soya bean has been cultivated and used in different ways for thousands of years. Soya beans are very versatile: soya beans can be used as whole soya beans, soya sprouts, or processed as soya milk, tofu, tempeh, soya sauce, miso (soup condiment). You can read more about this online at www.soya.be. Soya is also used as ingredient for non-food products, such as candle wax and biodiesel! Soy candles are becoming more popular because they burn longer and healthier.

I started seriously using soya as a protein in our diet about a year ago. Before then, it had been difficult for me to find it or use it. But then I had the amazing opportunity to visit a vegan community in Israel, that had started using soya as the base of their diet about 40 years ago. I’ve never seen such healthy, energetic and beautiful people! Their medical records have been carefully kept ever since they changed to a vegan diet and there is not a single case of cancer or high blood pressure among the community members that have been living on soya for almost 40 years now.

What was also highly inspirational was the incredibly creative approach to using soya to create all kinds of delicious dishes, including soya ice-cream! Through trial and error, the women in this community especially have now invented ways of spicing soya and presenting it in such a way that they create any substitute for animal protein that you can think of... chicken casserole, roast beef, scrambled eggs... you name it, they’ve got it.

It had not been easy until last year to find soya products in mainstream supermarkets in South Africa, but just as I returned from Israel, products from a South African producer of soya products showed up on the supermarket shelves across the country. During my recent visits to the USA I’ve been on the look-out for soya products and was absolutely stunned by the variety that is already available, although mainly in shops specializing in organic and health foods. But overall, there is really no excuse in many parts of our beautiful world, not to switch to a meat-substitute made from soya at least once a week. You’ll find these products easy to use: just cook them as you would normally do the type of meat they are substituting. I do suggest, however, that you carefully read the labels on the packaging. Avoid anything with artificial colouring and flavouring or preservatives!

Lentils

Lentils have been around since Biblical times and earlier. It was apparently one of the earliest plants that was domesticated in the Near East. Wikipedia tells us that a variety of lentils exists, with colors that range from yellow to red-orange to green, brown and black. Red, white and yellow lentils have their skins removed. There are large and small varieties of many lentils (e.g., Masoor Lentils). Lentils are sold in many forms, with or without the skins, whole or split.

Learning to cook more with beans and other pulses like lentils does mean getting into a ‘rhythm’ and planning ahead. These foods sometimes need to be soaked overnight or cooked for quite a long time. But the fact that they cost relatively less than the same weight of meat and don’t have a negative impact on our health, bring other important benefits.

In the age we live in, we are truly privileged to have so much information at our fingertips through the Internet! I searched the ‘net to confirm some facts I had, and also found lots of interesting recipes for all the plant proteins I am suggesting here. So, if you’ve never cooked lentils, just google ‘lentil recipes’ and you’ll see what I mean.

Peanuts

Most of us eat peanuts as peanut butter or as salty snacks, sometimes combined with raisins. Using peanuts in cooking is really not common in homes with a Western culture. Southern cooking in the USA features a lot of peanuts, however, as do oriental recipes. Peanuts can be used in many different ways, although they are mainly used for peanut butter in the USA. Peanut oil can be used in cooking, lighting, fuel and as a food constituent. Peanut oil has a better keeping quality than soybean, corn, and safflower oils and is a good source of Vitamin E. Peanut oil is the most popular use of the ‘groundnut’, as it is also known, in other parts of the world, outside of the USA.

Beans (Broad, Kidney, Red, Chickpeas, etc.)

All beans are an interesting mix of plant protein and carbohydrates. This is why it makes sense to eat beans together with carbohydrates, even though they are a protein: the can be digested by the same stomach juices as carbohydrates are. In fact, beans alone are not complete proteins, but combined with a grain are complete as a meal. So it is important to eat beans with other grain products. In switching away from a diet dominated by meat, beans are our best friends! They are hugely versatile and can be prepared in many different tasty ways. The Internet is full of delicious recipes, many being traditional recipes from across the world, which adds some excitement to your kitchen! I found a suggestion that, as you eat more beans, you need to increase your water-intake, in order to properly handle the higher fiber content in your diet. So there is another added benefit of beans: they will encourage you to drink more water. And water, as we know, is the ‘elixir of life’.

Seeds (including pumpkin and squash)

Seeds are generally not a main meal, but can be added to practically every dish, salad or baked item we make. Seeds are a rich store of energy, some have good protein levels, vitamins (especially vitamin E), minerals, and protective phytochemicals. Apparently, our ancestors who were ‘hunter-gatherers’ would follow seeds according to the seasons and ate  every seed that was worth collecting,  grass seed, legume (bean-like, pea -like, peanut and others), and any other seeds that were sustaining and productive, or big enough to be worth bothering with.

I am thrilled to see an ever-increasing selection of seeds on our supermarket shelves! Seeds are highly concentrated foods, so we need very few of them to add some taste to our other meals. Follow the example of our ancient ancestors and add seeds to your cooking, changing with the seasons to keep things interesting!

Nuts

Nuts, together with fruit and salads, are my favourite foods! Why? Because I don’t have to cook them. I just love the fact that these foods can be eaten ‘live’ – no fuel used on cooking them, all the natural nutrients ready for the taking, no vitamins or minerals lost. A handful of nuts, together with raisins, is my favourite (non-chocolate) snack. I know the protein and oils in the nuts are good for my muscles, organs and nervous system, while the iron in raisins helps to keep my blood healthy to take up oxygen. Did you know that, biologically, nuts are a fruit-and-seed in one? And that some types of ‘nuts’ are really seed, because they have to be extracted from the fruit, like cashews? I could spend hours on the Internet learning more about the foods we eat so thoughtlessly... It really is important to know where our food comes from.

This makes me think of a television programme I once watched in Germany, about ‘Spaghetti Trees’. It was a documentary, showing the ‘Spaghetti Plantations’ in Italy, where women painstakingly had to pick the ‘ripe’ spaghetti strips from the trees and lay them out in the sun to dry.... The programme was shown on April 1. April’s Fools’ Day! Of course all of us know that spaghetti doesn’t come from trees – or do we??!

As a human race we have become so far removed from the source of our food, that we really need to get in touch with the ‘food cycle’ again: seed, plant, fruit, harvest, compost, and so on. Make an effort to learn about where food comes from and teaching the members of your family the same. Understanding the value of food hopefully will help us to again respect food in the way it used to be respected by our ancestors, who had to spend hours looking for seeds and nuts to eat...

Mushrooms

I think edible mushrooms are God’s secret for meat-lovers, who need to stay away from meat for health reasons. Large, juicy brown portobello mushrooms can be ‘spiked’ with garlic sticks cut from fresh garlic and grilled on the fire just like meat. Or under the grill in the oven. Fried white mushrooms can be treated with the same spices one would use for chicken livers and enjoyed as such. Sliced mushrooms can be used together with onions and cream or soy milk to create a creamy sauce for pasta. Sprinkled with black pepper they are certain to satisfy any gourmet’s taste.

Mushrooms are the only natural fresh vegetable or fruit with vitamin D. Preliminary research suggests that the ultraviolet light found in sunlight may boost levels of vitamin D in mushrooms. Apparently, we can boost the natural process of “enriching” mushrooms with more vitamin D by briefly exposing mushrooms grown in the dark to sunlight for 5 minutes before cooking or using in salads!

Often grouped with vegetables, mushrooms provide many of the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables, as well as nutritional elements more commonly found in meat, beans or grains. Mushrooms are low in calories, fat-free, cholesterol-free and very low in sodium (salt). Still, they give us different nutrients, such as riboflavin, niacin and selenium, which are typically found in animal foods or grains.

For thousands of years, Eastern cultures have recognized mushrooms' health benefits. Studies conducted over the past two decades—mostly in Asia—have suggested mushrooms or substances in mushrooms may support the immune system. Traditionally, most of this science has focused on shiitake and maitake mushrooms, but this seems to be a common characteristic for all mushrooms.

Take some time to search and find all these interesting facts and delicious recipes for mushrooms on the Internet. A whole new world will open to you, as it did for me! 

Just on a closing note, some of the fascinating facts I found while researching this article today, is that oats and sun-dried tomatoes both are high in vegetable proteien. On the other hand, human milk – God’s food for babies – has very little protein! In fact, the protein found in human milk is equal per 100g as that found in bananas and carrots. So maybe we don’t need so much protein after all... Makes you think, doesn’t it?

PS: Much of the useful info I found came from www.wikipedia.com. But just using Yahoo or Google to search each of the plant proteins mentioned and adding ‘nutrition’ or ‘recipes’ will unlock an amazing world of knowledge for you. Have fun!

PS PS: Managing your energy by eating the right food in the right quantities and prepared correctly is critical if you want to achieve your dream! However, managing your time also is. And being your own boss, while working from home on the Internet can really help you take control of your own life. I found a great opportunity to do just that. You can too. Just click here and keep on reading.