Digesting Proteins

E

Eman Resu

Registered Senior Member
Discussions with others suggest that the fibers within a meat-based protein allow the human body to absorb anything the body considers toxic (thinking trace chemicals, toxins) whereas the fibers of a non-meat-based protein structure actually attract these toxins and discharge about 70% of them through the stool.

I've come to understand - and need some education on this - that dairy-based protein structures a twice the size of most other traditional sources of protein thus making it difficult for the body to break them down. I guess this idea applys to hydrogenated oils ...

Anyone care to prove or disprove - or provide some ideas on the digestive process altogether?

Thx
 
Eman Resu,

:bugeye: Could you please cite your sources as I don't have a fucking clue what your saying! Much of it does not even sound valid even contrary to what I have been taught, makes me wonder what kind of school and biochem program I've wasted the 3 years of my life on!
 
:confused: You will need to totally re-word your post because, as it stands, it makes no sense.

What are “fibres” in proteins?

What are “meat-based proteins”? What are “non-meat-based proteins”? Are you trying to distinguish between the proteins found in animal tissue as opposed to plant tissue?

“…dairy-based protein structures a twice the size of most other traditional sources of protein…”

What are “traditional sources of protein”? Just about every plant and animal you eat is made of protein. Are you referring to the proteins found in cows’ milk? If yes, to what other proteins are you comparing relative sizes. (Not that I think your premise is correct in the first place.)

“…thus making it difficult for the body to break them down.”

Are you alluding to lactose intolerance? If yes, this is a specific inability to break down lactose, which is just one of many proteins found in milk. It is not a general difficulty in breaking down milk proteins per se.

“…I guess this idea applys to hydrogenated oils ...”

Oils are not proteins.
 
By the way, lactose is a polysaccharide, it consists of a glucose bonded to a galactose. You need to produce lactase to break this bond efficiently. If you don't then bacteria in your break it down and release a bunch of Co2, which gives you a sore stomach.

From the original post, I'm guessing the plant fibres would be cellulose? This is also a polysaccharide, made up of long strings of glucose. We don't break it down at all, it's hard work for the amount of energy you get out of the glucose, bacteria break it down a bit, but alot of it goes right through the digestive tract. You need a belly like a cow to house the bacteria to break it down well. I haven't heard of it absorbing stuff though.
 
The majority of the human adult population is lactose intolerant and do not produce high amount of lactase to digest lactose (in milk) in large quantities, we do in fact have lactase enzyme and lactase beta-galactosidase enzymes needed for lactose and maltose digestion though. Cellulose though is indigestible and we lack enzymes needed to lyses cellulose nor do we have a digestive track evolved to culture the cellulase producing bacteria needed for digesting cellulose.

Ok I’m not a nutritionist so now here is where I’m going out on purely under-educated speculation: Cellulose travels strait though the digestive track I’m guessing its what makes all these “high fiber” foods go through you like a rock through water. Now I remember a report I read along time ago (I don’t know from where or when so I could be totally wrong on this) that said that the faster food products go through the digestive track the less damage and exposure to toxins the digestive track gets, so I’m guessing that with plants because they go through you faster then meat (meat with all the protein and fat just sticks in there, I’m relatively sure on that) they are better for your digestive track and reduce the rate of cancers in these areas.
 
oh my gawwwwd! :eek:

Of course lactose is a polysaccharide!!! How stooopid of me to call it a protein.

It was past my bed time and I was tired. :D
 
Well, technically it's considered a disaccharide (2 = di, right?). Polysaccharides are generally limited to long strings of 20 or more monosaccharides, such as cellulose and chitin (oligosaccharide being from 3-20 monosaccharides). [ /nitpick ] :p

It's not really important though.

I also don't really know what is being asked.
 
Okay, Okay .....

My understanding (re-worded):
We can get protein from vegetable matter or animal matter. We know that we have toxins everywhere (pesticides, etc.) and the premise of the argument is that these toxins are

(1) passed through the human intestinal tract with more ease when embedded within the vegetable matter (fibres?) and

(2) generally absorbed by the human body when combined with animal matter.

I hope this makes more sense ...
 
Well, me thinks you got the end results right but not the process. Meat being from a higher trophic level requires more biomass and consequently becomes a repository for many toxins so it is generally a source of more pollutants than vegetable food sources. Also, plant materials often contain antioxidants which help protect from the toxins and other substances like ellagic acid which causes cancer cells to regain apoptosis or pectin, which binds with heavy metals and renders them somewhat indigestable which is a good thing. Being low on the food chain is wise.

As far as fiber goes, meat has little and plant materials are the major source of it in human diets. Tis considered to be quite healthy to eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits every day. I'm reading that very recent book called "Eat to Live" right now by Fuhrman, MD.
 
A long jump through logical processes made me think that such a claim might be the result of ‘detoxification’ literature….
Here’s a sample of the literature http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/focus/nutrition/facts/detoxification/dietaryprotein.htm

‘In terms of healthy eating, a diet with a higher proportion of plant proteins over animal ones is recommended. This is based on research showing that cooking certain meats at high temperatures results in the formation of toxic substances known to have a negative effect on health. Examples of these toxic substances are the heterocyclic aromatic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are formed when 'muscle meats' such as beef, lamb, pork, fowl and fish are cooked at high temperatures. These toxic substances form when amino acids and creatine (a chemical compound found in muscles) react together due to the high cooking temperature.’

I guess ‘high temperatures’ is a nice term for burning food on your barbecue…

>We know that we have toxins everywhere (pesticides….)>

I would rather eat a free range chicken, than an American waxed apple….I think that its been established that most pesticides are found on fruit and veg..not animals. But there is the issues of ‘growth hormones’, antibiotics, and wild duck eggs could be a case for heavily metal toxicity …Reindeer meat for radioactive…the case of salmon is interesting, its not the free range natural salmon which is ‘toxic’ but the farmed variety which are fed high protein fish food (made from white fish from the bottom of the ocean floor).
 
weebee, what do you think the animals eat? The feed they get has also been contaminated with various herbicides and pesticides. These accumulate in the meat, in general. It takes many pounds of of feed to make one pound of meat and the toxins in the feed accumulate in the meat to where there is more than in vegetables and fruit available in your average market. I'll try to give you some references to that later. Consider those salmon, I bet they usually don't eat fish that are as high in the food chain as that which is incorporated in their feed. The higher in the chain you go the more pollutants concentrate, generally.

Chickens are actually quite efficient at converting plant protein to animal (I've heard them called vegetables with feet) so I might agree with you that eating one free range chicken might be safer than one waxed apple. I do skin all my fruit now and attempt to purchase so-called organically grown.

Yes, there are those antibiotics, hormones etc. and the toxins of cooking... Good points.
 
I think that animals eat what you feed them :D

-which I find is the main problem, not that some base foods have an ‘inherent evil’ or unhealthy quality.

I’d be interested in the statistical amount of pesticides and toxins for animals and plants, as a percentage of a normal diet.
 
Looking at the following sites and others I discover that as far as pesticides are concerned, compounds containing chlorine were some ot the most persistent that exhibited what is called "biomagnification," an increase in concentration from plants to the animals that consumed them and even greater concentrations in other animals that consumed the plant eating animals. They have basically been banned for use in the US (I bet NAFTA and similar trade policies bring 'em in from other countries) however when it comes to herbicides, apparently they are still in great use. These compounds are considered to be subject to successive and increasing bioaccumulation of concentration as food sources progress up into the higher levels of the food pyramids or trophic levels. The substances that were used in the US environment and subsequently banned still hold danger as they persist for many decades if not hundreds of years. Other pollutants, notably PCBs, heavy metals and radionuclides also biomagnify.

http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/102/2bioma95.html

http://ace.orst.edu/info/extoxnet/tibs/bioaccum.htm

If you are interested in wading through the data, the CDC has prepared toxicity reports for a number of chemicals with consideration of their biomagification abilities (or not) reported at http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/
 
Mr. Chips said:
Here's a site that has collected various reports on the finding of pollutants in common foods:

http://eces.org/archive/ec/pollution/food.shtml
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info Mr Chips. I’m not doubting biomagnification (catchy name and all) but I have a suspicion that that the tomato I ate for lunch never saw the sun shine outside. I think that in the West food production is so industrialised that it’s not the contamination of the rivers or soil that is the major problem, rather I think that chemicals enter my system do so by the way the actual food is produced. Cows should eat grass, but they don’t, they eat hay, pellets and till recently cow parts.

The second link you posted said ‘The figures obtained by the government's Pesticide Residue Committee also show that 71 per cent of cereal bars, 28 per cent of breakfast cereals and 45 per cent of crisps contain residue. Residue was also found in fresh fruit, including starfruit, nectarines, peaches and kiwi fruit.’ I don’t think that the fruit was grown on contaminated soil –I think someone sprayed the fruit with the chemical.

There is a certain shrugging of shoulders if we direct our attention to ‘biomagnification’. DDT is found in US children who weren’t even born when it was banned. There is no way to get rid of DDT once its out, there is nothing we can do, but stop using the chemical and wait. The road I’m suggesting is twined with this, we should also question how our food is produced, question why it does look so good even in the middle of winter. That is something we can do now, something that will change within years.

Your links made me aware again of something, the west does not really have a huge issue with chemicals; compared to non-west countries. I’ve heard of a room in a Vietnam hospital, that has rows of glass jars with aborted foetus, the deformities from Agent Orange. I want to go there once, not because I like that sort of thing, but because sometimes I get angry because I’m so passive…..
Cheers.
 
More problems with milk besides lactose-intolerant people, beta casein A1

http://www.a2corporation.com/english/index2.html

I would think that whey and BCAA proteine powders shakes with some fish-oil are the best combination of clean proteins and anti-carcinogen, especially people above 25 years (natural testosteron starts tapering off) old would benefit from fast acting "netburst" proteines while younger people would benefit more from slower released proteins like in eggs and cottage cheese.
 
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I thought meat proteins (as long as they aren't fatty 'red' meats) are better than vegetable proteins because they contain many vitamins that plants don't have and that we cannot synthesis in our bodies. Is this wrong?
 
Meat also contains more of the essential amino acids. A pice of red meat contains pretty much all of them, from what I understand. A meatless diet requires much more hoop jumpage to get all the essentials. Lots of combining of grains and legumes and such to get them in their proper amounts. And yes, red meat contains many B vitamins that are important to muscle growth and so forth.

There are more vitamins, minerals and essential amino acids in a Big Mac than in an apple or carrot or bunch of broccoli. Problem is, there is also more cholesterol, fat, and special sauce as well.
 
Also B vitamins I believe, are very important in maintaining health as they are necessary in making the bodies most important antioxidant - glutathione. Remember, cholesterol and certain fats are also believed to be important for the body! Im just trying to justify my bad habits of eating at Macs and KFC.

mmm chicken!!!
 
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