Researchers have discovered that people who eat more animal protein are not healthier than people who get their protein from plants:
If you look at the traditional Indian diet, it actually has treasures of foods that are not only delicious, but rich in the nutrition that we need, including protein. I'm talking about lentils, beans, chickpeas, vegetables and grains. These foods give us the protein that we need. Now, some have argued, no animal products are more densely packed with protein, so we should choose them instead. What they mean is that meat or eggs or dairy products have protein in them. They do. However, researchers have discovered something that's very important, and that's that people who eat more animal protein are not healthier than people who get their protein from plants. In fact, they're much less healthy. Why would that be? Well, the first reason is what comes along with all that protein. If you're getting protein from animal products, you get cholesterol, you get saturated fat along with it, as well as infective organisms like salmonella and e coli.
When you get your protein from plants, there's no cholesterol, there's virtually no saturated fat. Instead, there are things you need, like fiber, healthy, complex carbohydrates, vitamin C, other vitamins, antioxidants. The other part though might be the protein itself. A protein molecule looks like a a string of beads. Each bead is an amino acid, and your digestive tract separates those beads, those amino acids, you absorb them and you make your own proteins from them. And different foods have slightly different strings of beads, if I can put it that way. A slightly different collection. They have different amino acid profiles. If you eat grains and beans and vegetables, you'll get all the essential amino acids that you need. But it turns out that the collection of amino acids that you get from plants appears to be healthier than the amino acids that are gonna come to you from animal products. There are certain ones in animal products like lysine and methionine that seem to be too concentrated in the animal proteins, and that can be bad for human health. Bottom line, if we're eating our beans and other legumes, our grains and our vegetables, you're getting the protein that you need in its healthiest possible form. And luckily, their traditional Indian foods are wonderful sources of not only good taste, but good nutrition too.
