Protein and the myth we're fed | Del Sroufe | TEDxYearlingRoad

so in 1989 I dropped out of school at the Ohio State University and went to work for a small vegetarian restaurant called the King Avenue coffeehouse now the King Avenue coffeehouse was the kind of restaurant that the media like to portray is this throwback to the 60s hippies coffee house with patchouli in the air and chamomile tea and unmatched tables and chairs an eclectic art on the walls that was sometimes controversial bead store next door by the way I went to work there and I fell in love with it I'm like oh I'm home I stayed there for eight and a half years and by the time I left I decided to open up my own vegan bakery and had become vegan myself I spent four years in the bakery business three of it and a small food co-op called the Clintonville Community Market and then one year in the Short North at the North Market left there exhausted bakery business is a hard business I went home and slept for two and a half weeks got up and started the personal chef and meal delivery service and I did that for five years five years after I started that business my current business partner dr. Pam popper with waddles form health knocks on my door one day and says I want to buy your business and I want to move you into our space and build you a kitchen and let you do what you do there that move I said yes that move opened doors for me that never would have been opened otherwise I'd probably be still doing bakeries and meal delivery service on my own but instead what got to happen was I got to do some things that I fell in love with doing even more I started teaching teaching cooking classes and I started doing public speaking telling people about the health benefits of a plant-based diet eventually I got to write my first cookbook and I tell you all this because I've had a lot of conversations with people about the vegan diet about diet itself and there's some things that happen and conversations that happen when you start talking to people about your diet one everyone you talk to becomes an expert in nutrition right you ever notice that Sooni I'm on a diet and everyone wants to tell you the right diet to do right well when you tell them you're vegan it's the same thing except on crack the vegan diet is not healthy you you can't live without meat I swear to god they have all kinds of I take vitamins go see your doctor or they have a lot of questions what what do you eat I say well I eat your side dishes - the butter and sour cream and they're like okay I kind of get that and it's like well do you eat fish and I'm like well no I don't eat anything that comes from something that has a mother or a face Center okay then I can that includes honey they're like okay they kind of get that and I say well did you do it to lose weight and I have to laugh every time I hear that question because I'm like well I kind of bucked the trend in there because I went on a vegan diet and gained 200 pounds and they're like what what because everyone assumes that if you're vegan you're scrawny that you can't gain weight and you're eating that rabbits diet you know your carrots and celery and that's all you eat I can tell you that's not true so I tell people I eat the best food on the world I eat a more eclectic and exciting diet than I've ever eaten and they're like okay they're a little more curious than right and then they always ask this one question this is I never ceased to get this question wherever I speak and that is well where do you get your protein where do you get your protein and I say well I get them from the side dishes that we talked about there's this myth this perception that if you eat a vegan diet that you just can't get enough protein so I thought tonight what we would do would be to dispel that myth and put it to sleep forever to do so we have to go to the experts and find out how much protein humans need now the USDA the United States Department of Agriculture is responsible for setting Dietary Guidelines for Americans and they tell us that we need to get from 10% to 35% of our calories from protein a range that's not only maybe confusing but almost ineffective because are you the 10% or you the 35% now everybody in the day in the audience it's on a paleo diets going I'm 35% right but let's look at getting 10% of our calories from protein on a vegan diet and seeing if we can do it now let's assume that we're eating this mythical 2,000 calorie a day diet right the gold standard of diets is 2,000 calories a day so in order for me to get 10 percent of my calories in protein then I've got to eat ten percent 200 calories a day in protein and each gram of protein has four calories so that's 50 grams and let's assume that I'm going to eat it's kind of a standard meal nothing really exciting I want to have beans and rice for dinner and maybe a side of steamed broccoli so my cup of beans cup of cooked beans is 15 grams of protein a cup of brown rice is 5 grams of protein and the magical thing about my broccoli is 100 calories worth of broccoli has eleven point eight grams of protein by comparison 100 calories worth of red meat only has 5 grams of protein so I've got 15 5 is 20 and 11.8 is 31 grams of protein in my one meal out of 50 so I've met 60% of my protein meat needs in one meal I didn't eat dessert because I don't need it it's not 2/3 to the way they're so what does the science say about this protein myth of ours a really good friend of mine and a researcher who's been studying protein for over 40 years dr. T Colin Campbell who eventually wrote a book called the China Study that sold almost 2 million copies now been out for 10 years he started studying protein early in his career back then when we thought that animal protein the protein carbs and and fat were the three components that we needed to worry about in our diet alright and in his early research he was looking at lab rats and he was feeding lab rats varying amounts of animal protein he was using milk within his examples and then feeding them an athlete oxen that was a cancer-causing agent and he would vary the amount of the protein he would feed them five percent and then feed them the alpha toxin and then he would feed them 20 percent and feed them the alpha toxin well at five percent protein regardless of the amount of the alpha toxin the cancer-causing agent he fed them none of the rats got cancer but at 20 percent protein all of them did not with him died so he went on to expand his study when he was asked to go to China and figure out why the Chinese were dying with such varying rates of cancer it was very geographically determined so he goes and he does what B has become the largest study of human nutrition ever done and in that study he finds something and he finds kind of one of the answers to our question about this this protein and protein deficiency and vegans he finds that cancer rates varied in China based upon the amount of animal protein consumed alright so the higher amount of animal protein consumed the higher the rates of cancer and other diseases he found that the healthiest people on the planet the healthiest populations that he observed got 10% of their calories from protein and only 10% of that from animal foods and the Chinese didn't eat dairy because they had a lactose intolerance to it so 10% from protein and 10% from animal foods alright so we don't we don't have a protein deficiency whether we're vegan or not matter of fact we consume too much protein and it's the cause of many of the diseases that we see in Western culture the World Health Organization tells us that the only people that they see that do not get enough protein are people that do not get enough calories that's in their world watch mm report the only people who do not get enough protein are those you have to be going hungry in order to not get enough protein and then finally we're seeing this trend just to drive the point home of athletes who are adopting a vegan diet Serena Williams David Cardiff professional football player Robert Cheeke bodybuilder Brendan brazier triathlete these elite athletes are all saying they can workout harder they have better endurance they getting stronger they're faster they're recovering more quickly and they have more energy since they've adopted this vegan diet so it's not the protein that we need to be worried about protein is in our problem we need more plants in our diet most of us don't get enough fiber we can put in the end to a lot of the chronic diseases that we see if we changed our perception about our diet and stop listening to the myths that are out there

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 46,990

Rating: 4.7395349 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Health, Animals, Behavior, Cooking, Food, Heart health, Nutrition

Id: toHVZ5W_CDA

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2016