Facts Protein Nutrition

Protein is made up of chemical units called amino acids, and is important for many functions in the body.

Do you need meat or beans to get your protein?
Some time ago it was thought that only meat and milk would contain all the amino acids the human body needs. But now we know that vegetables are also a great natural source of protein.

Where one vegetable lacks some of the amino acids, another contains the missing ones.

So eat a lot of vegetables and many different kinds, and you will be fine.

Eat Enough
To get enough vitamins from food, you need to eat enough. The same goes with protein. If you eat a lot of vegetables or nuts every day, you will get all the protein you need. You do not have to eat beans or meat to get protein, because veggies contain a good amount of it, and so do nuts.

For example a bunch of spinach contains 10 grams protein and a head of lettuce contains 7 grams protein. One pound of tomatoes contain 4 grams of protein. And 1 oz or 23 almonds contain about 6-7 grams of protein, depending on their size.

Almonds
As I mentioned above, nuts are a very good source of protein. Especially almonds. The protein found in almonds is of very good quality. Eat a handful a day and you for sure will not become protein deficient.

More Facts Protein Nutrition Facts

RDA of Protein
To find out how much protein you need from food every day, you should multiply 0.8 by your own weight in kilograms. The answer you get is the grams of protein your body needs.

So for example, my weight is 53 kg. And 53 x 0.8 is 42.4

I need 42.4 grams of protein every day.

I can get that by eating some almonds, a salad and a few bananas and mangoes.

Frederic Patenaude has done the math and says the list of foods below contains 42 grams of protein, along with most other nutrients you would need in one day:

- 2 pounds of watermelon
- 2.5 bananas
- 1.5 large mangoes
- 0.5 ounces of almonds
- 2 celery stalks
- 2 large tomatoes
- some lettuce leafs
- 1 cucumber
- some fresh spinach

On this page: Protein you can find two videos of men that are building muscle without eating meat. They explain why it is a myth that you need to "overdose" on protein just because you want to build muscle. Have fun watching the videos :)

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References:

- http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_calculate_the_RDA_for_protein#ixzz18UyznjJN

- http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/

- Book: Natures Plan For Your Health by Thomas Bartram, Robinson, London

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