Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [152]
Perhaps no two people have done more to bring the Eastern art of cooking with legumes to the West than William and Akiko Shurtleff. Authors of The Book of Tofu, The Book of Miso (Ballantine Books, New York) and The Book of Tempeh (Harper/Colophon Books, New York), they offer hundreds of mouth-watering recipes. For more information on soy foods cookery (and these books), write directly to Bill and Akiko at the Soyfoods Center, Box 234, Lafayette, CA 94549. (Send long, self-addressed envelope.)
NUTS AND SEEDS
Nuts and seeds follow legumes in their ability to meet your daily protein need. They rank behind legumes only because we tend to eat them in much smaller quantities and they therefore contribute less to our dietary needs. Actually, they are as rich in protein as the legumes, and they often have higher NPU values.
First let’s compare the two seeds, sesame and sunflower. Sunflower seed is definitely richer in protein than is sesame—24 percent as compared to 19 percent. The usability of sunflower protein is also better than sesame protein; this is probably the result of the lower lysine and isoleucine content of sesame seed. Experimentally, sunflower seeds show even greater ability to promote growth than meat. Both types of seed have higher NPU scores than most legumes.
You might also wish to note that sesame seeds lose most of their calcium, iron, thiamine, and all of their sodium, potassium, and Vitamin A when they are decorticated. To avoid this loss you can purchase the “unhulled” variety. However, some studies have shown that in order for the body to digest the sesame seed it must be ground. This can be done in any good blender or with a mortar and pestle.
Now look at the nuts. The quantity and usability of their protein is generally lower than the seed meals. A surprise is cashew nuts, whose NPU matches sunflower seeds (and nearly equals soybeans). If you find that your favorite nuts (such as pecans or English walnuts) are not listed here, it’s because they are too calorific! To illustrate: if you (a woman) wanted to get your daily protein allowance solely from pecans (hypothetical, of course), you would have to consume almost 1½ pounds of pecans, which contain over 4,000 calories—or about twice what you should consume. This illustrates the rationale I have used for including only those items that can provide protein without exceeding caloric needs. The one exception here is Brazil nuts, which have been included because of their unusual strength in the sulfur-containing amino acids (rare in plant protein). For a complete analysis of the calorie “cost” of the foods given here, see Figure 17.
Finally, notice that the portions given here are quite conservative. A 1-ounce serving of peanuts provides 7 to 8 percent of your daily protein needs. But if you ate a small package of peanuts (1½ ounces), you would actually be fulfilling 10 to 12 percent of your daily allowance.
GRAINS, CEREALS, AND THEIR PRODUCTS
Cereals provide almost half the protein in the world’s diet. This might surprise you, since the percent of protein in cereals is not high. Someone must be eating a lot of grain. Not us, of course, but other people in the world.
Let’s take a look at grains from several points of view. First, as to the quantity of protein they contain. Among the various grains we find wide differences. In first place is triticale, a newly developed cross between rye and wheat which is reported to have 16–17 percent protein. Wheat, rye, and oats have from 30 to 35 percent more protein by weight than rice, corn, barley, and millet. The protein content of one type of grain can also vary significantly: wheat, for example, ranges between 9 and 14 percent protein. The values you find for wheat in Protein Tables V and VI are based on the highest-protein