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Fact: Containing 20 to 25 percent protein by weight, meat ranks about in the middle of the protein quantity scale, along with some nuts, cheese, beans, and fish. (Check the “quantity” side of Figure 14, “The Food/Protein Continuum.”)

Myth No. 2: Eating lots of meat is the only way to get enough protein.

Fact: Americans often eat 50 to 100 percent more protein than their bodies can use. Thus, most Americans could completely eliminate meat, fish, and poultry from their diets and still get the recommended daily allowance of protein from all the other protein-rich foods in the typical American diet.

Myth No. 3: Meat is the sole source for certain essential vitamins and minerals.

Fact: Even in the current meat-centered American diet, nonmeat sources provide more than half of our intake of each of the 11 most critical vitamins and minerals, except vitamin B12. And meat is not the sole source of B12; it is also found in dairy products and eggs, and even more abundantly in tempeh, a fermented soy food. Some nutrients, such as iron, tend to be less absorbable by the body when eaten in plant instead of animal foods. Nevertheless, varied plant-centered diets using whole foods, especially if they include dairy products, do not risk deficiencies.

Myth No. 4: Meat has the highest-quality protein of any food.

Fact: The word “quality” is an unscientific term. What is really meant is usability: how much of the protein eaten the body can actually use. The usability of egg and milk protein is greater than that of meat, and the usability of soy protein is about equal to that of meat. (Check the “Usability” side of Figure 14.)

Myth No. 5: Because plant protein is missing certain essential amino acids, it can never equal the quality of meat protein.

Facts: All plant foods commonly eaten as sources of protein contain all eight essential amino acids. Plant proteins do have deficiencies in their amino acid patterns that make them generally less usable by the body than animal protein. (See the “Usability” side of Figure 14.) However, the deficiencies in some foods can be matched with amino acid strengths in other foods to produce protein usability equivalent or superior to meat protein. This effect is called “protein complementarity.”

Myth No. 6: Plant-centered diets are dull.

Fact: Just compare! There are basically five different kinds of meat and poultry, but 40 to 50 kinds of commonly eaten vegetables, 24 kinds of peas, beans, and lentils, 20 fruits, 12 nuts, and 9 grains. Variety of flavor, of texture, and of color obviously lies in the plant world … though your average American restaurant would give you no clue to this fact.

Myth No. 7: Plant foods contain a lot of carbohydrates and therefore are more fattening than meat. Fact: Plant foods do contain carbohydrates but they generally don’t have the fat that meat does. So ounce for ounce, most plant food has either the same calories (bread is an example) or considerably fewer calories than most meats. Many fruits have one-third the calories; cooked beans have one-half; and green vegetables have one-eighth the calories that meat contains. Complex carbohydrates in whole plant foods, grain, vegetables, and fruits can actually aid weight control. Their fiber helps us feel full with fewer calories than do refined or fatty foods.

Myth No. 8: Our meat-centered cuisine provides us with a more nutritious diet overall than that eaten in underdeveloped countries.

Fact: For the most part the problem of malnutrition in the third world is not the poor quality of the diet but the inadequate quantity. Traditional diets in most third world countries are probably more nutritious and less hazardous than the meat-centered, highly processed diet most Americans eat. The hungry are simply too poor to buy enough of their traditional diet. The dramatic contrast between our diet and that of the “average” Indian, for example, is not in our higher protein consumption but in the amount of sugar, fat, and refined flour we eat. While we consume only 50 percent more protein, we consume eight times the