Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [83]
In earlier editions of Diet for a Small Planet I concentrated on the “meat protein mystique,” explaining why the body needs protein, how protein is ranked according to its usability by the body, and how you can combine plant proteins to create a protein mix that is just as usable by the body as is meat protein.
But it was the possibility of combining two or more less-usable proteins to create one of a better “quality” that most intrigued me. This neat trick is called “protein complementarity” and is explained fully in the next chapter. It doubly intrigued me when I realized that such food combinations evolved as the mainstay of traditional diets throughout the world.
Virtually all traditional societies based their diets on protein complementarity; they used grain and legume combinations as their main source of protein and energy. In Latin America it was corn tortillas with beans, or rice with beans. In the Middle East it was bulgur wheat with chickpeas or pita bread felafel with hummus sauce (whole wheat, chickpeas, and sesame seeds). In India it was rice or chapaties with dal (lentils, often served with yogurt). In Asia it was soy foods with rice (in southern China, northern Japan, and Indonesia), or soy foods with wheat or millet (in northern China), or soy foods with barley (in parts of Korea and southern China). In each case, the balance was typically 70 to 80 percent whole grains and 20 to 30 percent legumes, the very balance that nutritionists have found maximizes protein usability.
“Anglo students in Tucson had always put down the Chicanos for their ‘starchy’ diet,” Arizona Daily Star reporter Jane Kay told me. “But after your book came out, the Chicanos felt vindicated because it showed that the food the Mexican people in Tucson eat—lettuce, cheese, tortillas, and beans—is better than the all-American hamburger and fries.”
When I first wrote Diet for a Small Planet in 1971, the idea that people could live well without meat seemed much more controversial than it does today. I felt I had to prove to nutritionists and doctors that because we could combine proteins to create foods equal in protein usability to meat, people could thrive on a nonmeat or low-meat diet. Today, few dispute that people can thrive on this kind of diet. In fact, more and more health professionals are actually advocating less meat precisely for health reasons, reasons I discussed in “America’s Experimental Diet.”
In 1971 I stressed protein complementarity because I assumed that the only way to get enough protein (without consuming too many calories) was to create a protein as usable by the body as animal protein. In combatting the myth that meat is the only way to get high-quality protein, I reinforced another myth. I gave the impression that in order to get enough protein without meat, considerable care was needed in choosing foods. Actually, it is much easier than I thought.
With three important exceptions, there is little danger of protein deficiency in a plant food diet. The exceptions are diets very heavily dependent on fruit or on some tubers, such as sweet potatoes or cassava, or on junk food (refined flours, sugars, and fat). Fortunately, relatively few people in the world try to survive on diets in which these foods are virtually the sole source of calories. In all other diets, if people are getting enough calories, they are virtually certain of getting enough protein. (Babies, young children, and pregnant women need some special consideration, which I’ll discuss later.) This is true because the vast majority of unprocessed foods can supply us with enough protein to meet our daily protein allowance without filling us with too many calories. In Appendix D I present a simple rule of thumb for judging any food as a protein source. There you’ll see that most plant foods excel—meaning that you could eat just one food and get enough protein.
The simplest way to prove the overall point is to propose a diet which most people would consider protein-deprived