Eating protein to get protein is as ridiculous as eating hair to grow hair. Protein is made up of amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids in the food we eat. 9 of them cannot be produced by the body and must come from a food source. The best food source for these essential amino acids are grains, legumes, and vegetables. Meat is a very poor source for amino acids. The amino acids in grains, legumes, and vegetables are instantly available to start building into proteins. When you eat meat, the body must first break down the protien into amino acids to make them available for re-assumption as protein. You end up with more saturated fats and other non usable garbage than you do with protein. By going via the garden variety to get your protein, you not only get more protein per pound of food eaten, you also get more of the minerals your body needs and less of the fats.

Although I believe whole heartedly in a vegetarian diet, I have never been one to preach it. I learned a long time ago that people can be very sensitive about the idea of giving up their cadaver based diets. You can challenge their religion, their politics, their bad habits, anything except their meat consumption! So if eating meat is so right for most people, then why do we have to practice so much denial about what we are really doing! That's right, denial. Most of us could never kill what we eat. We don't even want to know what animals go thru from birth to their final moments of life at the slaughter house. Why do you think that slaughter houses are as hard to get into as a top secret military base? I'm not going to go into graphic details about this stuff, the information is out there.

Denial is an amazing thing. We so readily buy into the protein lie because it's what we want to hear, and why let a little thing like facts get in the way of our beliefs? I saw a fellow with a sign the other day that showed an aborted baby along with some anti abortion message. That's great! Lets get real about all of our denials. We should know what abortion looks like. We should also know what a terrified pig looks like that is getting his throat pierced as he is hoisted by his hind legs, screaming on his way to the carving room (sorry, I went into a graphic detail). We should know the sight of 40 caskets being unloaded from a military plane. Teenagers in drivers ed should be taken at least once to an automobile accident scene before they clean up the gory after mess caused by a drunk driver. Maybe if we were more honest with ourselves about the reality of things, we would make better choices.