Our Protein Obsession is Killing Us

Where do you get your protein? Should I eat more protein? What about protein powders?

Heard everywhere, daily.

While collectively we are obsessed with protein it is not doing us any good.

Let’s start with Keto

The Keto diet, the latest incarnation of high protein, low carb nonsense that Dr. Atkins promoted, has been ranked one of the worst for 3 years in a row.

The Keto diet recommends no more than 20 grams of carbohydrates a day. This is about the amount in a small banana or half of a bun. It promises weight loss, but not good health.

All diets, by nature of their design, will promote weight loss. Any time you restrict calories, either by food group or calorie total, you can promise weight loss.

The problem with this fixation on weight over health is that we neglect to read the fine print.

Other side-effects

While too much animal protein has many downsides. These include, but are not limited too, too many calories, osteoporosis, kidney disease, and the environmental impact of eating animal protein. Now add a new reason to limit your protein intake.

Research from the Washington University School of Medicine shows that high animal protein diets increase artery clogging plaques.

Animal proteins are high fat, but increasing fat and protein content like in this study done on mice – because we can’t give people heart disease they have to do that on their own, showed an increase of 30% in artery-clogging plaques.

While this is not the first study to show how high animal protein diets increase the risk of heart disease it did show how this occurs.

High Protein Plaques

Babak Razani, MD, Ph.D., and his team found that a high-protein diet activates a protein in macrophages called mTOR. This protein increases growth rather than it’s normal function of cleaning plaques out of the arteries. mTOR signals shut down the cells’ ability to clean up plaques while starting a chain of events that results in macrophage death. In the mice on a high protein diet researchers describe the macrophage graveyard as,

“Many dead cells in the core of the plaque make it extremely unstable and prone to rupture. As blood flows past the plaque, that force — especially in the context of high blood pressure — puts a lot of stress on it. This situation is a recipe for a heart attack.”

So please, don’t worry about getting enough protein on a plant-based diet. It is so easy to do if you eat a variety of foods. If you eat for your health, weight loss is a natural and normal outcome. It is also easy to maintain with good food.

It is easy to want to believe that one food group is the culprit for gaining weight, but too much food is still too much. Eating fewer processed foods and eating whole, plant-based foods improves your health, weight and fitness without increasing your risk of heart disease.

Need help? Join the How to Eat a Healthy Vegan Diet Course. It is free and always will be.

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla