[Magdalen] Egtablevay?

[Sibyl Smirl]

On 11/21/15 9:03 PM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon wrote:
>>>> When were they ever NOT vegetables?<<<
>
> When I was taught from childhood (Four Food Groups era) that their protein content made them meat.  You don't, by any chance, think tomatoes are vegetables, hmm?  :-)=
>
>

Wow!  what a can of worms you opened!  (BTW, you can eat earthworms, and 
they're a great protein source: I've never had the courage to try them, 
and don't you go out and dig unless you can tell the difference between 
earthworms and other wormlike creatures such as nematodes, some of which 
are probably poisonous or parasitic in humans.)
Anyway, beans (including peanuts) are not a substitute for meat.  They 
are high in protein, but it's not a complete protein unless it's 
combined in the same meal with things like grain (especially corn, which 
is in itself an unusual grain)(Smart Indians, or God-instructed Indians, 
who didn't know any chemistry, but ate and grew beans and corn together, 
pretty much _inventing_ corn), or with complete animal proteins like 
eggs or milk (aka cheese, yogurt, but not butter, which is the FAT from 
the milk).  Read "Diet for a Small Planet" by Francis Moore Lappe. 
Soybeans (tofu, etc) are not totally complete either, but better than 
other beans.  If you eat all incomplete proteins, you get deficiency 
diseases like pellagra, a killer.  That's a deficiency of a B vitamin, 
but you can make the B vitamin for yourself if you have enough of one of 
the amino acids that make up protein.  That (tryptophan) you can't make 
for yourself, but have to get it in your diet.  Actually, you can eat 
all incomplete proteins, but they have to be, in the same meal, 
incomplete in ways that complement each other to completion, like the 
aforementioned beans with corn.  Then, as mentioned in the thread, 
humans are very individual in their digestions, and sensitivities, so 
you've got to figure out a lot just on the individuals you're cooking for.

The four food groups, and the pyramid, are an oversimplified stab in the 
right direction, not a "complete" course in nutrition.  The devil is in 
the details.  We couldn't even have a complete course in nutrition yet, 
because we keep finding out more things all the time.  They found out 
that "cholesterol" clogged arteries, then all the half-educated (on the 
subject of cholesterol) people went overboard on avoiding animal fats. 
It was probably more than twenty years before they discovered that there 
are two types of cholesterol, one of which can be very helpful, and that 
a lot of us make our own cholesterol anyway.  Uh... etc.  Several 
textbooks full of details, many of which refute or add necessary details 
to earlier science.



-- 
Sibyl Smirl
I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net