Most of us equate
word diet with calorie reduction. This is understandable, since most diet marketing is relentlessly focused on offering consumers low-calorie options. Unfortunately, this way of thinking is categorically wrong. The simple fact that any nutritionist will verify is that everyone is on a diet. Even those who do not wish, or do not need, to lose weight are on a diet, as are those who are increasing their weight. Dieting has nothing to do with calorie reduction, and everything to do with calories choices. The foods you ‘choose’ to eat determine type of diet you are on.
Indeed, to digestive system and intestines, a candy bar and a stalk of celery are neither seen as junk food nor diet food. They are both seen as simply food. The candy bar leads to a rapid glycemic reaction and production of fat cells. The celery does not. Still, body does not label one as junk and other as diet food. In fact, everything that body ingests, it tries to use in best way that it can.
However, outside neutral intelligent internal body systems, term diet persists in our often rather misguided external world of advertising, marketing, and diet plans. As such, we can group diets into two categories: deliberate and accidental.
Deliberate diets are designed with specific requirements, such as those engineered to lose weight, to gain weight, and to maintain weight. Deliberate diets are typically what people refer to when they use catchall term ‘diet’. This is in contrast to other kind of diet that is called ‘accidental diet’. Accidental diets have no requirements, and march to a simple chant: eat whatever, whenever, and body will take care of itself.
However, despite fact that there are two terms for diets – deliberate and accidental – there is a denominator that unifies them both: protein. All diets, even those that are accidental, require protein.
Protein, and amino acids that comprise protein, are essential for life itself. Every system within body depends, directly or indirectly, on protein. In fact, because protein regulates hormones, some cases of depression or anxiety are actually instigated and perpetuated by either a lack of protein, or body’s inability to fortify its neurological system with this critical macronutrient.
Yet for those on a diet -- and that includes everyone -- importance of protein is more pragmatic. Many deliberate diets such as Atkins™ diet and South Beach Diet™ restrict carbohydrates, while other restrict fats. That leaves protein. Protein is common link between all nutritionally-sound diets. But is it also missing link? Or, is protein readily accessible and readily present in foods we eat?
Oddly, most American meals and snacks are protein deficient. Indeed, complete protein is absent from 6 of top 10 foods eaten in US, and absent from all 10 of most popular snacks (see chart at end of article). This shortage of protein in American diet refers both to absolute amount of protein, which is recommended to be a minimum of 50 grams per day, and kind of protein as well. The healthiest protein is a “complete protein”, which includes all 19 amino acids. However, even people who are ingesting 50 grams of protein may not be eating complete protein. As such, these people are sometimes unwittingly suffering from some form of protein malnourishment, and experience symptoms that include drowsiness, digestive problems, emotional disorders, and other adverse physiological effects.
