Another Confirmation. How Many Do We Need?

It wears me out. I see influencer after influencer (why do we listen to them?) telling us that plants are toxic and that meat, butter and other animal food products are the key to, well, everything that makes a life healthy.

It’s time for a reality check since the latest research shows that 50% of people under 50 take their health advice from influencers with expertise in their bios like “parent,” a great responsibility to be sure, but does that make an expert on nutrition out of you?

I’m not sure about you but I prefer my experts to actually be experts in their fields, with nutrition science or ancient wisdom like Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda backing up their claims.

But I digress.

You’ve heard the protein message a thousand times: eat more of it, especially as you get older. And that’s good advice, as long as you are not losing your mind, as though we were still warriors. We only hunt for parking spaces these days, so take it down a notch on the protein, ok?  Interestingly, the conversation often stops at the quantity of protein, when we should be considering the variety and quality as well.

Researchers found that people who ate the most plant protein, from foods like tofu, tempeh, beans, legumes, nuts, and whole grains, had a reduced overall cancer risk.

This was no mini-study. Researchers followed nearly 200,000 participants over 11 years. Compared to those who ate the least plant protein, people in the highest intake group had significantly lower rates of overall cancer. The associations were strongest for kidney cancer (31% lower risk) but were significant for lung (14%) and colorectal cancers (23%).

Each 10-gram (1 tablespoon) increase in daily plant protein for 1,000 calories consumed was linked to an 8% lower overall risk. The benefits eventually plateaued, suggesting more protein, even from plants isn’t always better. It’s often just more, but it’s also important to note that the study revealed the greatest reduction in cancer risk when plant proteins replaced red and processed meats (not eaten in addition).

So yeah, this is a give-up-meat blog. I’m not sure what it will take for us to get the message loud and clear, but I will keep saying the truth, giving facts and hoping for the best.

Mother Nature has imbued plant-based foods with compounds that animal proteins can’t and don’t have, like fiber, polyphenols, and antioxidants that help reduce inflammation and oxidative stress. When you eat lentils instead of relying on chicken or meat, you’re not just getting protein. You’re benefitting from all of the other nutrient-density that comes naturally with plants.

A caveat in the study is actually yet another benefit. The researchers noted that people who eat more plant protein also tend to exercise more and smoke less and those are great things. But here is where it gets interesting: the pattern held even after researchers adjusted for those lifestyle differences, which makes the argument for plant protein even stronger. The conclusion is simple: plant-rich diets result in better long-term health outcomes.

Now before you start emailing and calling me out, there is one thing we do not get from plants and need to supplement…and that’s Vitamin B12, so simply supplement it and viola, you’re good to go. All the rest; all the supplement lines sold by influencers to balance you, detox you or do whatever else they promise is just turning you into a profit center for their nonsense.

Do we need supplements? Some of us do and we should act accordingly. I am not anti-supplement; I am not anti-medicine. I am anti-listening to people who only want to sell you something, based on their scant knowledge or ability to spin the results from a study to tell you what they wish to tell you.

Back to protein. To get more protein from plants is easy. Toss chickpeas into a salad. Add black beans or lentils to your next taco night. Have a tempeh sandwich on whole-grain bread. Try something really daring: tofu in a stew or stir-fry.

One final note; the research was strictly science and not ethics or consideration of the environment. The research did not discuss the impact of animal slaughter for carnivore diets on well, the animals. Nor did it discuss the impact that the continued and excessive consumption of animals as food has on human health, the planet, from use of water to deforestation to the poisoning of our soil from animal farm runoff to methane pollution to cruelty to…to, well the list goes on.

So the next time you’re tempted by a scantily clad woman biting down on a stick of butter or a bare-chested muscle-bound man holding up a raw steak as though it’s a prize he won, think about your kidneys, colon, lungs and well just about every cell of your body and its risk for cancer. And if you’re feeling more ‘big picture,’ think of the animals and this planet we all share.