too much focus on protein in the diet?

I have gotten in to Eat To Live, and the basic message is eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. How many of you follow diets that maximize "micronutrients"? Is this something that is important in your mind?

"When you eat to maximize micronutrients in relation to calories, your body functions will normalize; chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol melt away; and you maintain your youthful vigor into old age. Heart disease and cancer would fade away and become exceedingly rare if people adopted a lifestyle of nutritional excellence. But in the here and now, what is exciting to so many people is that when your diet is high enough in micronutrients, excess weight drops off at a relatively fast rate. It’s like you had your stomach stapled. You simply don’t crave to overeat anymore. In fact, it becomes too difficult to overeat when you eat your fill of high-micronutrient food.

The mistake of focusing on the “importance” of protein in the diet is one of the major reasons Americans have been led down the path to dietary suicide. For too long, we have equated protein with good nutrition and have thought that animal—products in spite of the fact that they are deficient or devoid of most micronutrients—are highly favorable foods simply because they are rich in complete proteins. This miscalculation has cost us dearly. By favoring a dairy- and meat-heavy diet, instead of one rich in fruits, vegetables, and beans, we have brought forth an epidemic of heart attacks and cancers."

Link to the blog post is below:

Link

Tue. Mar 18, 8:05am

I have read some of this book and will be buying it this week. From what I've read, this way of eating, for health and weight loss, makes real sense. I can't wait to take my already "good" eating to "great".

Tuesday, March 18, 2008, 9:38 AM

I don't completely buy the stuff about animal-based proteins. First, they are not devoid of micronutrients. As someone who keeps an eye on minerals like iron (tendency towards anemia) and potassium (regulates heartbeat) and calcium (family history of bone density problems), I make a point of including meat and dairy targets in my daily diet.

The only point the author might have is that we eat more of this stuff than we need. I've heard that there's no benefit to eating more than about 28g protein in a meal because of the way the body digests and absorbs it, but I haven't confirmed that from a reliable source.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008, 11:38 AM

Face it, if you work out and you are a female, you should be eating 100 - 120 grams of protein a day. That is a boat load of Soy. I do not eat beef or pork, but chicken and fish works very well to obtain those numbers.

But yet you need micronutrients that comes from fruit, nuts, berries, veggies etc.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008, 12:19 PM

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