Animal vs. Plant Protein

This is an article I wrote for a friend about benefits of animal proteins (particularly the powerhouse of protein shakes: whey) and plant proteins.

Now, before you read this, keep in mind that I do not pass judgement on animals' or plants' proteins as they are equally effective, but different and serve different purposes... I am not making any recommendations for anyone's diet, etc. This is just my thoughts on the subject and how I arrived at these conclusions.

Think about how many pounds of food you eat per day… the average is between three and five pounds per day for the average american. Now times that by ten.

A human would eat, by weight,  1.5 to 2.5 of these quarts per day.

Cows are large animals and eat tons of feed per year, (i.e. alfalfa, hay, grass). Dairy cows, on average, eat fifty pounds a day. Fifty!!!  

This bale of hay is and approximate one day's ration for a dairy cow.
Those are some dedicated munchers. No wonder their jaws are so defined.

Of course, measuring simply by weight does not account for density of calories, in a diet. However, even if you measure with calories consumed, cows consume tens of thousands of calories every day. Not only that, cows need 2 or 3 times more water than food. 

At minimum, they consume 100 pounds of water per day (http://www.holsteinfoundation.org/pdf_doc/workbooks/DairyCattleNutrition.pdf - page 8).

Cows do give a lot of milk. One gallon of milk (8.6 pounds) could make 1 pound of cheese. That’s an 8.6:1 ratio of weight milk to cheese. However, compared to how much water and food they drink... that's a small return.

Whey is a common protein supplement that is derived from milk, naturally, and as a by-product of the cheese making process.That means it is a good complete end-use of a dairy cow’s milk.

Whey has lots of amino acids (good), protein (good) , some fat and cholesterol (less good).

Animal derived proteins and foods (in general) are quite expensive because cows are expensive to raise, care for, and process. No wonder those who raise them try to extract every useful compound from their animals: it increases their return on investment in every step of the chain.  It’s good that they use every component the animal can provide…

Now, think about what cows eat: plants. All the plants they eat include protein. We’re getting our protein through them from what they eat…

Why don’t we just use what they use directly? There will be less waste (and cost) in the whole process, saving water, transportation costs, and processing energy which makes it more sustainable for our planet.

Although one plant alone does not produce all the amino acids a human needs (like an animal protein can), a variety of plants easily accomplish this. Plus, plants contain more minerals, vitamins, fiber (which is good at slimming one’s waistline), and are processed less than whey products, so they may maintain more nutritional benefit.

So, why do we focus so much on consuming the by-product of what cows eat when we humans can utilize plant proteins just as effectively as cows? Because animal proteins are deemed ‘superior’ with no evidence to support their superiority over plant derived proteins.
In fact, plant proteins are actually much healthier in some ways than animal proteins. The proteins themselves both have benefits.

Don’t get me wrong. I love cheese (I have a few varieties in my fridge that I’m thinking about right now… mmm… white cheddar). However, a varied diet is important to one’s physical health, so I rely on the plants, and splurge on the cheese. Because relying more on plants is more manageable for my budget,  and the environment.

What is Food Desco?

It started out as a joke, like so many of my projects. I was talking with some friends and we were coming up for alternative names for objects.
"Chair!", I said.
"Butt sling!", my friend said.

"Food desk!", I said slapping the table.

And so it began.

The domain "Fooddesk.blogger.com" was already taken (and it's a pretty interesting blog, but the last entry was in 2009, so I'm a little miffed that I can't have the domain for what I hope to be a good on-going project), so I decided to go with "Desco" which is Italian for "table (containing prepared items)" and/or in the Urban Dictionary means "Descent, not too bad." Desco originates in Latin for "discus". It also has a meaning in "Desco de Parto" or "birthing table", which shows that life is connected to tables where you eat, and live. Here's a famous discus/desco de parto from the 15th Century. It's apparently a mysterious work.

Masaccio birth scene, c. 1420

Food Desco works on so many levels.

Linguistic, historical, and allegorical levels (I can't be the only one who always has to look up "allegory" when I use to ensure I'm using it correctly).

(Quick caveat, I wonder if the connection between the Desco de Parto and Desco, and all the food connections had something to do with imprinting baby's hands and feet into salt dough? Interesting thought...)

And on their 18th birthday, they have to eat it!

So, what I'll be writing about is food in general. Maybe health benefits, nutrition, unhealthy deliciousness (because sometimes you have to throw cholesterol-caution to the wind), some of my own recipes and different stuff like that. Also, I studied theatre , so of course I'm going to have some art in there.

The Theatre, the Theatre, what has happened to the Theatre?

A lot of art is pictures of food, right?
Let's explore that.
There are some really interesting things you can learn from a painting about food. Food is sacred and always has been. There is an entire symbolism code in paintings of food. All about life and death and consumption of both by which we are all sustained. I will explain in a later post.
Pretty fun artsy stuff, though.

"'Faisans et Bécasses sur une table en marbre', huile sur toile de Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894, France)" Or, "Dead Birds and Lemons"

There's also going to be posts about actual food you can actually eat that's beyond the raw art stage.

But, as a warning, I like pretty strange flavors, and I am, by no means, a professional with food, so if you have any suggestions for me improving my technique, please let me know. I try to learn new things from YouTube and such, but one can only watch someone else make mouth-watering dishes so many times before you just get impatient and jump right into the task. One also can only extract so much information from text instructions before going dead behind the eyes,

"First, pull the dough, then cut it, then roll it, the pull it again, the egg wash all sides and slightly toast it, roll it out, stamp your crest in the dough, roll that out again, smell the butter, smell it some more, go outside and throw it around, air it out, take it for a walk, punch it, tell it you're sorry, spend the rest of your life gaining it's trust again, etc..."

My point is, I usually do some research, but sometimes, depending on many factors, that research does not yield comparable results. Amount of time spent on research (or reading/writing instructions) does not correlate to how good the food will taste. At least, not yet. Maybe I'll get better at it.

Also, you can't taste the food on the internet, so really, do we ever know if we're doing it correctly?
We only have visual and verbal cues about the food.
How powerful the eyeballs are. The nose and taste buds are more powerful, though, but they haven't invented WonkaVision in real life yet, so here we are, banging out words on a keyboard to capture the essence of something that never comes close to a real experience.
Isn't that so much of life?

Okay, enough about life and the internet. Without further ado, my first entree (get it? Entree/Entry) onto the Food Desco.
Enjoy!

-Hannah