5
Why We Limit Protein
My great-grandfather George Washington Crile (1864–1943) is considered one of America’s greatest doctors. He died long before I was born, but he still looms larger than life in my family. I remember bringing friends home after school and opening the Encyclopaedia Britannica (for all you millennials, that’s how we got our information before the advent of Wikipedia) and showing him off. “The Chief,” as he was called by his colleagues, was written about for many reasons but principally for performing the first successful blood transfusion from one human to another. He also cofounded the Cleveland Clinic in 1921, wrote all kinds of influential books, and invented several important medical techniques and tools. In World War II, the United States liberty ship SS George Crile was named in his honor.
In his two-volume autobiography, George Crile, my great-grandfather concluded the chapter titled “Hemorrhage and Transfusion” by mentioning how frustrated he was that thousands of lives could have been saved before and after World War I if the medical establishment had embraced his new procedure as a method of counteracting all forms of hemorrhage as well as depleted states—gravely injured soldiers simply couldn’t produce enough blood to live without help from a transfusion. The sad reality is that it took more than three decades before transfusions became a commonplace practice by the medical establishment.
The chapter’s last sentence hit me like a ton of cauliflower: “Such is the inertia of the human race.” These eight words have stayed with me ever since. I particularly think about them when I hear of doctors prescribing an endless battery of dangerous prescription drugs for their cardiac patients instead of prescribing a whole-food, plant-strong diet—the only proven way to prevent, arrest, and reverse heart disease. I also think about my great-grandfather’s words when I hear certain nutritional myths that have no grounding in science, such as that milk is good for your bones, or that you must eat oily fish to get enough omega-3 fatty acids. It’s as if there’s too much inertia out there for people to change their minds and accept the truth.
And the very worst myths of all involve protein. I get questions like these all the time:
“How do you get your protein with a plant-based diet? Only animal products have protein.”
“Aren’t plant-based proteins incomplete?”
“Don’t you need lots of protein to build muscle?”
These assumptions are very wrong. During the question-and-answer session following a talk I gave in St. Paul, Minnesota, a teenager mentioned to me that he wanted to build more muscle mass. I asked him how he was structuring his workouts. He said he went to the gym three days a week and ate lots of protein daily to ensure he was building muscle. When I asked him what he was eating, he replied: bacon and eggs for breakfast; chicken breasts for lunch; and either steak, hamburger, or fish for dinner. To boot, he drank two muscle milk protein shakes during the day.
I could almost feel my arteries seizing up.
I asked him why in the world he had come to hear me talk with a diet like that and he replied that his mother had asked him to come.
I told him that not only was he overdosing on the wrong type of protein, but he was consuming far more protein than anyone needs. Moreover, it was toxic protein from animal sources, and nothing he was eating contained fiber, phytonutrients, carbohydrates, or antioxidants—all the things we need that are found in whole, plant-based foods. His meals were a weak cocktail of animal products and animal by-products, without any of the building blocks from plants that would allow him to flourish on the outside as well as the inside.
The kid was getting a firestorm of unhealthy animal protein, animal fat, and animal cholesterol in meal after meal. Bacon is nothing but fat and protein, and, much to the chagrin of the Paleo people—not to mention Time magazine, which proclaimed that “bacon is back”—it is not healthy. Meanwhile, eggs are not the perfect source of protein as many people have been led to believe. Eggs are a concentrated source of weak animal protein and cholesterol (one egg yolk has 212 mg/dl—the same as two Burger King Whoppers). In addition, close to 65 percent of an egg’s calories come from fat, with over 20 percent coming from saturated fat. And I hate to break it to those of you who have been subsisting on skinless chicken breasts, but the leanest cuts are 30 percent saturated fat, have the same amount of cholesterol as red meat, and are riddled with weak and destructive animal protein. As my father likes to say, there is no such thing as lean meat, just less-fat meat.
And don’t get me started on that muscle milk nonsense. This drink of choice for many bodybuilders is made mostly from bovine growth fluid (cow-milk proteins) mixed with a few extracted oils. I told that kid there was more than enough protein in every plant food to easily meet his needs. I informed him that consuming massive amounts of protein had nothing to do with getting big, ripped, and buff. Heck, if that were the case, all of America would be walking around looking like the Rock. And as we all know, more people are walking around looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy than Dwayne Johnson. After all, the average female takes in 70 grams of protein per day, and the average male takes in more than 100 grams! To put this in perspective, the Institute of Medicine, which advises the federal government, recommends that men consume 56 grams a day and women 46 grams.
Forget about the protein for a moment. The best way to get muscular and shredded is by taxing your muscles with either weight or resistance training, allowing recovery time, and then repeating this process so your muscles can adapt and grow according to the stresses placed on them. We’ve known this forever.
It also so happens that the crown jewels for muscle recovery and performance are whole-plant foods. Plants have healthy fats loaded with unprocessed carbohydrates (our dominant fuel source). Plants are brimming with micronutrients to defend against oxidative stress and inflammation. And plants rock the perfect amount of lean and healthy protein to keep your muscles strong. When I was a professional triathlete training between two and six hours a day for two decades, I never, ever worried about getting enough protein. Every time I was asked the question, “Where on earth do you get protein?,” my answer was always the same: “BGP.” Beautiful glorious plants. After the question-and-answer session I spoke with the boy and reassured him that, like many bodybuilders, UFC fighters, and NFL football players, he could get as big and strong as he wanted, without jeopardizing his health, with plant-strong foods as his muse. He broke into a wide grin and told me he was excited to get after it!
Let’s move past our inertia, lose our unnatural cravings for animal flesh and animal secretions, and be done with it. Be done with pretending animal protein is the way to be strong. Be done with all the unnecessary and debilitating chronic diseases. It all starts with changing your fundamental perception on the issue of “Where will I get my protein if I don’t eat meat or dairy products?”
Take a seat. Let’s talk protein.
WHAT IS PROTEIN, ANYWAY?
Don’t worry if this question popped into your head. If someone is going to tell you how much protein you need and where you should get your protein, it might help to know what protein actually is, right?
Protein is the body’s building block, helping grow everything from bones and muscle to skin and hair. Protein makes up about 20 percent of your body weight—it’s so plentiful that if you removed the water from your body, you’d be a whopping 75 percent protein. Protein itself is a molecule composed of much smaller building blocks called amino acids. These acids link themselves into chains to form individualized proteins with specific roles. Think of proteins like buildings, and amino acids like bricks. Each building serves a special purpose, and each building requires uniquely shaped and sized bricks arranged in a specific sequence.
Our bodies contain more than ten thousand different kinds of protein, each busy doing its own particular job. In addition to growing and repairing tissue, protein is necessary for the production of enzymes, hormones, and countless other body chemicals. Antibodies—blood proteins that counteract toxins and foreign substances in the body—support the immune system, and protein carriers aid in the transport of molecules, such as iron, in the blood.
To make proteins, the body needs amino acids—twenty of them, specifically. The good news is that we can synthesize eleven of them on our own, but the other eight—known as “essential” amino acids—must be taken in through our food. Every food on the planet has some protein, but the quality of the food depends on the amounts and ratio of the essential amino acids.
How much protein do we need? The official recommendation from the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, is 0.8 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight. So if you weigh 150 pounds, that comes out to 50 grams of protein per day, or 10 percent of your daily caloric intake. Nevertheless, most Americans get far more than they need. People eating the standard American diet often take in as much as 30 percent or more of their calories from animal protein, which, as you’ll soon see, places an enormous burden on the bones, kidneys, and heart, and promotes cancerous tumors.
Plants, on the other hand, provide the ideal amount of protein without taxing your body’s systems.
THE PROTEIN MYTH
Peek your head into just about any fire station around the country and you’ll discover that the “Real men eat meat” myth is alive and well. It’s time once and for all to let people know that this is not just a myth, but a dangerous one that is burning down people’s health.
I can’t even begin to tell you how widespread the protein fallacy is. I have my Seven-Day Rescue participants fill out a survey before the program begins, and the most common concern is getting enough protein in their diet. One participant from the North Ridgeville, Ohio, study told me about how her athlete friends pontificate on the “quackery” of the plant-based lifestyle. They don’t care that literally every food has protein, and that you can get all the protein you could possibly ever need from plants. They declare that you can get enough protein only by eating animal foods.
It’s time to destroy this myth once and for all.
As mentioned, the typical American on the standard American diet may get as much as 30 percent of his or her calories from protein. The typical American is also among the least healthy in the world. Americans die at an earlier age than most Europeans and Japanese. We have much higher rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. A 2013 report from the Institute of Medicine comparing US rates of death and disability to those of sixteen peer nations (including Canada, Australia, Japan, and the countries of Western Europe) found that Americans trail the rest of the developed world on virtually every measure of health and well-being. And, as of 2014, according to U.S. News and World Report, Americans have the distinction of being the fattest people on earth.
If you have time, check out the enlightening book Proteinaholic by Dr. Garth Davis, in which the author digs deep into the history of protein and why our country has grown to worship it at the altar. As Davis explains in his book, if you look at the Japanese island of Okinawa, you’ll see residents consuming a high-unprocessed-carb, low-protein diet—in fact, just 7 percent of Okinawans’ calories come from protein. Nevertheless, Okinawa enjoys the world’s highest rates of centenarians and among the lowest rates of obesity. These people sip protein. We gorge it like it’s coming out of a fire hose.
So how did this myth that we need piles of protein first emerge? Let’s go back in time to find the answer. If you glance at any fashion magazine, you’ll see today’s bodies held to an impossibly chiseled standard—men with perfect six-packs and ripped pecs, women with impeccably toned thighs and Barbie-doll waists. But if you look throughout history, you’ll find the opposite was once true. Being heavy used to be a sign of wealth. The bigger your gut, the bigger your wallet! In most cultures, meat was considered a luxury, and the more you ate, the richer (and the fatter) you must be. Nowadays people poke fun at presidential candidates who tip the scales, but obese presidents like Grover Cleveland and William H. Taft were once admired for their prosperity and power. Even the word protein itself reflects self-worth—it comes from the Greek word proteos, meaning “of prime importance.”
It also didn’t help that when the nutrient protein was first isolated in 1839 by Dutch chemist Gerhard Mulder, it was taken from meat. This led to the erroneous belief that only meat had this nutrient of “prime importance.” Later, the renowned German physiologist Carl von Voit declared that adult men needed an absurd 118 grams of protein per day, even though privately von Voit admitted this figure should be more like 52 grams per day. But von Voit’s recommendation was influential, and to this day protein has been inextricably linked to meat, and lots of it—and both protein and meat have been equally inextricably linked to a false sense of good health.
As T. Colin Campbell points out, in the late 1800s researchers discovered that plants also contained protein, but the so-called experts dismissed these as “low-quality” sources. Why? In a society that associated body fat with prosperity, animal-based proteins were found to add fat at a faster pace than plant-based proteins. This finding was actually 100 percent accurate. But as we now know, excess body fat is a precursor to most chronic diseases.
Throughout the twentieth century, researchers poked holes in the protein myth. One of the first to do so was Russell Chittenden, a chemist at Yale University. Using a host of clinical trials (or, as we sometimes call it, actual science), Chittenden proved that young men who ate a low-protein, mostly plant-based diet were more physically conditioned compared to young men on a high-protein, animal-based diet.
The medical establishment just laughed at Chittenden, much the way they laughed at my great-grandfather’s blood transfusion idea, but I know a few people who didn’t get the memo that you need to gorge yourself with protein to be a top athlete. Just ask Rich Roll, who has twice finished near the top of the Ultraman World Championships, an insanely grueling, three-day triathlon featuring a 6.2-mile ocean swim, a 270-mile bike ride, and a 52.4-mile run. Ask the former British heavyweight boxing champion of the world, David Haye. Ask German strongman Patrik Baboumian, who broke the world record for most weight carried by a human being when he heaved 1,200 pounds across a 10-meter stage. Ask Alexey Voevoda, the Russian-born 250-pound double gold medalist in the bobsled at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games, who is also an eleven-time world arm-wrestling champion. Or how about MMA fighters Mac Danzig, Jake Shields, and James “Lightning” Wilks? I don’t think my good friend Scott Jurek, the renowned ultramarathoner who recently broke the record for the fastest Appalachian Trail thru-hike (or should I say run: 2,160 miles in 46 days, 8 hours, 7 minutes), got the memo either. The sports might be different, but the results are the same: elite-level athletic performance on a 100 percent plant-strong diet.
Let’s bust another myth right now, the one that claims people on plant-based diets don’t get enough protein. Once again, we’ll consult the actual science instead of folktales—or “bro science,” as my buddy Ultimate Fighter winner James Wilks likes to say. The Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recently published results from the largest-ever study of people eating plant-based diets, comparing the nutrient profiles of 30,000 meat eaters and 25,000 individuals with predominantly plant-based diets. The meat eaters, of course, shoveled down protein by the truckload, but even people on strictly plant-based diets took in 70 percent more protein per day than is actually required. In other words, you can get all the protein you need just by eating plants.
Meanwhile, a panel that included the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization concluded that “all usual food proteins would readily meet and even exceed the requirement for indispensable amino acids.” In short, almost any diet will provide you essential amounts of protein. But, as we’ll see later, only one diet provides you with healthy amounts of protein.
Pop quiz: Which has more protein per calorie, beef or broccoli? Yup. Broccoli. This green bodybuilding machine has 15.5 percent more protein per calorie than beef. But that doesn’t stop your protein-seeking brainwashed neighbor from eating pounds of steak at a time.
Let’s take a gander at the amount of protein in a few of the basic plant-based food groups, starting with leafy greens. Believe it or not, kale, broccoli, bok choy, and other cruciferous greens hover close to 35 percent protein, and spinach clocks in at a jaw-dropping 51 percent protein. Your average unassuming white mushrooms don’t like to brag, but they’re 57 percent protein. Your average intact whole grains, such as wheat, barley, millet, and rye, are 15 percent protein, with the ancient Peruvian grain quinoa setting the bar at 18 percent protein. Your typical legumes—black beans, split peas, red lentils, and pinto beans—are 25 percent protein, with soybeans taking the cake at over 40 percent. Your average fruit is 6 percent protein, though lemons steal the show at 16 percent.
When life gives you lemons, you get protein!
For those of you who think there’s no protein in mushrooms or other plants, I say you’re full of shitake! (For a more comprehensive protein chart, refer to Appendix 4.)
Now that you know the numbers, I want you to know that none of it really matters. Oops! This is because only 5 to 10 percent of our calories should come from protein. The higher end of that range is for pregnant women, who are giving some of their protein to another human, and athletes, who are actively breaking down and then having to build muscle. Nevertheless, as you can see from the list above, it would be virtually impossible for you to get less than 10 percent of your calories from protein. Any combination of fruits, vegetables, green leafy vegetables, beans, and whole grains will do!
Furthermore, when you’re eating plants, you’re also consuming all their other beneficial ingredients, such as fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients. These are the superheroes you want coursing through your body when it comes to fighting off oxidative stress, building healthy cells, strengthening your immune system, and reversing disease.
Here’s the simple truth: Plants have protein, they have plenty of it, and it’s 100 percent healthy. Since you have a choice, why not choose the healthiest option? As Dr. Walter Willett, chair of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition, recommends: “Pick the best protein packages by emphasizing plant sources of protein rather than animal sources.”
Unless you’re stuck on a desert island or otherwise trying to starve yourself, it’s just about impossible to eat a protein-deficient diet. Protein deficiency is so rare that almost no one has ever even heard the word for it (kwashiorkor).
And yet I still have firefighter friends who are convinced that if they don’t consume their daily ration of ham and eggs, tuna fish, chicken breast, steak, hamburger, cheese, and roast beef, they’ll get weak and have to be hospitalized for protein deficiency.
Baloney!
The truth is, these are the exact foods that are responsible for an overmedicated America, an obese America, a sick America, a bankrupt America, a depressed America, and a dying America. Animal protein does not just provide your body with unnecessary protein, it provides it with dangerous protein. Here’s why:
ANIMAL PROTEIN IS BAD TO THE BONE
We already destroyed the milk-is-good-for-you myth back in chapter 3. Want more? A study published in the BMJ followed about 100,000 people for two decades and concluded that drinking lots of milk, which is chock-full of animal protein at 8 grams per cup, was associated with a much higher risk of bone and hip fractures, not to mention up to twice the risk of death, more heart disease, and more cancer.
The problem lies with acid. Just like a swimming pool, your body’s natural pH level can rise and fall. As your fluids become too acidic, your body is forced to compensate by extracting minerals from bones and tissue to bring down the acid level. Any guess which mineral is your body’s first line of defense? It’s calcium. Remember, calcium is an essential mineral that promotes healthy bones. Your body does not make it, so it must come from diet.
Calcium is also a fantastic antacid. If you’ve ever suffered from acid reflux, you probably took an over-the-counter medication like Tums or Rolaids, also known as… calcium carbonate. By swallowing calcium pills, you’re making your body less acidic. Of course, you have your own internal supply of these pills in your bones. This means that every time your body gets a little too acidic, calcium is slowly leaching out of your skeleton to solve the problem. And if your body is always acidic, your bones can become brittle.
So what causes the body to become acidic? You guessed it: animal protein! We’ve actually known for a century that meat is acid-forming, and experiments as far back as the 1920s have demonstrated that eating meat causes a big spike in calcium in urine. It didn’t get there by chance—that calcium is leached directly from your bones to heal your body every time you eat animal food. Indeed, a Harvard University study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, which followed more than 80,000 women for twelve years, noted that animal protein was directly associated with an increased risk of forearm fracture, though this risk was not present for plant protein.
Meat, fish, dairy, poultry, and eggs almost universally have high levels of sulfur-containing amino acids, which are metabolized by the body into sulfuric acid. The more sulfuric acid in the body, the more calcium your body needs to neutralize it. Based on twenty-six similar studies, for every 40 grams of protein added to your diet, you pee out 50 mg of calcium. Considering your skeleton holds only about 2 pounds of calcium, over the course of a lifetime your frame grows weaker and weaker. Based on that math, people who wolf down 100 grams of protein per day could pee out most of the calcium in their bones within twenty-five years.
For strong bones, don’t pay attention to those “Got milk?” ads, or anything else the dairy industry has to say. Plant-strong means bone-strong!
ANIMAL PROTEIN IS BAD FOR YOUR KIDNEYS
The kidneys might be the most underappreciated organs in the human body. They’re working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to perform an unsexy but critical task: filtering your blood and creating urine. Without our little bean-shaped buddies, waste products will accumulate in our blood and eventually kill us. Though they are small—each kidney is about the size of your fist—these mighty organs filter 150 quarts of blood every single day, nonstop.
If taken care of properly, your kidneys should last a lifetime. After all, you have two of them. Heck, if you’re a real stand-up guy or gal, you can give one away to someone in need and still live a completely normal life. Sadly, though, most Americans don’t take care of their kidneys: A recent survey published in JAMA found that only 41 percent of Americans tested had healthy kidney function. By age sixty-five, one in three Americans can expect to be suffering from chronic kidney disease. Eventually, kidneys can fail entirely, which means several times a week you have to undergo a laborious procedure called dialysis, during which a machine artificially filters your blood. It’s inconvenient and not especially effective: the average life expectancy for someone on dialysis is less than three years.
There is no reason you should ever have to resort to dialysis. Like heart disease, diabetes, and so many other chronic diseases, kidney failure can be seen as a choice—a choice that comes down to what you put on your plate. Think of your kidneys as a car engine. If you take care of your engine, change the oil regularly, and don’t drive too harshly, you can expect it to have a nice, long, trouble-free life. But if you treat your car like you’re racing the Daytona 500 and constantly rev your engine past the red line, it won’t last long.
Eating animal products inundates your kidneys with animal protein, causing massive inflammation and pushing the kidneys into a frenzied state called hyperfiltration as they go into overdrive to sift out the bad from the good. Our kidneys evolved to enter hyperfiltration once in a great while—after a rare hunt, perhaps—but they were never meant to continuously handle an unrelenting load of animal protein.
For example, a study published in the leading nephrology journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation concluded that beef, chicken, and fish cause the kidneys to enter hyperfiltration. On the other hand, plant-based protein does not. A recent study by Japanese researchers found that tuna fish causes kidney filtration rates to skyrocket by up to 36 percent within three hours of consumption. However, the equivalent amount of protein from tofu does not cause any noticeable strain on kidney function. It’s no wonder that a review published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology of a study comprising thousands of participants concluded that kidney decline was directly associated with eating lots of animal protein, while no such decline was associated with plant protein.
What I love most of all about plants is that they not only prevent chronic disease, they can actively halt it. This is true for heart disease, and it can be true for kidney disease as well. Even if your kidneys have been revving up past that hyperfiltration red line for years, you can ease their burden right now by cutting animal protein out of your diet. So far, six clinical trials have proved that replacing animal protein with plant protein can immediately reduce hyperfiltration, and a 2014 double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial published in Clinical Biochemistry proved that plant protein can help revive failing kidneys.
So why not do your bean-shaped buddies a favor and cut out the meat? They deserve it!
ANIMAL PROTEIN AND CANCER
I’ll bet you thought the effects of animal protein on your bones and kidney were bad enough. But animal protein also acts as rocket fuel for cancer.
There are approximately 37 trillion cells in your body, and every single day your body creates 50 billion new ones and wipes out 50 billion old ones. It sounds incredibly violent, but it’s just biology.
Children’s bodies pump out more cells than they discard since they need extra cells to grow organs and limbs. But as adults, we don’t want any excess cells wandering around the body, since they’ll find their way to tumors who thirst for growth.
The body signals cells to grow, baby, grow, with a hormone called IGF-1. As kids, we have lots of IGF-1 running around to encourage cell division, but as adults our bodies dial back the IGF-1 so that we don’t create more cells than we kill off. However, the body can also trigger the release of IGF-1 when it comes into contact with… drumroll… animal protein! When you consume it, animal protein stimulates IGF-1 production, your body pumps out more cells than it needs, and these extra cells then fuel the one thing left growing in your body: tumors.
IGF-1 is especially associated with prostate cancer. A meta-analysis of forty-two studies published in the International Journal of Cancer concluded that “raised circulating IGF-1 is positively associated with prostate cancer risk.” And before any meatheads try to claim that both animal and plant proteins stimulate IGF-1, take a gander at this study published in the prestigious journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention: After studying both meat eaters and plant eaters, the researchers concluded that animal protein was “positively associated with serum IGF-1,” while a “plant-based diet is associated with lower circulating levels of total IGF-1.” Animal protein increases your cancer risk while plant protein decreases it. It’s as simple as that.
But remember, plant-strong means you have to be truly strong. You can’t be kinda, sorta, sometimes strong. The more plant-strong you are, the more you reap the anticancer benefits of plants. Animal protein is in every animal food, no matter if it’s meat, chicken, fish, milk, or egg whites. Within just two weeks of going cold turkey on not just turkey but all animal food, you can expect your IGF-1 levels to drop by as much as 20 percent. But the science shows that your occasional, willy-nilly, sometimes-maybe, Monday-Wednesday-Friday plant eaters are not able to meaningfully drop their IGF-1 levels.
Remember, folks: Go for all plants. All seven days. Yes. You. Can! Eat strong protein from plants!
This charade surrounding animal-based proteins is as intense as a Labrador retriever puppy playing fetch. Every day people are doubling up on chicken breasts, chugalugging protein powders, spooning down Greek yogurts, and gobbling up protein bars, convinced they are doing themselves and their bodies a favor.
We have this perverted notion that there is no such thing as enough protein. This isn’t surprising. Everywhere we turn, we are bombarded with commercials and information touting the benefits of protein, even protein-enhanced shampoo and protein-infused baby food. During the 2014 Super Bowl, we watched the Rock dive through a plate-glass window and declare that we need to drink milk for protein.
Enough is enough. People should know the real story. We’ve been bombarded with so much pro-protein propaganda for so many decades that trying to convince anyone we don’t need meat or dairy is like saying the sky is green and the grass is blue. It’s tough for people to wrap their brains around this concept because it’s a 180-degree difference from the prevailing cultural messages. We need some serious deprogramming.
I challenge you to surrender everything you think you know about nutrition, especially when it comes to the best, safest, and strongest sources of protein. We have to break free from this notion that the more protein we consume, the better. It isn’t better. “More protein” is responsible for more chronic Western disease than any one of us can imagine.
Don’t play the protein game any longer. Just say NO to animal protein as you would to crack, meth, or heroin. This is your brain on drugs, and these are your bones, kidneys, heart, and tumors on meat. Too many people in this country are animal protein junkies. It’s time for America to visit a new “dealer” for our protein needs. His street name is Bro Broccoli. He or she also goes by other pseudonyms, such as King Quinoa, Queen Kale, Warrior of Watermelons, Duke of Dates, and the Princess of Peaches. Remember, you are getting all the junk that’s keeping you down and messed up when you consume animal flesh, whether it’s red meat, chicken, fish, pork, or eggs.
When it comes to animal protein, just say no!