On Tue, 31 Oct 2000 10:27:45 -0800, Wally Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
...
>3. Incomplete proteins operate under the "lowest
>common denominator" principle. Your "wheat only" diet
>example, exemplifies this principle, since you must
>continue eating the food until the requirement is
>satisfied for the least concentrated amino, regardless
>of whether requirements for other aminos have been
>satisfied.

Now it seems *we* have found our "lowest common denominator" principle.
I agree.
Except for the first word "incomplete", what you write applies to all
proteins.

> Animal foods, on the other hand, can
>provide proper amino ratios in much smaller
>quantities.

And what's the conclusion?
You need a rather small amount of meat per day for protein.

From a very high quality protein (Potatoe with egg, 136% of egg) you needed
below 0.4g per kg bodyweight (in absence of growth or disease).
For meat (91% of egg) you need roughly .6g per ky bodyweigt.
Thus a 70 kg man could get it's protein from 200g meat alone.

However as paleonutrition doesn't have technology-spoiled food items such as
sugar, any food, any living beeing will supply enough of protein of enough
calories are eaten.
Even fruit.

>
>4. I am not stating that vegetarians cannot fulfill
>their protein requirements. Aminos are "stored" in the
>bloodstream, and can be combined when needed (in most
>cases). Which means that if you have a varied veggie
>diet, you will probably be ok. However, because of the
>incompleteness of veggie proteins, if your diet is not
>varied (fruit only, etc.), you're looking for trouble.

..Even fruit.
Storing of amino acids in the bloodstream works only for a limited
time of about one day (it's only some 55 grams).
There's no reason to care about any combination (even on wheat only).

Eaters of high quality protein just burn away other amino acids, as eaters
of lower quality protein do.

Time to close protein quality discussion here...

It may however be well advisable to think about *certain* selected amino
acids.

Tryptophan for two reasons:
1. It's a substrate for the body to build the vitamin niacin out of
2. Its the substrate for the body to make brain transmitter serotonin of
For the second point the relative occurance is important.
(As I've seen here wild game is much better than domestic animals).

Arginine as Todd pointed out
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind9910&L=paleofood&P=R4600
is important for the newly discovered NO biochemistry.

Amadeus