On Fri, 27 Oct 2000 07:15:35 -0400, siobhan <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>Amadeus writes:
>
><<Protein consists of 21 amino acids of which 9 are essential.
>All of these are readily available from plants.
>What was your point about animal protein?>>
>
>My understanding is that if these nine (I honestly thought it was 10) amino
>acids are not consumed together, the efficacy of each is greatly reduced to
>the point of being insufficient and ineffective for our health.  I have
>been
>led to understand futher that meat provides these amino acids in their
>entirety.

Animal protein is often refered to be "complete" and plant protein as
"incomplete". This is misleading so far as all proteins from plants
contain
all of the essential amino acids.
Plants do not contain all of the non-essential amino acids.

In addition many plant proteins contain an amino acid composition
which is
not close to the spectrum of amino acids actually used by humans.
Particularly cereals (wheat) and legumes have a low biological "value"
because one (essential) single amino acid is unusual low in them.

When only one of the complete set is low, the other aa's cannot be
fully
exploited and would be suspect to protein degradation and usage as
fuel.
Usage as fuel is also the fate of all other unused amino acids, which
aren't
used for protein synthesis (and a few other purposes) within a day or
so.

Fortunately (for neolithic cultures) or by accident cereals and
legumes help
out each other in exactely the one low amino acid, so the biological
value
of a composition of legumes and cereals is even higher as the one of
meat
(about 90 to 100).
While egg is a good deal efficienter and the highest biological value
known
(from full spectrum tests) is a combination if potatoe protein with a
little
egg protein.

However the biological value of a protein is only of important in
diets low
in protein or for kidney diseased (which are required to have a low
protein
diet). Because protein amounts above approximately 0.4g/kg bodyweight
are
burnt anyway (which unavoidable to a certain extent, because of the
un-ideal
composition of all real existing proteins).

regards

Amadeus