Re: - Guatemala #4

[Guest guest]

S. McLaren, M.D.'s article was in the July, 1974, issue of

The Lancet. It was not lengthy. In last year's June issue of

Nutrition, it was honored, though, as a classic milestone in

nutritional science (see McLaren's reflections, " The Great Protein

Fiasco Revisited " , same issue).

McLaren had worked in Africa, the Near East, and elsewhere, and

knew nutrition in poor countries from the ground up. He is one of

those wonderful, crusty British types. He made two points: 1) the

science of the 'protein crisis' was bad, and, 2) there was a reason.

Let's discuss the science first. I don't want to get into too

much of this, since the literature was massive. But it is important

to understand how sophisticated and convincing the lie was. For the

bad science led to a worldwide consensus of 'the experts', and not

all were charlatans. Many believed, at least in part, that a massive

protein shortage existed, especially in poor countries, but probably

also amongst the poor, elderly and young of the developed countries.

A vast crusade to increase protein intake was launched. Hundreds of

BILLIONS of dollars were spent. Careers were made. People tried to

mix doing good with doing well, just like me.

Let's look at just one kind of study: something called a nitrogen

balance study. (I am working from memory here, and it has been

decades, so I hope I don't make a mistake).

Structures and enzymes in the body are made up of proteins, which

themselves are composed of chains of amino acids. There are over a

hundred amino acids found in nature, but only 22 are used in the

human body. 13 the body can synthesize, but the other 9 we have to

get in our diets, and these are called the 'essential amino acids'.

Now, as you work and play every day, you 'use up' structure and

enzymes. Stuff breaks down, and the 'debris' gets excreted (feces,

urine, sweat, spittle, shed skin cells, and so on). You have to take

in new amino acids (protein) in order to replace what you lose. If

you did not do this, you would gradually waste away.

So 'diet protein in' has to at least equal 'protein used and

excreted'. It complicated, actually, to measure amino acids or

protein, but easier to measure gross nitrogen and then estimate the

protein from that. This is pretty reliable.

So, you have a procedure. You take some subjects and have them

fast for, say, 24-hours to get a baseline. They are now clear of

most amino acids in the blood stream, supposedly. You feed them,

have them work, collect what they excrete, etc., over the length of

the experiment. If you find nitrogen in the diet equals, or exceeds,

nitrogen in excretion, they are in balance. Usually, this means they

are in protein balance, too. So, they can replace tissue, enzymes,

etc. that are used up.

But if the subjects excrete MORE nitrogen than is in the diet they

are eating, they are in nitrogen (hence protein) deficit. Stay in

deficit for long, and you waste away. That was the theory.

Hundreds of studies were done on different types of subjects, on

different diets, under different exercise conditions, and so on.

Different ways of preparing food was tested, since it is not enough

to just eat the protein, it also has to be digested and made

available to the cells. (For example, it was found when corn is

soaked in lime the tryptophan becomes more available). The science

got very sophisticated. And this is only one kind of study. Lots of

other research was done, both in the lab and in the field.

All the research pointed in the same direction. People were

starving, not from lack of calories, but from a shortage of protein.

So, billions of dollars were rushed into getting protein to those who

needed it.

McLaren was the first to say, " Bullshit! "

Lots of papers were published after him, saying the same thing,

including one of my own. In only a few years, the scientific

consensus was overthrown.

Protein, it turned out, was NEVER in short supply. In ANY

naturally occurring diet, there is enough protein. Hell, a potato is

around 6% protein, the same as mother's milk! (And babies grow fast;

adults need even less protein, usually, than babies.) In one study

in India, which came after McLaren, children after weaning but under

5 years were fed a diet with whole wheat as the ONLY protein source.

They did fine.

Consider those hundreds of nitrogen balance studies again. How

could they all have gone so wrong?

Well, first, the baseline was off. Turns out subjects in the West

who are on typical high-protein Western diets DON'T clear all

circulating amino acids in a 24-hour pre-experiment fast. So, some

of what they flush during the experiment was 'surplus', ingested

before the experiment began. More important, the typical short run

of these experiment was all wrong. It turns out that changing from a

high protein to a low protein diet takes much more time. You sort of

have to 'train' to eat a low protein diet, like you do, too, to run a

marathon. If subjects stay on low protein diets for a long time, a

whole set of 'protein sparing' mechanisms set in. The body starts to

recycle amino acids instead of just flushing them. They go into

deficit first, but then RECOVER, and go back to balance.

But nobody bothered to run an experiment long enough to find this

out in the 1950s and 1960s. You see, they were looking for a certain

result: protein shortage. When they got the proof they wanted, they

closed up shop.

That takes us to the second part of McLaren's critique. The first

part told how the science went wrong. The second part told why it

went wrong. And that was the more important part.

-- In 12-step-free@y..., ernst17us@y... wrote:

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