Protein
What are proteins? Well to simplify, they are the second largest element found within the human body, water is the largest. Proteins are combinations of tiny molecular building blocks known as amino acids. Muscle is the primary storage form for proteins in humans. However, unlike fat that is stored in fat cells, or glycogen (sugar) that is stored in muscles and the liver, there is no place in the body to store proteins for ready use, so we need to regularly consume enough proteins to allow our muscles to be healthy and perform work. Proteins are essential to life because they are responsible for building and maintaining the various systems within our body, such as, our brain, heart, blood, muscle, hormones, antibodies, enzymes, etc…
Dietary proteins are supplied to the body externally through food. Although dietary proteins are an energy nutrient and yield approximately four calories per gram they are not a preferred energy source. Additionally, when a diet contains adequate amounts of carbohydrates, protein use as energy is small and this allows protein to do the primary job of build and repair.
Dietary proteins can be classified into two groups:
- The first are called essential proteins and are derived from animal sources.
- The second are called non-essential proteins and are derived from plant sources.
Although we do agree some plants or combination of plants can contain all of the essential proteins we still do not count them as essential proteins. Instead we refer to foods containing non animal proteins as protein containing foods and include them as carbohydrates due to several factors such as digestibility as well as the disproportionate amount of carbohydrates they usually contain.
