From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
Subject: Re: The protein myth
Summary: another piece of Traub nonsense
Date: 13 Nov 92 06:20:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1992Nov13.062022.1798
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

In article <1992Nov11.074508.9068@abo.fi> abulsari@aton.abo.fi writes:
>I got this from Michael Traub. This post is somewhat long.

You get what you pay for.  This is anothe reason why Michael Traub and
cannot be trusted when he writes a treatise which purports to be
authoritative on nutritional issues.  They're full of half truths,
misstatements of facts and quotations from the most dubious of
sources.  Or more honestly (and baldly) stated, they're full of lies
between the occasional truths.  However, they're written to sound
authoritative, and can mislead people who don't have the background to
recognize propaganda when they read it.

>Now  they  also  say  that  excess  protein  intake
>overworks the urinary tract and causes  fatigue.

Nonsense.

>	I could give  you a hundred reasons why  eating meat for
>protein is  one of the  worst things you  could do.  One  of the
>by-products of protein metabolism is  ammonia, for example.

Yeah, and a byproduct of carbohydrate metabolism is CO2.  Big deal.
Your body has mechanisms for dealing with excreting nitrogen.  The
amount of ammonia which circulates as ammonia/ammonium ion is quite
small, since the ion is toxic.  The body deals with that in the
liver, converting it to substances like urea.

>Let me mention two points in  particular.  First, meat contains high
>levels of uric  acid.  Uric acid is  one of the body's  waste or
>excretory products resulting from the work of living cells.  The
>kidneys extract uric acid from the bloodstream and send it on to
>the bladder to  be passed out with  the urea as urine.   If uric
>acid is not promptly and thoroughly  removed from the blood, the
>excess builds  up in the  tissues of  the body, to  later create
>gout and  bladder stones, not  to mention  what it does  to your
>kidneys.

Anyone familiar with uric acid metabolism would recognize this as
complete nonsense.  Only some meats are high in uric acid and other
purines, mainly organ means like sweetbreads and brains.  There are
quite a few vegetables which have high purine content.  Most urate
comes from metabolism, and not from the diet.  Only a very few individuals
have problems with excessive uric acid levels in the blood, and this
is the result of a defect of excessive production or occasionally,
inadequate excretion, usually due to a genetic defect of some sort.
To recap: uric acid blood levels are independent of dietary intake
in almost all cases.  Few people with gout are even placed on a
purine-restricted diet, though there are still some individuals for
whom this can be important.  It is simply not an issue for most people,
be they vegan, ovo-lacto-vegetarian or omnivores.

>People  with leukemia are  usually found to  have very
>high  levels of  uric acid  in their  bloodstream.

And what are we to conclude from this?

>The  average piece of meat has fourteen grains [sic] of uric acid.

This is a lie.

>Your body can only  eliminate about 8  grains of uric  acid in a  day.

Ridiculous.


>In addition, do you know what gives meat its taste? Uric acid, from
>that now dead  animal you're consuming.  If you  doubt this, try
>eating kosher-style  meat before it's  spiced.  As the  blood is
>drained out,  so is most  of the  uric acid.  Meat  without uric
>acid has no flavor.

How would _you_ know, Abhay or Michael?  This is nonsense.

>Is that what  you want to put in your body,
>the acid normally eliminated in the urine of an animal?

This is not only incorrect, it's a stupid argument for vegetarianism.

>	Moreover, meat  is teeming  with putrefactive  bacteria.
>In case  you're wondering what  putrefactive bacteria  are, they
>are colon germs.

Gad, more "putrefaction".  Didn't we go thru this once before?
"Putrefaction" is not a scientific term.  They are not "colon germs".

>As Dr.  Jay Milton Hoffman explained it in his
>book, "The Missing Link in the  Medical Curriculum Which Is Food
>Chemistry in Its Relationship to Body Chemistry, page 135: "When
>the animal  is alive,  the osmotic  process in  the colon  keeps
>putrefactive bacteria  from getting into  the animal.   When the
>animal  is dead  the osmotic  process is  gone and  putrefactive
>bacteria  swarm through  the walls  of  the colon  and into  the
>flesh.  They  tenderize the meat."

Not.

>You  notice meat has  to age.
>What ages or softens the flesh are the putrefactive bacteria.

Wrong.

I can't even go on; this is so laughable and sad, that it's ridiculous.
A particularly funny part is the bit about the use of calcium sulfate
to assist in the curdling of cottage cheese, with Traub making one of
his zanier Traub-isms with asking if you wanted "plaster of paris"
running through your veins.  Whatever the utility of calcium sulfate
in making cottage cheese (I really do not know), it's at least a good
source of calcium.  Tofu which is produced from soybeans treated with
calcium sulfate is usually put forward as one of the better sources of
calcium for vegans.

I'll leave it at that.  Traub's articles should be read with a good
deal of mistrust.  He likes to misstate matters and draw incorrect
conclusions from the most dubious of assumptions.  My own opinion
is that it's good that he's gone, and that Abhay is doing no one any
favor by disseminating his disinformation.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg