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Bulgarianlily
Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 1667 Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria
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Sally Too
Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 2511 Location: N.Ireland
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Posted: Tue May 10, 11 7:43 am Post subject: |
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Well the vegetarians are right about the energy costs of meat.
Meat must be fed with other living things (eg grain or grass) whereas plant matter grows using energy from the sun directly.
As a rule of thumb, plant eaters get only 1/10th of the energy they consume converted into their own body mass. Hence the reason you can feed more people if they eat a vegetarian or plant based diet than if they are meat eaters.
Meal worms are however meat in the sense that they do not grow using energy from the sun directly, but must eat plant matter in order to grow. So they are not any "better" in energy terms than meat.
This is all to do with food chains. In a food chain the plants are the 1st trophic level, also called Producers as they produce food by using energy from the sun to convert the raw ingredients (carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil) into glucose - which is the basic food molecule.
Vegetarians are on the 2nd trophic level. In Biology they are called Consumers (or Herbivores) because they cannot make their own food but instead eat the plants that made the food. They are also animals and they need to move around to find their food. So they produce muscles and the muscles are the bits that we call meat.
Food chains can go on up. The 3rd trophic level are also consumers, but they eat other animals and so are known as Carnivores. Meat eating humans are on this 3rd Trophic level.
Anything that eats a carnivore would be on the 4th Trophic level. However we tend not to eat carnivores (although some countries eat dogs I think). A carnivore at the top of a food chain is called a Top Carnivore. It is a vulnerable position in a food chain.
So back to meat - and to the protein story. Plants don't need to walk around, so they don't produce muscle. Muscle (meat) is made from proteins. So if we want a good concentrated source of protein, meat is a good place to start.
Making protein needs nitrogen and animals need to get their nitrogen from plant material. Plants can absorb nitrogen from their roots in the form of an ion called nitrate and they use it to build their own proteins by various reactions that also use the glucose it made using light energy.
Animals must eat plants to obtain the nitrogen they require. Actually when they eat plants they digest plant protein in to amino acids, which animals can then build into the protein the animal needs. Each amino acid contains one nitrogen and there are 20 amino acid types commonly used by nature.
Plant's tend to be a less concentrated source of protein than meat (well meat is made from protein so this is hardly surprising). Some plants will put more protein into their seeds than into their leaves. So vegetarians get most of their protein from things like peas, beans, lentils, nuts and so on. The plant puts the protein in the seed to give the young plant a head start.
So how do sprouted grains contain "more" protein than unsprouted?
They probably don't in the strictest sense. However if the seed has germinated then it is starting to mobilise the proteins that were put into storage for it to use when it was ready. The fact that the seed is starting to "unpack" these proteins (possibly breaking many of them into the protein building blocks - amino acids) tends to make the proteins in germinated seeds more easily digested and absorbed by humans. So you "get" more protein from the sprouted seed even though there may not really be more in them.....
At least that's my understanding....... I'll try to explain further if needed..... |
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Nick
Joined: 02 Nov 2004 Posts: 34535 Location: Hereford
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Posted: Tue May 10, 11 7:49 am Post subject: |
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Sally too wrote: |
So how do sprouted grains contain "more" protein than unsprouted?
They probably don't in the strictest sense. However if the seed has germinated then it is starting to mobilise the proteins that were put into storage for it to use when it was ready. The fact that the seed is starting to "unpack" these proteins (possibly breaking many of them into the protein building blocks - amino acids) tends to make the proteins in germinated seeds more easily digested and absorbed by humans. So you "get" more protein from the sprouted seed even though there may not really be more in them..... |
Oh, they do, around 25% more.
Quote: |
Increases in Protein Quality Chavan and Kadam (1989) stated - “Very complex qualitative changes are reported to occur during soaking and sprouting of seeds. The conversion of storage proteins of cereal grains into albumins and globulins during sprouting may improve the quality of cereal proteins. Many studies have shown an increase in the content of the amino acid Lysine with sprouting.”
“An increase in proteolytic activity during sprouting is desirable for nutritional improvement of cereals because it leads to hydrolysis of prolamins and the liberated amino acids such as glutamic and proline are converted to limiting amino acids such as lysine.”
Increases in Crude Fibre content Cuddeford (1989), based on data obtained by Peer and Leeson (1985), stated - “In sprouted barley, crude fibre, a major constituent of cell walls, increases both in percentage and real terms, with the synthesis of structural carbohydrates, such as cellulose and hemicellulose”. Chung et al. (1989) found that the fibre content increased from 3.75% in unsprouted barley seed to 6% in 5-day sprouts.”
Crude Protein and Crude Fibre changes in Barley Sprouted over a 7-day period
Crude Protein Crude Fibre (% of DM) (% of DM)
Original seed 12.7% 5.4%
Day 1 12.7% 5.6%
Day 2 13.0% 5.9%
Day 3 13.6% 5.8%
Day 4 13.4% 7.4%
Day 5 13.9% 9.7%
Day 6 14.0% 10.8%
Day 7 15.5% 14.1%
Source: Cuddeford (1989), based on data obtained by Peer and Leeson (1985). |
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Sally Too
Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 2511 Location: N.Ireland
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Bulgarianlily
Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 1667 Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria
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Sally Too
Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 2511 Location: N.Ireland
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Bulgarianlily
Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 1667 Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria
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Sally Too
Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 2511 Location: N.Ireland
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Sally Too
Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 2511 Location: N.Ireland
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Nick
Joined: 02 Nov 2004 Posts: 34535 Location: Hereford
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Truffle
Joined: 07 Feb 2006 Posts: 526
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Sally Too
Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 2511 Location: N.Ireland
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Sally Too
Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 2511 Location: N.Ireland
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Truffle
Joined: 07 Feb 2006 Posts: 526
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Bulgarianlily
Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 1667 Location: South West Mountains of Bulgaria
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