11.03.2009

fun facts about protein

In the book, Eat to Live, there is a chart that shows that brocolli has more protein per ounce than sirloin. I did the math, and might have it wrong. This sentence links to the book page where the information is found.

Amount of protein in half a pound of sirloin: 12 grams

Amount of protein in half a pound of broccoli: 13 grams

Amount of protein in half a pound of Brussels sprouts: 15.4 grams

Interesting. Who knew?

3 comments:

Lynn said...

holy shit, is that true? we really should all be vegetarians. at least we need to make the meat a side dish instead of the entree. gotta get on that! wish i knew a nutritionist who could get me on track. i just get confused with all the seemingly conflicting literature.

Bungalow Builder said...

Come on, do the math, and don't give up on common sense. If you seek other sources, like nutritiondata.com, and compare equally sized 100g portions each of top sirloin and raw broccoli, you get 20g protein and 3g protein, respectively. This is vastly opposite of what the author is claiming, and more in line with what people would typically assume.
For 100g of broccoli, you get 34 calories: 0 g fat, 7 g carbohydrate, 3 g protein, (and I assume the rest of the weight is water.) For 100g of top sirloin, you get 214 calories: 14g fat, 0g carbs, 20g protein, and I guess I have to assume the rest of the weight is water (?).
The author is NOT comparing portion size at all though, and that makes the data pretty misleading. The chart that he references is comparing amounts of protein to caloric total, not protein to portion size. So it's not that a similarly sized portion of broccoli has more protein than sirloin, he's just saying that sirloin has fat+protein and broccoli has fat+carbs (which we all should know). Since fat is 2x+ the calorie value as carbohydrates (9 vs. 4), the ratio of protein per calorie is higher in broccoli than steak. This is also misleading because weight of the broccoli is only 10% caloric, whereas the steak is 34% caloric (if I add up the grams which have calories-fat, carbs, protein- vs. the overall portion size of the portion-100g). Broccoli has a much lower density of calories due to its lack of fat, and its abundance of water. This all boils down to the fact that if you were insane, and if you were to eat the same caloric value in broccoli as you want in steak, you'd have to eat like an entire fridge worth of broccoli. You might be skinny, and full of protein, but you would have no fat to help absorb any of those vitamins (like the rich vitamin c content), AND you'd fart all day & have no friends. Would it be worth that? seriously? I'll stick with my beef. :-)

harkinna said...

Thanks Laura. I needed that...:)