How many amino acids does a food have to contain
in order to have it count as a protein food?
Of the many amino acids needed for existence the human body can make
all but ten of them. Those ten have to be ingested. Meat, eggs and
And it turns out from a bit of reading that the
current thinking is that if you get enough calories
you get enough of all the essential amino acids,
unless you eat certain monocrop diets (especially
only sweet potatoes). Looking at the example numbers
of rice and chickpea amino acids, eating 567 g of rice
and chickpeas a day gives you all the protein you need.
Looking slightly more carefully (if you trust the
figures at all), if you eat 700 g of rice a day OR
600 g of chickpeas, you get a full WHO dose of protein.
This is because when the nutritionistas say that some
protein is "deficient" in amino acids, they neglect to
tell you that there are various degrees of deficiency,
and rice (for one) is not all that incomplete, its
profile having a sag in lysine, but it's not a very
big sag. This came as quite a surprise to me.
Or one could eat a pound of rice and 1/2 oz of meat.
Or you could eat 200 g of beef and call it good.
milk contain all ten in the required ratios. Grains contain nine of
them in abundance and is low on one. Pulses contain nine of them in
abundance as well including the one grains lack but is low in
different one. Combining those two foods frequently is the easiest
way for a vegetarian to thrive without memorizing all sorts of
tables or even learning how to pronounce those ten names.
Back when I first read about complete protein (and I
discover that the 1960s was real pioneer time in the
field) much was made of specific historical/cultural
food combinations that evolved over the millennia
through wisdom and good fortune, and now it turns out
that you can throw together just about any combination
of beany + grainy and get all you need. Or, as above,
if you get enough to eat period, you don't have to
fuss much, if at all. Some sources indicate you don't
have to balance each meal, or even each day. If you
eat corn on Monday and beans on Tuesday, your body
should be just fine with that.
Title: Ganondagan Spicy Black Bean & Corn Burger
From: Ganondagan State Historic Site's Iroquois White Corn Project ganondagan.org
Didn't look particularly Amerind, with stuff like
cumin not easily found in ancient upstate New York.
Pepper Fool's Chili Powder #1
categories: spice
yield: 1 batch
6 dried New Mexico hot peppers
6 dried Chipotle peppers
3 Pasilla Negro peppers
2 Mulato peppers
6 Tb cumin seed
6 Tb coriander seed
1 Tb whole cloves
3 Tb celery seed
2 Tb ground Cayenne
Break up the New Mexico, chipotle, and mulato
chiles. Toast the chiles in small batches on
an ungreased skillet or comal over medium heat
until they just begin to release their aroma.
Do not let them darken or the may become bitter.
Toast the cumin, coriander, and cloves on an
ungreased skillet or comal over low heat until
they release their fragrance and become lightly
roasted, about 3 min.
Grind the toasted spices and celery seed (best
to use a spice grinder).
Grind the chiles in a spice grinder or food
processor.
Mix the ground chiles, spices, and ground
cayenne. This receipe is an adaptation of one
appearing in New Southwestern Cooking by Dille
& Belsinger.
Clay Irving www.panix.com/~clay
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
* Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)