Chapter 3 - Protein – The Body’s Building Blocks

I want to preface this section with my assurance that I have no bones to pick with people who choose to be vegetarians, either casually or as strict vegans. (Unless they’re militantly browbeating me to join their ranks against my will.) We each have to choose for ourselves what works for us personally in terms of our beliefs, our life’s philosophy, our personal health, our own spiritual convictions and our heredity.

I spent more than a year of my life as a vegetarian, so I’ve had that experience and I believe I gave it a truly fair trial. I have very good friends for whom it works much better than it did for me. They enjoy the vegetarian lifestyle and I do respect their choice as I do yours.

Protein is the subject of this chapter, however, and meat, of course, is the most bountiful source of complete proteins. Why do we need them? Everything in our bodies is made up of proteins and eating proteins gives us the complete compliment of essential amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks we have to have in order to build the proteins necessary for all of our body processes.

Proteins are incredibly long, convoluted, complicated molecules, made from smaller, simpler molecules called amino acids. When proteins are digested and broken down into all of their components, including glucose and amino acids, the amino acids are taken inside the cells of our bodies to be used as building blocks. Those amino

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