Seems people are getting way too worried about micro-nutrients these days. Just a short time ago, man didn’t even know what a “micro-nutrient” was. We were healthier too! Eat real food and you won’t have to worry about it much.

I eat a reasonable amount of cabbage. Hilarious that it has more calcium than milk.

Great points! I couldn’t agree more. I’m a big fan of Westen Price! Thanks for the article on gorillas.

“Stop focusing on calcium as your source for good and healthy bones. The health of your bones has more to do with other factors than it does with how much calcium you can shove into your mouth.”

My poorly expressed point was that this also goes for protein. Other factors such as load-bearing exercise (e.g. weight lifting) is much more influential on bone strength than calcium and protein intake. For example I currently deadlift up to 170kg for reps several times a week at a body weight of 80kg and I’m closing in on a body weight military press. I also consume a decent amount of protein (grass fed beef, organic chicken, hormone free eggs, fish, kangaroo and so forth) along with a lot leafy green and other vegetables, a good amount of raw nuts, some fruit (mainly apples and berries) and some dairy such as organic plain yogurt. My only supplements are OMEGA-3 fish oil and vitamine D3 and I hardly ever eat grains or grain products.

Given this I highly doubt my protein intake is going to negatively affect my bone strength. At worst the calcium pulled from my bones to maintain ph would be replenished through my diet.

On the subject of what hunter-gatherers ate I highly recommend Western A. Price’s fascinating book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Online I was reading this yesterday -

Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 71, No. 3, 682-692, March 2000
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/71/3/682

And finally on the subject of gorillas the GI tract of a 65 kg human is just a little over half the size of the GI tract of a similar sized primate. I refer you to a fascinating paper:

The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis, 1995, Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 2, http://www.scribd.com/doc/20045146/The-ExpensiveTissue-Hypothesis

Regards,

Stephen

Thanks for your comments! The issue of protein is an important one for building bone, but I disagree about the amounts that are suggested in those studies.

I think that we have to get away from the notion that increased bone density is the same as avoiding fractures as we grow older. Research shows that this simply is not true. The healthiest bones are those that are flexible and not just dense.

Eating that much protein does cause (as pointed out by other commenter’s) an acid/base imbalance, where calcium is being pulled from the bones to counter the acidity caused by high protein intake.
It would be interesting – as you point out – to see studies that include many more subjects, to see what effects protein consumption has on our health.

Many in the weight-lifting community say that we cannot build strong muscles/bones without protein, and to them I simply point out the gorilla’s vegetarian muscles.

I think this issue comes down to what you think humans should be eating. Either you see us as hunter-gatherers who ate meat all the time, or you see us as hunter-gatherers who only ate meat every once and a while.

Not to insult the purists out there, but I consider myself a vegan who eats meat every once and a while. This, I think, is the healthiest dietary blend and mimics a hunter gatherer eats nuts, leaves, fruits and vegetables and then occasionally catches something to eat.

Many will often talk about the “acidity” of foods like meat and dairy. This is the stress foods put on your body to maintain proper pH balance. The pH balance is tightly regulated, but the body pulls from the Calcium resources in the bone to help maintain a proper pH.

Research has historically been “mixed” (real life is dynamic and can’t be portrayed in a randomized clinical trial)on this relationship but what they found was that the larger factor was the amount of vegetable and fruit consumption in one’s diet. Therefore you could eat meat (in moderation, no more than 15g of protein at a sitting) and be fine as long as you countered it with high consumption of fruits and veggies.

This needs to go out to as many people as possible as the majority lives still under the fog that “milk does a body good”. Well not quite.

And to add to this research there is also the issue with cassein, animal protein and the acid/alkaline issues.

So when one looks back, it is not that crazy to start wondering, “and why was I drinking milk again?”

I must say I enjoyed your article and agreed with everything right up until the very last point. That is the statement that protein will reduce the amount of bone one has. To be as brief as possible I point you towards:

Bess Dawson-Hughes, Susan S. Harris, Helen Rasmussen, Lingyi Song and Gerard E. Dallal, ‘Effect of Dietary Protein Supplements on Calcium Excretion in Healthy Older Men and Women’, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 89, No. 3 1169-1173

The abstract of which can be read here – http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/89/3/1169

Also:

Lowery LM, Devia L. Dietary protein safety and resistance exercise: what do we really know? J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2009 Jan 12;6:3.

Abstract – http://www.jissn.com/content/6/1/3/abstract/

The long and the short being that data used to justify such dissuasive messages typically stems from nonathletic older women or parts of the general population that lead an average Western lifestyle. What if one isn’t a member of these populations?

One thing you won’t hear often is that, despite searches through hundreds of studies, the sum total of subjects used in all accessible athlete-protein safety studies is around 40 individuals (see Lowery & Devia above). Further, the protein seekers in these studies were compared to subjects rather unlike themselves.

According to Lonnie Lowery Ph.D he has seen examples of people who lift weights who’ve consumed an average of 195 grams of protein daily for 22 years. These guys have significantly denser bones than their counterparts who don’t go out of their way to take in extra protein. They also have no reliable differences in gross kidney function or damage, nor do they appear to lack fiber in their diets.

I just wanted to point out that there is more to this particular picture. Otherwise this was a fantastic article. I particularly like the fact that the lowly cabbage has so much calcium in it. Naturally fermented cabbage is an awesome food!

Stephen