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Lots of food have protein, but some can be more expensive. (iStock) |
Welcome to the Thursday edition of the Future Coach newsletter. This week, sea turtles return and “staggering” oil prices. First I'll answer a question about how to get enough protein without breaking the bank.
Now, you can leave me a voice message (Click here and tap to record ☎️) or write me at futurecoach@washpost.com. I hope to hear from you soon. A reader asks: How can we ensure we’re eating enough protein per meal (and per day) without breaking the bank? Given that the protein is all around us, it’s natural to wonder: What is the most affordable way to get your daily dose? The answer depends almost entirely on a deeply personal question: What do you want to eat?
“It is insane how easy it is to get protein,” Christopher Gardner, a professor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine who investigates healthy diets, told me. “One of the reasons for that is everything has protein.” That includes plants. Meat, of course, is a particularly dense source of protein: It’s easy to digest and rich in essential amino acids. But it’s by no means the only way, or the optimal one. If you’re going ounce for ounce, protein powder wins: soy, wheat or rice all work. Even peanuts beat beef, although they come with more calories. Instead, picking the right protein is really about finding what’s tasty and healthy. |
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Scientists have not found any difference for building and maintaining muscle from consuming protein from a balanced omnivorous, vegetarian or vegan diets. “They’re all fine,” Luc van Loon, a muscle physiologist and professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands told me. While many assume plants are an ‘incomplete’ protein, that’s not true. All plants contain all 20 amino acids, including the nine essential ones, according to a peer-reviewed paper from 2019 in the journal Nutrition Reviews. It’s just that some plants are lower in specific amino acids. You don’t need all 20 in one meal. Our bodies assemble the necessary proteins from a pool of free amino acids in our bodies over the course of the day. Eating tons of anything to maximize protein intake — whether that’s a hamburger or a protein-enhanced Pop-Tart — may erase any theoretical benefits from the added nutrient. Many foods, especially meat, lack healthy things you need such as fiber, antioxidants and nutrients, while including a lot of things you don’t, such as saturated fat and excess calories.
With the world as your buffet, what’s the most affordable protein? I’m going to assume that means something thrifty you’d look forward to eating every day. For me, the answer is easy. I love seafood. While many stocks are overfished, many are not (even the Pacific tuna is making a remarkable comeback). My favorites are the freshest catch at my local markets (Pacific rockfish are in fine health), and for the most affordable — hear me out — sardines and mackerel, fresh or canned. These aren’t fishy tinned specimens of yesteryear. They’re delicious gourmet meals in their own right and will not break the bank. (I wrote about my favorite recipes that got me hooked on tinned fish here.) If you prefer something more terrestrial, I recommend eggs, peanut butter, chicken, soy and of course lentils, which you can eat every day. |
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Many who read my column this week on how lead laid down in your bones as a child may later cause dementia asked: Who’s responsible? If there’s one central figure in this story, it’s General Motors, writes Jennifer Weuve, an epidemiologist at Boston University’s School of Public Health in a book with Marc Weisskopf, “Aging and Vulnerability to Environmental Chemicals.” GM first added tetraethyl lead to gasoline to decrease engine knock in the 1920s. Although grain alcohol served a similar purpose, lead worked at lower levels and gave GM a proprietary additive. The company teamed up with Standard Oil of New Jersey, which later became part of ExxonMobil, to form the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation. The first gallon of leaded gasoline was sold in 1923. A year later, after five employees in Standard Oil’s tetraethyl lead facility died “violent, psychotic deaths,” New Jersey and New York City officials banned the sale of the fuel for a time. A panel was commissioned by the U.S. Surgeon General to determine the dangers of tetraethyl lead fuel. Given only seven months, the panel concluded it had no grounds to ban leaded fuel if properly regulated. But it presciently warned that “longer experience may show that even such slight storage of lead [in the body] as was observed in these studies may lead eventually in susceptible individuals to recognizable or to chronic degenerative diseases.” That turned out to be true. Lead used in paint, smelting, mining, small-aircraft aviation fuel, industrial manufacturing and water pipes only added to this burden. GM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. There has never been a full national reckoning for the harm caused to millions of Americans. California won a $305 million settlement against paint manufacturers in 2019 for lead paint control. Negligent landlords are sued in civil court for failing to remediate peeling lead paint or warn tenants. So far, that’s dwarfed by the hundreds of billions of dollars in harms that would have been avoided if lead were removed from products earlier.
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💡 Reader Tips and Stories |
Many of you had stories about your early exposure to lead. For ink-stained wretches, as journalists have been known to call themselves, lead was ubiquitous. David of Kansas wrote about a childhood in the print shop:
“From my early age to age 12, I spent time in the backshop of the local newspaper, the Great Bend Daily Tribune, where my father was the managing editor. In those days, typesetting was done with lead blanks for each letter. They always had a big bar of melting lead over a furnace, open to the air that all in the backshop breathed all day. Then the typesetter placed blanks to lay out the daily paper. I loved to run my fingers over the “page” when it was set up. Probably got heavy doses of lead in those backshop visits.” |
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Another reader recalled his days in printing class:
My father taught a college-level printing class, and I was constantly playing with type, packaging that surrounded lead type, and a linotype machine in his classroom that had molten lead. We also used to make fishing weights with molten lead. Washing engine parts in leaded gasoline without glove protection was often done. |
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You can also send feedback or ideas for what I should cover next using this form. |
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It’s been quite a week for AI doom and gloom. While President Donald Trump deemed AI fears a ‘hoax’ onstage during a call with Nvidia’s CEO, OpenAI’s chief executive says people are right to fear advancing AI (but should trust the industry’s leaders). Some politicians in Washington are still convinced the end is near. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.) If you think gas prices are high, you haven’t seen anything yet. Executives and analysts are using words like “staggering,” huge” and “buckle up” to describe the next wave of price increases expected to come atop already painful national prices for regular gasoline (averaging $4.37) and diesel (averaging $6.31). On the other hand, millions of households and businesses are snapping up “offensively cheap” solar panels, transforming energy economics virtually overnight in many countries. Is there a limit to how much protein your body can use from one meal? Conventional wisdom says 30 grams. That’s not true, say scientists. If there is an upper limit, it hasn’t been discovered yet — but 30 grams is plenty for most adults. Here’s The Post’s Anahad O’Connor on the best protein bars. La arribada is here. Every year, hundreds of thousands of olive ridley sea turtles return to their natal beaches in Oaxaca, Mexico, for a mass nesting event, a phenomenon known as la arribada, or the arrival. Watch this magnificent migration here. |
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A baby olive ridley turtle. (iStock) |
Send your questions to me at futurecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. See you next week, Michael Coren, Future Coach Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Future Coach in your inbox every Tuesday. |
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