When Gladiators mostly ate Barley, Do you really need Protein Supplements?
High protein diets these days are considered the healthiest diets. The food industry markets all their products as high in protein. Protein shakes have become very popular and dieting industry now provides free protein shakes to lose fat. According to recent stats, the global protein supplement market size is valued at 12.4 billion US dollars and is expected to rise at a Common Annual Growth Rate of 6.3% up until 2025. Most of this growth is attributed to increasing interest in the general population towards high protein diets.
Before you jump onto the bandwagon of protein supplements to lose weight, I would recommend you to put things in perspective. Do you really need to spend your hard earned money on protein supplements? The unprocessed high protein foods include meats, fish, poultry and dairy. Historically speaking these foods were mostly eaten by the upper class, while the working class mostly ate grains. In other words the people who did hard work mostly lived on grains while high protein foods were mostly consumed by people who had a sedentary life. There is historical evidence that gladiators who had a tough training regimen mostly survived on barley with very little meat and dairy. The pehalwans or traditional wrestlers of South Asia are another example. Most of these strong men survive on a strict lacto-vegetarian diet with no meat or fish in their diet.
With these examples of strong men surviving mostly on vegetarian diet, one has to question if we really need to consume a lot of protein to be healthy. Clearly these examples suggest that maybe we do not have to. USDA recommends that for an average human being about 50 grams of protein a day is sufficient. One can get that much protein quite easily in a normal healthy diet without the supplements. With a glass of milk, half breast of chicken and two eggs you will meet your 50 grams of protein per day requirement.
The other thing that we do not realize is that meats, fish, poultry and dairy are not the only sources of protein. Grains, Beans and Nuts are also good sources of protein. For example, 1 cup of boiled quinoa has 8 grams of protein, which is about the same as the protein we get in a glass of milk. Or 1 ounce of peanuts contains about 7 grams of protein, which is slightly more that what you have in an egg. This explains why Gladiators could survive mostly on Barley. They got most of their proteins from grains.
Food industry has always had a history of marketing their products as healthy and essential. As an example cheese industry had lobbied to make unpasteurized dairy illegal, claiming it causes diseases. Subsequently they used this to create their monopoly by outlawing the local cheese producers who made great cheese but could not afford to buy the equipment for pasteurizing the milk. Numerous people consume boiled unpasteurized milk all over the world and they live just fine. Europe does not have any such pasteurization requirement and you can get very interesting types of cheese over there that we do not get here in the US.
People these days put their trust in science, however what they do not realize is that many a times these research studies are funded by industry itself. The researchers performing these research studies are under a lot of pressure to produce results that are suitable for the industry. Trust me, I have first hand experience with this, although in a different area. I was part of a research group evaluating a product from a medical prosthetics company and we had direct evidence that their product does not work. However since the company offering the product funded our study we did not publish our results.
If you are an individual who does not perform intense strength training and is only interested in losing weight, then you really do not need to spend your hard earned money on Protein Supplements. Just eat a healthy balanced diet and you should be getting enough protein. If on the other hand you perform intense workouts and you feel that you cannot recover well from your workouts, then you might consider taking protein supplements. However do not spend too much money on getting fancy expensive supplements. A cheap regular whey powder should be more than sufficient for you. Keep in mind that Gladiators survived only on grains and their training was also quite intense. All these fancy products are mostly there to squeeze more money from you based on some research study that might have been funded by the same company.
Originally published at www.kaa-yaa.com.
