I was vegetarian, not vegan, for many years, and was extremely healthy. Yet, 3 or 4 years ago, I started doing the low carb diet, and although I intially lost weight, it always returned if I ate the slightest carb ("carb snap", I've learned it's called). Plus, I haven't felt good eating all that meat, and the lastest blood work showed I had high cholesterol for the first time in my life!

So, although I know many people have good results on the low-carb diet, I think it doesn't work for everyone, and I'm going back to what works for me, which is a vegetarian diet, with occassional fish or seafood. I recommend Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book, "Eat to Live". It's a moderate approach, with limited meat consumption, whole fruits and vegetables. I've been following that for a few weeks and feel so much better. Haven't had my cholesterol rechecked, but I'm willing to bet it's lower.

As vegan diets are so restrictive, many people who are vegan do not have a good diet. This woman may have been eating a very low fat, high grain, high soy vegan diet. She suffered from serious health problems and depression. Therefore in her mind, vegan diets made her sick and meat was the medicine. This is like living off nothing but Big Macs, suffering health problems, and then deducing that meat is making you sick so you should become a vegan.

I had an acquaintance I knew that was vegan, and forced her dog to eat vegan too (no meat was allowed in her house). WHo ever heard of a dog eating raw veggies and tofu?

She wasn't friendly - and her little Maltese was a snarling- white-hot-ball-of canine-terror!

Call me old-fashioned but when it comes to eating, I've found that "everything in moderation" works best for me. Besides, I doubt the cavemen were feeling guilty about killing and eating animals back in the day; they had to work with what was available, after all.

I could have written most of that myself -- pretty close to my 15+ year experience on veg, vegan & raw food diets. Now I'm feeling great on low carb omnivore,but I suspect its mainly because I burned out my adreanals on high fruit for months at a time.

I kept being told that my hair loss, memory blanks, tooth decay, etc were detox symptoms and that I needed to stick with it longer. I thought about killing myself almost nonstop. At some point I realized -- 'its either them or me' and I decided to have a BLT...

I cut out carbs to lose weight in four days when we were shooting my book cover, and felt so great, I couldn't go back. There's a period of carb withdrawal in the first three weeks -- "Atkins flu," I believe it's called.

I have much more energy, don't get down, and need a lot less sleep than ever before. And I generally feel great. I also incorporate 5,000 iu of D, eat a bunch of sauteed parsley for vitamin K, and take magnesium 100 percent of the US RDI (300 whatever measurement it is of that particular vitamin), and potassium. I'm not sure about whether to continue taking calcium. I'm looking into it. Weight-bearing exercise also seems necessary to keep bones healthy, and I try to do an hour a week on the bike, but I don't nee to to stay thin.

From the article: I was so depressed I couldn't laugh at funny things or smile anymore. I had always been depressed, but always able to at least smile. This was a new low.

That's about how I felt on the all-meat. To say nothing of the fact that it tastes terrible.

What kind of diet is "All meat"? I've never heard of such a thing.

I've done Atkins, and it's definitely not "All meat".

Like I said, Amy, low-carb works for many people, but perhaps not everyone. I hope you don't ultimately have the same issues I had. Initially, I lost weight, but overall, it crept back. Three years later, I'm really at the same weight, maybe a little higher, than before, so I think I mostly lost water weight, if anything.

And I just personally don't like eating tons of meat. Hate bacon, for instance. But if you like the diet, you can stick to it more easily.

I agree with all things in moderation. No one should fear fruit or whole grains, like a low-carb diet suggests. I'm finding my weight is stabilizing now, even adding those back in. The scale doesn't drop so beautifully after a few days of avoiding carbs, but it doesn't jump up again if I eat a carb. It's slower, but I think I'm actually losing real weight, not just water. At least for me, it's a more sustainable diet.

"get everything you need from a raw food vegan diet, but try it out for 10 years and watch yourself turn into a neurotic, nervous, hyper sensitive and adrenally burnt-out mess"

Now, that explains a lot.

now that they are seeing a genetic vector for what diet actually works, I am hoping in the next few years that a genetic test will suggest if high or low protein, high low carb wroks for an individual...

THAt is key. No matter how a trend works, or who is writing a book, YOUR body is the only one of it's kind, and so you will have to try different things and listen to it.

One thing that is often occuring to me recently is that we are simply living too long for our evolutionary design. Up until ~150 years ago, most people never made it beyond 45... cave critters didn't much make it beyond 30. Life was just hard like that. That is how we could make a transition form hunter gatherer to agrarian. Regardless of your genetics, you didn't live long enough to have tons of problems that we now have in middle age.

It becomes doubly importatn to figure out the food issues simply because we now live long enough to feel the impact. Those people with gold plated genetics always lived a long time in the areas they were from, but they weren't average.

Couple all these issues with the speed at which lifestyle changes now, and there is bound to be some turbulence. I doubt that I was meant to sit at a desk all day in front of a glowing screen, nor that it would be so hard for me to find a food that didn't have some kind of grain or corn mushed into it to make it cheaper. Whole foods tatertots, used to be potato with oil on them... could feed them to my kids and everything. Now they have corn meal in them.

The only thing I think they are going to find with the genetics testing for foods though, is what tribe you are from, and that may make some people unhappy. Couple with the fact that great swaths of our agriculture are geared to make GRAIN and only GRAIN... could be politically interesting.

from the AP and Sun-times, but stil interesting

Kaleigh deserves credit for her candor. Many people who escape veganism are afraid to acknowledge why. There's a lot of pressure on vegans and vegetarians to defend the lies.

"I also found out I had hypothyroidism, and when I did some research I found the link between raw cruciferous vegetables and soy blocking thyroid function."

When I was diagnosed hypothyroid my fabulous endocrinologist gave me a couple of books to read (Thyroid for Dummies is one he always recommends--he gives a copy to every new Hashimoto's patient he gets) and I was amazed to find your diet can make you hypothyroid. He said he worked with lots of folks over the years to modify their diets and get them off of soy (which is in many processed foods) and many times they could reduce their medication dose or go off completely. Sadly, that won't work for me as I now have no thyroid, but I still have to watch the diet because soy and other stuff interferes with the medication. Oh, and fluoride. Thankfully my town dosn't fluoridate it's drinking water but it's something I have to watch when I travel. I seriously miss coleslaw, though. I make killer coleslaw and cabbage is just not something my body can deal with anymore.

Suzy said: I could have written most of that myself -- pretty close to my 15+ year experience on veg, vegan & raw food diets.

Why did it take you that long to figure out yyour diet was making you feel so bad?

I was never more sick, tired, and cranky than when I was on a vegetarian diet. And I gained a bunch of weight on it too. Some people can eat that way and be fine, but I'm not one of them. I'm firmly back in the Atkins camp and plan to stay there.

>>I am hoping in the next few years that a genetic test will suggest if high or low protein, high low carb wroks for an individual...

Hey, it's okay, if you stop reading when you see my name, heh, heh. I just posted on this blog in the last few days a news article about that very thing. The news article said there are four genetic types, and the main one is like Amy and I, who need low carb. The least common cannot eat either carb or fat. The other two types other combinations. They can test you and tell you.

Google for the following:

genetic types fat protein carbs test

and you will get plenty of information on this, thousands of hits.

Some immediately claimed, no, use the Blood Type Diet. Which allegedly says Type A should avoid meats and eat veggies. Others said it means low fat. Um, I am hypoglycemic. So, Type A isn't supposed to be hypoglycemic???

Anyway, my bp is as low as 104/64, and I don't need no stinkin' Viagra by arteries are so clean. My diet is mostly flesh of various creatures; some nuts when I seek variety; and cheese, plus cream.

A lot of quoting scientists. Um, yeah, the wonderful folks who have told us for 45 years we need a low fat high carb diet even as we get fatter and fatter and sicker and sicker. Have told us sugar isn't bad for us. Have told us Freon R-12 destroys the ozone. Have told us the planet is going to burn up. Oh, yeah, we better listen closely when a scientist speaks.

I say, read; study; try the different choices and see what your body does. Pure science at work. You will know in some cases within hours which diet is best for you.

Whole grains (or any grains) would not have been part of the Paleo diet, since agriculture was invented about 10,000 years ago. - Amy Alkon

I remember reading a bunch of articles that sugeted the reason agricultre became so popular was mnkind had discovered how to make alcohol

lovelysoul, if you're over 45 your high cholesterol may be from hormonal changes. Many women (so far me and all my friends and sister) experience a spike in cholesterol in peri-menopause. My cholesterol was always 178 or so, it's over 200 now for the first time, and I've been eating the same way for 5 years and keeping a food journal.

High HDL, high LDL, low triglycerides.Low liver values (15, 16). Just my LDL is all that's changed which makes little sense...if you have a diet that gives you high LDL you usually have high triglycerides as well. I had a test done on my arteries, I have no ateriosclerosis. It's just weird.

I started low-carb 10 days ago, actually NO carb to jump start it, I've lost 9 pounds and feel great. While I lost a lot of water, I needed to. My estrogen levels are too high, it was giving me interstitial edema, I couldn't eat any salt at all without blowing up the next day with fluid. I'd eat some kimchee (spicy Korean cabbage pickles) and be up 6 pounds the next morning.

Now I can pinch less fat on my stomach. Meat, cheese and wine, who could ask for anything more? I too, don't like bacon so I've been eating a good bit of chicken, and I can get really good fresh fish so I'm eating fish for more than half my meals and have beef a once a week or so. I'll make a Costco run this week for beef, at Japanese supermarket prices I'd need another mortgage to eat beef more than I am. :-D

So far, so good. I feel good, no tiredness at all.I'm not bloating no matter what I eat, I feel so good I wish I'd done this months ago. I will get a blood test done in a couple of weeks though just in case.

One thing that is often occuring to me recently is that we are simply living too long for our evolutionary design. Up until ~150 years ago, most people never made it beyond 45... cave critters didn't much make it beyond 30. Life was just hard like that.

You may want to do a bit more research on that (says the commenter not offering up any links to specific research). A number of ethnographies and demographic studies in small-scale hunter-gatherer populations show that although the average age at death is approximately 45, many individuals live to 70 and beyond. The average age at death is brought down by high infant mortality and young adult male death due to violence. In other words, if you can make it to 45, you'll likely make it to 70. There are no indications that our modern diseases were latent in our primitive ancestors, only surfacing now due to technologically extended lifespans. It is more likely that a significant portion of our population is not adapted to year-round, high-carb diets.

Yes, this no-carb dining is just so natural and healthy! Just take about a bazillion different supplements in astronomical amounts, and you'll see just how natural it is! We were just sooooo intended to eat that way!

Patrick, if it didn't work for you, so be it.

I'd much rather do low-carb than go on hormone supplements and increase my risk of stroke or breast cancer, or go on a statin and deal with the side effects of those.

I do horribly with more than minimal carbs in my diet. I eat mostly meat, cheese, fish, eggs, raw milk, and veggies. I'll have some fruits on occasion as a dessert option, but only maybe once or twice a week. I'm quite thin, no chronic health problems, and great cholesterol. If I eat carbs I bloat and pack on a lot of weight quickly. I also start getting moody and exhausted. It does not agree with me at all. The only real carbs I eat are popcorn, but with lots of real butter so I derive some benefit from the "bad" food. A few years ago I got away from this diet and within three months I had packed on 40 pounds and ballooned up to 150 pounds despite not eating large portions of anything. At that point I quickly decided to go back to my previous diet to see if that would help. It definitely did! I dropped the weight and gained my energy back, no longer felt like a crazy person with wild mood swings. I work with a few vegetarians, all of them overweight. Another woman has been trying to lose weight and is avoiding meats and anything else with "fat" in it, eating mostly rice and veggies. She's complaing she can't drop the weight besides working out and hiring a personal trainer. I told her it was all the carbs she was eating instead of proteins, but she insisted that was not the case and that proteins were too fatty, unhealthy, and contained too many calories.

Crella, I don't know if the high cholesterol is related to low-carb. You could be right. May be hormones.

I have a friend who follows the "blood type diet". I'm 'O", so supposedly I'm supposed to eat a lot of meat.

If you read Fuhrman's book, he'll have you convinced that high meat consumption is heavily linked to cancer. I don't know - it's so confusing. I do think highly processed food is so bad for us, and it's the mainstay of the typical American diet.

I grew up on a farm, so the meat we ate, we raised and killed. But we also had a garden, and for the most part, we ate vegetables, so I grew up loving those.

Personally, I feel healthier eating mainly vegetables. I don't really believe we were meant to be omnivores. Our intestinal tracts are too long. Since I've gone back to vegetarian, I've noticed that my abdomen feels lighter and less bloated.

Yet, that could just be me. Everyone's body is different. My ex has been a vegetarian (not vegan) for over 30 years, and he's in his 60s and quite healthy, except for high cholesterol. And, it's only anecdotal, but it seems like most of his vegetarian friends (since the 60s) have avoided cancer, while many of our meat-eating friends have gotten cancer. But that's probably not the meat so much as what they put in it. If you're going to eat meat, eat free-range organic (but I found that's hard to do, especially at most restaurants, unless you live in a big city).

I drink bottled water too, the ground water in Phx taste like ass and some of the aquifers have some sort of brain devouring amobea.

I do miss the water from nortgern Utah's wasatch range though. Your monthly alotment of metal in every 8oz glass. I remember one night the water heaer across the hall from me burst, 40 gallon tank reduced to a 5 gallon capacity in less than 5 yrs

I don't know that it's that you need to eat 'a lot' of meat per se. I don't eat more than 4 ounces (usually less) per meal. I think the point is to get a high total protein intake. I think the image of low-carb is that of eating heaps of meat, but a 4-ounce serving of fish and an ounce of cheese is enough and I stay full for hours.

Protein shakes are another way to do it, if you don't like to eat a lot of meat. Protein powder mixed into yogurt with a little fruit...there a lot of ways to get protein.

After reading about Amy's success with low-carb, I got the '30-day Low-carb Diet Solution' and took it to the gym. Coincidentally my trainer had just listened to a talk by a doctor in Kakogawa (outside Kobe) who's using no-carb with his diabetes patients with great success, 2 weeks of no-carb and then a maintenance-type low-carb follow-up plan. My trainer got interested in it and started it, I started the next week.

This doctor might popularize it here..the problem is that any protein source is expensive in Japan. My trainer jokes that it's a 'celebrity diet', the you have to be independently wealthy to eat meat and drink red wine regularly in Japan :-D It's not that bad, and there's always Costco for meat and fish.

If we're going to go anecdotal... I was a vegan for 8 months, healthiest I've ever been. I ate as much as I wanted, lost 20 lbs effortlessly, was bouncy and full of energy.

So why'd I quit?

Gluttony, folks, gluttony. It is my hedonistic downfall.

Fuhrman claims that a serving of brocolli actually has more protein than meat. I have no idea, but I do believe that our idea of the amount of protein that is needed in our diet must be wrong. That info is outdated. My ex has been living vegetarian since the late 60s, which is over 40 years, actually. He'd be dead now if meat was that critical. He does eat eggs and cheese, so he probably does get the amino acids that are necessary, but he doesn't take any supplements.

He'd be dead now if meat was that critical. He does eat eggs and cheese,

Well, then, he's getting at least the minimal amount of animal protein he needs, so he won't serve as an example of the healthiness of vegetarian eating.

kishke: Well, then, he's getting at least the minimal amount of animal protein he needs, so he won't serve as an example of the healthiness of vegetarian eating.

There's no such thing as a "minimal amount of animal protein he needs." You do not need any amount of animal protein, else vegans would be dropping dead and of course, they're not.

All you need are the essential amino acids, and it matters little where you get them from...although some recommend supplementation with non-essentials, such as glutamine.

Yet another reason why I wish the self-styled experts would leave the dietary advice to experts like Eades, and stifle their rampant misinformation campaign already.

When I described the symptoms of what Taubes tells me is called "Atkins Flu," Amy erroneously insisted I wasn't eating enough fat, when, in fact, not enough salt was the problem.

The sensible thing for non-experts to do is simply point people in the direction of the books/experts that they recommend. Let them take the heat for any misinformation, instead of spouting patent nonsense.

I'm falling on the side of "moderation is key." I managed to keep off the weight only when I started really paying attention to how much I was eating.

You do not need any amount of animal protein, else vegans would be dropping dead and of course, they're not.

You need complete protein for optimal health. There's a lot of space between optimal health and dropping dead. Even vegetables with lots of protein do not have the complete set of amino acids necessary for proper utilization; animal products have what you need. The way to make it work is by combining a small amount of animal protein with your veggies, which is what LS's ex seems to be doing. You say it can be done by acquiring the amino acids elsewhere? Fine. I was discussing the particular case of LS's ex, who seems to be getting them from his eggs and cheese.

This may surprise you—but not only does broccoli have protein in it, but it has MORE protein than steak! Broccoli and many other leafy green and solid green vegetables have the highest protein per calorie of any foods available—even more so than meat. As a matter of fact, 45 percent of the calories in broccoli are protein. 100 calories of broccoli has more protein than 100 calories of steak.

Some of us do like to eat broccoli, and lots of other vegetables, and doing so won't kill us. In fact, it's arguably more healthy than eating meat, which has been linked, in study upon study, to cancer.

Amino acid deficiencies are extremely rare. B12, for instance, can be stored in the liver and muscle tissue for years. Anyone who eats some animal products, like cheese and eggs, will have more than enough to be healthy.

"That's about how I felt on the all-meat."

Patrick, please stop spreading the lie that low-carb or Atkins = "all meat" ... this isn't the first time I've seen you state this. I'm not sure if you are lying on purpose, or if you are simply extremely ignorant, but given that you supposedly did a lot of research and Atkins and supposedly gave it a serious try, I'm going to assume that you HAD TO have known it's an "all meat" diet, because I've also done low-carb and Atkins and one of the first things you read about it, over and over and over and over, is that it's "not an all-meat diet".

"I'm going to assume that you HAD TO have known it's an "all meat" diet"

Correction, there's a missing "not" in there.

I find it simply impossible to believe that anyone who has tried Atkins seriously can possibly mistakenly believe it's an "all-meat" diet. It's just impossible.

For people who grew up in the "clean-plate club," moderation can be challenging. There were starving kids in Africa, after all, and I wasn't leaving the table until I was done (with done being however much my parents decided was enough). They sincerely believed that if I didn't stuff myself, I wouldn't be healthy, so I can't fault them, but it did require me to take a more analytical approach to how much food is "enough." I measured portions and weighed food and counted calories for six months before I got a sense of how much a normal adult of my height and activity level should eat.

Now, I still find that I have a tendency to overeat if I'm around people who are overeating, even if I'm not hungry. Trusting my own sense of hunger to let me know when to stop doesn't work. At least not for me.

Thanks, Amy. I bought that book on your suggestion a few months ago and it ended up in the "to-read" pile. I'll have to bump it up.

Back to the veganism: The main reason I abandoned it after a month is because it's a huge pain in the ass.

Want to lose weight fast w/o hunger or cravings, then transition to healthy lifetime eating? Check out medifast's "5 & 1" / "slim for life" plan. Amazing. Worked wonders for me and many friends, I'm a convert.

Lobster, given the fact that you made an idiot of yourself claiming that no one is claiming that fruit is bad for you..."I also don't like it when people erect straw men..." or whatever your self-righteous nattering was.

Uh, see it now? People are clearly knocking fruit. People are quite clearly insisting that fruit isn't good for you. Starting with this blog's owner. Well? See it now?

I never said Atkins was all-meat, dumbass. Do you see me claiming that Atkins is all-meat? Why, no, you don't. On the subject of straw men.

However, if you follow self-appointed dietician Amy Alkon on this subject, she has come down in support of an all-meat diet. The Alkon diet is not the Atkins diet. She talks about a friend she got started on it, and by all accounts he had nothing in the way of vegetable matter.

After this, you should try to read the thread before you insist you know what you're talking about. From where I sit, you look like 28.7 types of idiot right now.

kishke:You need complete protein for optimal health.

See what I mean? More misinformation. If you're so concerned about getting all the essential amino acids...this may come as a shock to you, but it doesn't have to come from one source.

Complementary proteins, folks. It's really very simple. Eat one vegetable with some of the essential amino acids, and you get get the rest of the essentials from a different vegetable!

Some of the symptoms described above sometimes result from a gluten sensitivity ("celiac disease").

Although some people are asymptomatic, the condition can result in the destruction of the intestinal wall, which can create difficulty or inability to absorb nutrients, and lead to a host of problems - including edema, damaged tooth enamel, vitamin k deficiency, difficulty concentrating - and so on.

Many of the symptoms people mention above are also mentioned on this Columbia University web page:

http://www.celiacdiseasecenter.columbia.edu/A_Patients/A02-FAQ.htm

There are other websites that are easier to read (and more interesting), but this site is a good, credible start.

I've also found that limiting my intake of simple sugar and taking vitamin D supplements quickly make a noticeable difference in my well-being. Calcium has a sedative effect, so I will keep taking that before bed, too. That said, omitting gluten is by far the single most influential factor in maintaining my health, including my ability to otherwise effortlessly maintain a healthy weight.

Eating bread I have found makes me very very sick. For years when I ate a burger I thought that I was getting sick from the meat, and after going on the low-carb diet I realized it was the bread that was making me sick. I always had stomach issues and after I went low-carb they were all cured.

The low-carb diet works great for me, but if something else works for you the better. If I could go on an all pasta diet and loose weight, trust me I would.

Store-bought gluten-free cookies and beer are loaded with simple carbs (white rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch or flour, sugar) but don't give me gas.

Give me a gluten-free cookie or gluten-free beer, and I'm a happy camper (until the sugar crash).

Though GF beer pales in comparison to standard (always GF) vodka, scotch, sake...

Call me crazy if you will, but most of the very nature of this discussion is just plain nuts.

Alright, hear me out.

Fact: We have many options when it comes to food.

Fact: Almost none of those options are exactly like what our earliest ancestors ate.

Fact: Our earliest ancestors lives sucked. Nasty, brutish, and short, to borrow a phrase most of you probably know.

I don't aim to imitate them in any of it.

And frankly, neither do any of you, however much you protest.

Our ancestors were constantly on the move, we're constantly at our desks. Their diet, their lifestyle, and ours, are of course going to be radically different.

Fact: Humans were meant to eat meat.

Fact: Humans were meant also to eat vegetables.

Fact: We are omnivores. We have a lot of options.

Picking this food over that food, worrying about this or that level of carb intake, worrying about how a type of meat was treated might give you cancer in 60 years...its all fairly meaningless.

If you eat to much of anything you'll be unhealthy.

Trying to find the perfect balance of meat, fruit, vegetables, tasty deserts, etc. is just plain petty. Yes I said it, its a petty attempt to control a very tiny aspect of our lives.

If you want to eat healthy, learn to cook and make the meal yourself out of basic materials, and then go for a jog, a swim, play tennis or basketball, do SOMETHING with your body aside from checking feces for fiber to ensure you've eaten enough of this or that while praying that the evil company responsible for providing this or that ready made dish didn't also provide you with cancer 50 years down the line.

-----------------------------

Listen, I don't intend to sound harsh here, most of you are very intelligent, well read, and thoughtful individuals whom I take a great deal of pleasure debating/arguing with, or agreeing with, as the case may be.

But something about arguing about which food will give you the healthiest and longest life...when most people don't use much more of their bodies than their hands to type or eat with, or their asses to sit on...it just seems meaningless. What good is healthy food if one does not live an active healthy life???

We could argue allllllll day about the healthiest foods or the worst foods.

But the long and the short of it is, the only thing absolutely inarguable is that the healthiest life is the active life.

Want to be healthy?

Step away from that keyboard, put on your sneakers, and go for a walk, or ride a bicycle, hop in a rowboat and go down river if you can.

Until you live an active life, whatever your dietary intake, your food is basically meaningless.

Because of course the undeniable

FACT: is that we were not shaped to be sedentary creatures.

Rant over, I'm going to throw on my P.T. uniform, go for a jog, and then get ready for work. Pleasant days!

This source says that one cup of broccoli has 4 grams of protein...

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm#table2

A cup of broccoli is about 150 grams. A 150-gram steak will give you approximately 42 grams of protein.

Until you live an active life, whatever your dietary intake, your food is basically meaningless.

I agree with everything you wrote here except for this. Food is vitally important. But there is a wide variety of things we can eat and still be healthy, so I agree that there's no need to obsess over it. In fact, I only finally lost those 20 extra pounds (and kept them off) when I decided that I would eat everything I wanted to eat -- in reasonable amounts.

I'm fortunate in that I don't have any food sensitivities. For people with allergies, lactose intolerance, celiac, etc., eating can be like navigating through a field of landmines.

For the purposes of weight loss, I've never found exercise to be important. I lost the weight without exercising at all. But it's important for other reasons.

lovelysoul: This may surprise you—but not only does broccoli have protein in it, but it has MORE protein than steak! Broccoli and many other leafy green and solid green vegetables have the highest protein per calorie of any foods available—even more so than meat. As a matter of fact, 45 percent of the calories in broccoli are protein. 100 calories of broccoli has more protein than 100 calories of steak.

crella's rebuttal: A cup of broccoli is about 150 grams. A 150-gram steak will give you approximately 42 grams of protein.

Thanks for the info, crella. I had read the earlier post and was kind of astonished by the argument that broccoli has as much or more protein than steak.

So I'm going to do the figuring: I find my nutrition info at this site, which says that cooked broccoli (boiled and drained, while I usually steam mine) has 4.5g protein per 180g, which is pretty good for a vegetable. The problem is that 73% of the calories (98) in broccoli are from carbohydrates. 180g of trimmed, braised cube steak has 63g of protein, and 72% of the calories (369) are from protein, and 0% from carbs. 180g of cooked broccoli is almost 100 calories, and 100 calories of this cube steak is 48.5g. This 48.5g of cube steak would therefore have 17.1g of protein, whereas the approximately 100 calories of broccoli has 4.5g of protein. So I don't know where you got your info, lovelysoul, but cite your source, please, as it differs greatly from the information I have found.

A footnote: I am a vegetarian, which is why I look up the nutrition info of produce, which is not labeled at the store. It is more work for me to get enough protein than it would be if I ate meat. Interesting note: greek yogurt is a great source of protein, much, much better than regular yogurt. I just bought a Cabot greek yogurt with 16g of protein per 8 ounce serving. There is another brand that has 15g per 5.5 ounce serving. Good source of protein and calcium, which I also have to work to get enough of, as I really hate drinking milk.

From where I sit, you look like 28.7 types of idiot right now.

Everyone here is talking about Atkins. You bring up an "All Meat" diet and say that it makes you feel terrible.

So either you're talking about diets that no one cares about, or you're talking about Atkins and misrepresentation it.

Yes you never said that Atkins was an all meat diet, that's because you're horrible at communicating and we're trying to figure out what you're saying.

You realize this and you're ashamed, lashing out in anger at safe targets on the Internet.

@ NumberSix -

You can make regular yogurt into "Greek style" by draining the whey from regular yogurt.

I rest a sieve over a bowl, put a paper coffee filter into the sieve, and then pour a large container of yogurt into the filter/ sieve/ bowl. Stick that into the fridge (or not) and 24 hours later, Greek style yogurt in the coffee filter/ sieve, and liquid whey in the bowl. I use goat's milk yogurt to avoid the lactose issues I experience with cow's milk, and then doctor the yogurt with anything - cocoa powder, pumpkin spice, berries, etc. Much cheaper than buying the Greek stuff outright.

Actually, it's not, depending on which kind you get. The imported stuff is definitely more expensive, but I bought a huge Cabot greek yogurt for the same price as the same size regular yogurt in the store brand. And I do know that you can drain regular yogurt to get the better texture, but is the nutrition equivalent in drained yogurt? Greek yogurt has about twice the protein and half the carbohydrates, but does draining regular yogurt concentrate the protein this much? Not being snarky, I'm really asking, because I couldn't find anything about nutrition facts in drained yogurt. Everything I've seen has just been talking about texture. And as for pricing again, you are losing quite a bit of volume in draining the yogurt, and, like I said earlier, the super-large container I bought was about the same price as the same size in the regular store brand yogurt. I don't buy the individual ones in the Greek, because it's much cheaper to get the big size. I've been spooning in a bit of honey and eating it with some fabulous pineapple I bought.

Someone asked why it took 15+ years for me to figure out that my diet was making me feel bad...

I started being a vegetarian at age 13. I was used to feeling bad! Feeling bad was the norm. I thought that by eliminating certain foods -- foods I thought were "bad" -- I'd allow my body a chancve to heal itself.

A lot of the "gurus" of raw & veg/vegan dieting say the body will heal if its not busy dealing with impurities so I thought it was my fault for not having a better diet. Raw especially: David Wolfe says raw vegan is "the best food on earth," and if you're not experiencing optimal health, its just "detox."