Why are proteins so important?
If you as my father in law, if there is no meat there is no meal. A meal without a meat is just a snack! In previous articles I've looked at carbohydrates like flour, rice, corn, and potato. I've also looked at oils like butter, margarine, olive oil, sunflower oil, and canola oil. Today it is time to look at the final macronutrient which is :
Protein
Now protein is absolutely essential for the body to maintain itself and to grow. Carbohydrates and oils are great to give you energy to live but proteins are what help your body develop and grow. Missing out on protein is a sure way to stunt physical growth and have a weak body. Having said that, too much protein can be hard on your body too!. Your kidneys have to filter out the nitrogen from protein breakdown (as urea). They are good at it but can be overwhelmed if too much protein.
Getting too little protein and too much carb/fat is increasingly common. In developing nations because proteins are expensive compared to carbs and fats. In developed nations because loading things up with carbs and fats helps them sell better....and protein makes it more expensive. Want to make money? Make a tasty low protein snack that people love to eat (Potato chips, chocolate bars, ice cream...the list goes on).
Many people are overfed (too many calories) and undernourished (too little protein, vitamins and minerals).
So, please pay attention to proteins as they are very important!
And on that note here is a list of today's protein list to "Set the Bar" for upcoming posts on the cost of getting this valuable macronutrient.
Now in case you are impatient I'll give you the quick list of prices for 2000 calories. So if you were to get your entire daily calories from these sources this is how much you would need to spend daily! From least expensive to most expensive:
- Lentils..........1.07
- Chickpeas........1.15
- Soy Beans........1.30
- Pork.............4.58
- Milk.............4.58
- Chickpeas in can.5.24
- Chicken..........$5.98
- Beef.............7.56
- Eggs.............9.55
Notice: The cheapest meat is triple the price of beans.
From a price perspective it pays to be vegan. Although check the source of your protein even when your vegan to avoid paying too much. As a side mention going vegan is also better for the environment. So I am not vegan but would call myself flexitarian. I try to limit my meat but also try to get the most nutrition for the lowest cost. If that lowest cost is meat...well, meat is on the menu tonight.
Side note for @monica-ene (or any of the #earnspendgive crew) if you are curious just take the value you see and multiply by 1000 to get the price in Naira. Ie: Lentils 2000 calories would be roughly 1000 Naira). If anyone wants to post their local price for comparison I'd love to see that!
Meats, Beans, Eggs, and Milk
Typically the "best" protein sources are either meats or beans. Today's list will focus on those.
Beef
The cheapest beef I could find was lean ground beef at $4.12/lb
$ 0.91/100g which means $0.91 / 240cal
Cost per day at 2000 cal/day = $7.56
Pork
At $5.49/kg it is much less expensive than beef.
$0.549/100g or $0.549 / 240cal
For a 2000 calorie daily allowance that would be $4.58
Eggs
At $4.01/dozen its a little hard to figure out their cost but here's the numbers as I see them. A typical large egg is about 50g. There are 12 in a carton so about 600g in a carton.
$ 4.01 for 600g
$ 4.01 for 840cal
$ $9.55 for 2000 calorie daily requirement
Chicken
Of course is chicken cheaper than eggs? $21.96 for 3.046kg of chicken. With a little math :
$ 0.72 for 100g which is
$ 0.72 for 240 calories or
$ 6.00 for 2000 calorie daily requirement
Believe it or not chicken is cheaper than eggs. I wouldn't have guessed! Doing the math is useful I suppose 😄
Milk
Now everyone thinks of Milk as a great protein source. It certainly is a complete protein source but it also has a lot of sugar and fat! It has 50% sugar (lactose) with 20% protein and 0-4% fat depending which type you drink. However, today I'm doing the math on 2% milk as follows: $5.95 for 4L is
$0.15/100ml and at 0.65cal/ml
$0.15/65 cal which is the same as
$ 4.58 for 2000 calorie daily requirement.
Chickpeas / Garbanzo beans
This gets a special section because its a great deal and a terrible deal at the same time! Take a look at the flyer that came yesterday. You have a choice of dried chickpeas of a can of chickpeas:
Dried is on sale for $0.99 for 454g (1lb) while the canned chickpeas are $0.98 for a 398ml can. How many dried beans equal one 398ml can? About 100g of dried beans. Sure you have to cook them for 6hrs in a crock pot to convert but still:
Lets look at the dollar cost per day and see how they stack up :
Dried Chickpeas
$0.99 / 454g which turns out to
$0.22 / 100g pretty cheap and that would be
$0.22 / 378 calorie and
$1.15 for 2000 calorie daily requirement
But
Chickpeas in Can
$0.99 for 398ml can which is equivalent to 100g of dried bean
$0.99 for 100g
$0.99 for 378 calorie
$5.24 for 2000 calorie daily requirement
Lentils
I hate lentils and don't know how to cook them but at $0.88/100g they seem really cheap. I'll do the math just for completeness.
$ 0.19 for 100g
$ 0.19 for 361 calories which equals
$ 1.07 for 2000 calorie daily requirement
Final Thoughts
Looking at the different protein sources I was quite surprised that eggs were more expensive than chicken. Go figure. I was also surprised that eating pork is actually cheaper than eating chickpeas if you decide to get the beans in a can
Take home message: Do the math!
When you compare everything based on how expensive the same amount of calories (in this case 2000 daily requirement) it is so much easier to see what is expensive and what is cheaper and by how much!
Thank you for the tags, it ensures that I don't miss out of the blog.
I just saw the other ones too and will go through them later in the day. please make it a habit to tag me always I will appreciate that
These could be a little bit boring.
However, when you are trying to get the most food for the least price I'm working hard to figure out a framework that is useful. I figure 2000 calories (what a person needs daily) is a good way to calculate whether something is cheap or expensive.
If you can figure out a better way to do it let me know :)
But this goes back to the "Eating for $1/day" post I made long ago. Side note: All prices are in Canadian dollars so about 1000:1 Naira to CAD.
Alright. Will send some quality assessment And reply to all of these soon. It’s pass midnight here
Awesome.
As a side note I'm also trying to make recipe's using the ingredients I mention in the cost for food posts. If you check out @tergan that will be my food making blog. @terganftp is to make money to buy a hive hideout. @terganmarket to buy things (like food) to put into the hive hideout. @tergan is about an inexpensive, nutritious diet on a budget complete with recipe's. @hiveabbyftp is holding the cash to support the GLD token and @tergan604 is for me playing Splinterlands.
So many different names....might get confusing. I don't want to tag you too much because I don't want to bother you. But if anything sounds interesting let me know and you'll get a tag.
It's alright
Will keep all these
I don't mind the tagging
I just don't wanna miss out of any of the things I should know
I do the math, but I also go with what tastes and feels good.
I guess legumes could work well as protein source, but I don't digest them well and fart all the time :D
I have something with beans or lentils once per week.
Probably not common where you live, but different organ-meats have excellent nutritional values and are sometimes quite cheap. (liver, lung, bones (for soups))
I get my first 600-800 calories in by just drinking heavy cream in my coffee.
Then again, I work physically and need much more than 2000 cal/day.
Nutrition is a complicated topic and kinda depends on your lifestyle, location, gut-biome, genetics, etc...
You are absolutely right. Nutrition is a very complicated topic! Taste and feel are incredibly important as you mentioned. As for the legumes you are absolutely right about them causing you to be gassy! They are well known for that which is why we have a silly rhyme about it here in Canada.
Now the farting is from bacteria fermenting the undigestible fibers in your gut. Helping to feed these beneficial bacteria with fiber is actually beneficial to the gut biome. Also these undigestable fibers are excellent in promoting proper bowel movements. Proper bowel movements help to eliminate waste but also help with things like preventing bowel cancer. Sure it can be embarassing to pass gas when you don't want to but nutrition wise it is hard to beat legumes.
Liver is an excellent source of vitamin A, vitamin D, and iron. It will get its time to shine when I'm looking at the best sources of each vitamin. Bones are excellent source of calcium and magnesium in soupss. Plus the gelatin they release adds texture and flavour to the soup as well.
Lung typically isn't sold in Canada. Intestines are but they are less common than regular beef.
At the end of the day I've just written about the 3 major macronutrients so far:
Carbohydrates, Fats, and Proteins. There are many more vitamins and minerals to go over the next year. The main goal in putting a price per 2000 calories on everything isn't to suggest eating only one type of food for minimum cost. Rather it is to provide a framework to tell whether something is expensive and cheap based on the nutrition it gives. Also looking at the types of nutrition in each food helps to determine how much of something you should be having.
Portion control is out of control here in North America. I have a refillable cup from 7/11 and they charge the same amount for a soda refill regardless of the size (mostly. They sell a 64oz cup (about 2 liters) which is often downed by an individual! That's a crazy amount of soda for one person in one day. Personally I fill it and divide into smaller containers for the whole family. When I was in the USA they had a 128oz container.....who could drink that much sugar? The same portion control problem is in many other products as well. I wanted to look at individual raw foodstuffs a little more closely so there can be a correlation between what you need and how much you need to get it.
How people put everything together in tasty recipes to improve taste and mouth feel is the magic that brings raw ingredients together :) But I'll be exploring that in my other account (@tergan) to find ways to take inexpensive ingredients and more expensive ingredients to provide tasty food that provides the nutrition you need. Again, early days for everything and I have a lot more to research but thank you for starting off the discussion!
I gave @tergan a follow.
I'll leave some votes when stuff pops up and keep adding my random and underresearched thoughts under it :)
Awesome.
I won't say I'm a good cook by any stretch but I am trying to figure out recipe's which use undervalued high nutrition products. Or use stuff totally from scratch. Hopefully it will be interesting :)