Debi & David Christy <[log in to unmask]>
 
>When you mix one cup of sugar with one cup of meat, you've got 50% protein
>& 50% sugar.  Which may sound condescending, but the simple truth is, that
>a lot of fairly intelligent people get confused when percentages enter the
>nutrition discussion.
 
This is incorrect.  Meat is not pure protein.  Depending on what type of
meat (lean beef, not so lean beef, pork, chicken, poultry meal) you use,
you have a mix of primarily protein, fat and water.
 
For example, a 3 oz (85 gram) serving of ground beef may contain:
56% water (about 48 grams)
21 grams of protein (less than 25%!)
16 grams of fat (about 19%)
 
(Source for nutritional content: "Nutritive Value of Foods", USDA
publication 1981 revision.)
 
After that you have to look at the *usability* of the protein.  A pound
of feathers has a high protein percentage, but it's not very digestable.
(Yes, feathers *are* actually used in animal feed.  You may shudder now.)
Meat protein is high quality, as is the form in soybeans, but it's more
appropriate to feed meat to a carnivore and soybeans to a herbivore, who
will each make the best use of them.
 
The other issue with mixing two cups of substances is that they are not
necessarily additive.  You can mix one cup of A with one cup of B and with
up with more or LESS than two cups of the mix.  (If, for example, you mix
a cup of water and a cup of sand, I guarantee you it won't fill two cups.
The water will occupy the air spaces between the sand grains.
 
But in addition, chemicals may react in such a way that they change the
volume so the volumes are not additive.  When I worked in the college
science department and we were making 10% Lysol solution for example, we
did not mix 100 ccs of Lysol and 900 ccs of water.  We put 100 ccs of
Lysol into a container and added enough water to bring the total to 1000
ccs.  Make sense?)
 
I agree it can get confusing though! :)
 
-Ilena Ayala
[Posted in FML issue 3155]