3 Reasons to Prioritize Animal Protein

For several years now, there’s been heavy pressure placed on people to shift to a plant-based diet.

Everywhere you look, the media, politicians, mainstream medicine, and social media are pushing the benefits of eating plant-based food and eschewing animal meat.

The nutritional landscape can be tricky to navigate, especially now. 

It feels like every time to take a step, there’s another new and confusing media article released:

• Don’t eat saturated fat, it’ll kill you.
• Saturated fat is ok, go ahead and eat butter and eggs.
• Saturated fat is terrible again, eat plants to get healthy and save the environment.

With all this contradictory information out there, it’s no wonder people get confused and go down the wrong path. Or worse than that, they give up. 

I know what it’s like to make wrong turns on the road to health.

I have made so many wrong turns that I ended up messing up my health, had to course-correct, and re-start down a new path to wellness. 

The key difference between me from 8 years ago to the me, now, is that I have a new motivation that has kept me from giving up and has helped me get to the healthiest point I’ve been in my adult life.

Psalm 139:14 states, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

Knowing who I am in God changed a lot of things in my life, especially how I viewed myself and the world around me. 

I became much more open and curious about points of view and information that I had previously dismissed outright. 

Learning about the true impact of food was critical to helping me heal while nourishing my body.

For most of my life, I had never really thought for myself when it came to nutrition and wellness. 

I figured that since I wasn’t an “expert,” I wasn’t qualified to make those kinds of decisions about food and its impact on my health.

I’ve come to realize that it is my responsibility to learn what foods would heal me so that I can do the work I was created to do.

At the end of the day, what matters the most from a health perspective is the minerals and vitamins that your body can absorb. 

This is what’s known as nutrient bioavailability and animal protein trumps all plant foods when it comes to nutrient bioavailability.

3 reasons to prioritize animal protein:

1. It’s the most nutrient-dense food that you can eat – Animal protein provides the nutrients that we need as humans in the forms that we need to thrive. It contains D3 instead of D2, K2 instead of K1, heme iron instead of non-heme iron, and retinol instead of beta-carotene.
2. It has the most bioavailable vitamins and minerals – Animal proteins have no anti-nutrients to actively bind minerals or prevent our bodies from digesting and absorbing nutrients, unlike all plant foods. 
3. Our bodies were made to digest animal protein – We have a stomach pH of around 1.5, an extremely long small intestinal tract, a short, long intestine, and a tiny cecum. All these things together make our digestive system perfectly designed to break down and absorb animal proteins and fats but make us not-so-great at digesting or absorbing fiber and other plant material, especially raw plant material. 

God created animals and humans to depend on each other to not just survive but to thrive. 

Through God’s grace, I figured out the foods that truly healed and nourished my body and those were animal foods. 

No two people are alike, different foods affect each person a little differently, however, animal protein is the most nutrient-dense, bioavailable food that exists for humans and the best way to heal and nourish the body is through them.