What’s the Best Lean Protein? [Video]

Video: What’s the Best Lean Protein?

Dr. Vicki Peterson discusses the importance of protein and highlights legumes as a superior, lean protein source compared to chicken. She addresses concerns about lectins and phytates in beans, explaining that when properly cooked, these compounds are not harmful and actually offer significant health benefits, including cancer protection. Peterson recommends consuming three servings of beans daily to reduce cancer risk and emphasizes the nutritional value of legumes. She encourages adding beans to the diet and offers assistance through her clinic, Root Cause Medical, to improve overall health.

Transcript of the video

Are you getting enough protein? A lot of us are concerned about that. We want to make sure that we’re getting ample protein, and a lot of times when patients come in, one of the first things they say is, “I’m eating lean protein.” I ask them to define that, and they tend to bring up chicken, which actually has more saturated fat in it than beef does. I appreciate why they don’t know that because, certainly, we hear from the media that a chicken breast is the best idea as a lean protein source, but it is not.

I can tell you one that is a great source, and that is legumes. Legumes include all beans, including soybeans, split peas, and chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans), as well as lentils. They are very rich in protein. We talked about chicken breast—four ounces of chicken has about the same amount of protein as bean soup. So you can easily get ample protein. The bean soup has even more grams of protein than a hamburger does. It’s not hard to get truly lean protein with zero saturated fat by eating legumes.

Maybe you’ve heard recently about lectins and phytates, called the anti-nutrient toxic factors associated with beans. Lectins are a form of protein, and the study that’s frequently cited had to do with someone actually dying from eating kidney beans. However, the kidney beans were raw. I don’t know how anybody could eat a raw kidney bean unless they were truly starving, but the lectin in the kidney bean, if it’s not cooked, actually can kill you. But nobody should or could really eat raw kidney beans.

So, do you have to be very careful about how you cook your kidney beans? Like a chicken breast, you have to make sure there’s no pink. Not at all. The kidney beans—the lectins are completely gone even when the beans are only 45 percent of the way cooked. So by the time you’d want to eat a kidney bean—and you can definitely get them canned and really not worry about this—but, you know, by the time it’s cooked enough to mash with a fork and you can chew it very readily, the lectins have long since been gone. Seventy-five percent of the way cooked, the lectins are gone.

Phytates are antioxidants, actually, which makes them sound healthy, and indeed they are. They are found not only in beans but in nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Phytates have also been accused of being anti-nutrients and having activities that are negative. Yet, when research is done, they find the phytate anti-cancer activity to be amazing.

So, I’m looking down at my notes for a little bit here. What they found was that the phytates are not only loaded with antioxidants but they’re anti-inflammatory. They boost the immune system, actually giving strength to the cells that fight cancer and other sorts of infections. They, as I said, are detoxification pathway enhancers, plus they actually can encourage cancer cells to revert back to normal cells. If this was a drug, everybody would want it, right? And these are phytates that are naturally found in nuts, seeds, and whole grains, as well as beans.

This was across a wide variety of cancer lines. So, in other words, it wasn’t just one type of cancer. It was pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer—a very, very long list of cancers that the phytate activity was found to revert the cancer cell. I know you’re thinking, “Why doesn’t anybody talk about this?” But instead, they’re demonized. Beans are demonized, and they have anti-nutrient activity. Those anti-nutrients, just so you know, are a protection of the plant against invaders, against pests, so they won’t eat it. But by the time it’s properly prepared—so we talked about the kidney beans with the lectins—similarly with the phytates, when they’re properly prepared, that anti-nutrient activity is gone, which is Mother Nature’s way of protecting the plant to grow and survive and not have the birds consume it. And then, when the humans are ready to consume it and they properly prepare it, then it’s fine.

So the other study I want to quote was from the American Institute for Cancer Research, where they looked at 500,000 different studies, and their consensus was that we should consume three servings of beans every day as a help to reduce our cancer risk. Three servings a day. So how does it make sense that there’s all this cancer protection with beans and legumes (beans are in the legume category, so this includes lentils)? How could it be that they’re so protective against cancer yet, at the same time, be toxic and have anti-nutrients? It doesn’t make sense because it’s not true.

So what I really want you to take away from this is that this legume category, including all beans, is highly nutritious, highly protective. Just so I’m not leaving you hanging on what’s a serving: 1/4 cup of hummus is a serving, 1/2 a cup of cooked beans is also a serving, and a full cup of uncooked or raw beans is a serving. So, depending on how you’re preparing it, the serving size changes.

I hope you learned something today. It’s really, really important that you add beans and legumes to your diet because they’re highly protective, they are a great source of truly lean protein, and I think you’ll enjoy and have fun learning new ways to prepare them. We certainly have in our family.

If your health is not the way you want it to be, if you worry about cancer, you worry about certain degenerative diseases, please reach out. That’s why I’m here. I very much want to help. Here at Root Cause Medical, that’s what we do—we get to the underlying root cause of why your body’s not functioning as well as it should. So give me a call, whether you live locally—we’re in Saratoga, California, which is the heart of Silicon Valley—or if you live at a distance. It doesn’t matter. We’re a destination clinic. So give me a call at 408-733-0400. I’d love to help.

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