I’m sure most nutrition-conscious people are aware of the 1g protein/10 calorie ratio for determining whether a food is high protein. To my knowledge the highest protein foods & supplements out there have a 2/10 ratio, but theoretically shouldn’t a 2.5/10 be possible, since 1g of protein generally contains 4 calories (I am aware this is a rounded up figure that can vary, but that only furthers my inquiry). What is the scientific reason for this? Is it impossible for a molecule to fully consist of proteins, so the remaining 2ish calories have to consist of other macronutrients, or is it something else?
In: Chemistry
You can probably get a lab to send you some pure amino acids if you want, but what would be the point? It wouldn’t be palatable, your stomach probably wouldn’t find it very pleasant to eat, and you can only handle so much protein before your kidneys decide you are Having a Very Bad Day, and Would You Please Sit Down For A While So Your Kidneys Figure Out What the F— You Just Ate.
There is no living being whose tissues are 100% protein, ergo you can’t find anything to shhot/stab/cut into foodstuff that is 100% protein. If you want that, you need to look it up in the catalog of Sigma Aldrich or some other chemical vendor. It probably wont be very palatable though.
There’s no living being or any part of living being that is 100% protein. You can isolate and purify proteins at any purity even 100%.
As for the food industry there are two problems with it. One, purifying proteins beyond a level gets increasingly more expensive. Nobody would pay let’s say 100 bucks for a bar that’s 100% protein if you can buy that amount of protein for 10 bucks, okay the cheap one comes with some carbs in it, but heck, you need carbs anyways so you can just eat a bit less bread for breakfast. And two, a 100% protein food would be quite disgusting. The calorie content of the actual bars partially come from all those added flavours and structure materials so you can force down the bar on your throat without throwing up.
So it would be disgusting, unnecessary and expensive.
Protein poisoning is when the body takes in too much protein with not enough fat and carbohydrate for a long period of time. Other names for this are “rabbit starvation” or “mal de caribou.” These terms came about to describe only consuming very lean proteins, such as rabbit, without consuming other nutrients.
This is a bad idea. You should never exclusively eat protein. This causes [protein poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning).
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