Ok silly question but...WHY do we need to eat protien everyday

[RawpaleoHealthdiet]

 What is protein's purpose besides building muscle tissue,hari,nails, skin, and organs.
amino acids etc. I know on Zero carbs they can be used to create glucose

[jessica]

because each cell in your body has a life span and is in a continuous cycle of life degeneration death and regeneration, for these cycles to take place your body needs materials to rebuild cells, it also needs fuel to create this process.  our fuels happen to consist of oxygen (why we breath constantly) and food and to an extent the chemical reactions between the organ of the skin and the sun/our environment and our skin/digestive system and microbes (maybe no totally necessary for survival but vital to healthfulness)
you dont have to eat protein everyday, a lot of fruitiarians/candyvores do not eat protein consistently, the body is adaptable and can grasp for what amino acids are present, create some of its own, or borrow some from other tissues (bones, muscle) to restore what needs be and to fuel this restorative and other processes of the body system
some people fast for weeks and dont eat at all and dont die, but for thriving and maintaining proper bodily/organ function it is optimal to eat protein everyday and for myself and i am sure others on the board they have found that their optimal diet consists of a large percentage of raw animal protein.
someone could probably extrapilate with a ton of links and scientific data
i wanted to find a concise list of the turnover rates of different types of cells in the body and only found one which kind of differs from others i have read before but hopefully this is a sufficient explanation or helpful to you!

[jessica]

i feel like i didnt give you any other reason then what you discribed because i think what you described is the reason
just like any other organism:
grow as powerful as possible, procreate, die

just like each cell in our body:
macrocosm, microcosm

the exception is we have these brains which make us question our instincts and somehow we figured out this way to make it easier to grow and proliferate and now are augmenting our path into something "disterrigenius", being this weird half man half machine that can survive on the waste products of a wasteful /polluted society (maybe because they are becoming so plentiful?) and not on the "traditional/ancestrial" source of life that we were given which were plants, animals dirt, sun air and water in their pure forms(because one can argue this is all we use now) is not my idea of where we would go if i had an option to choose the way the majority would function but it is where what is happening, which makes it hard for those who choose to live differently to do so, but not impossible!

[jessica]

also if you want to see the power of macro/microcosms

thiriving off waste products and non optimal fuel (as i describe humans do above) is what body cells do when they are looking for proteins to build more tissues, take from bones and muscles and brain tissues
opt for drivethru/takeout when nothing else is as easily/readily available

we are much like any other organism, we want to generate in the way that takes the least energy away from our bodies, it is an instinctive process, but knowing how to balance this with prime health is also instinctive, we dont have that anymore, we forsake ancestrial human selves unknowingly

because i dont profess to know the future, maybe this is SUPPOSED to be the future of our species,
or the end to those who thrive on things like milkshakes and french fries and minivans and tap water, because within those populations you see a much higher insidence of infertility, "hyper"degenerative and social diseases 

i am not trying to be a dickhead or derogitory towards people who live the afformentioned lifestyle what ever happens is going to i have no judgement on it just curiosity, and for myself even a fraction of that life sneaking into my own causes disbiosis within my body that i am aware of and very unhappy with so i opt for oxygen, sunshine and animal protein and hiking,

[majormark]

jessica, you could writhe a novel "Of Protein and Men" with those thoughts lol.

Anyway, I remember a vegan saying that we dont actually need protein unless we want more muscles. The reasoning was that we are not growing in height anymore or something like that.

Is it possible that we need less protein if we dont grow anymore compared to a growing child?

[RawZi]

Anyway, I remember a vegan saying that we dont actually need protein unless we want more muscles. The reasoning was that we are not growing in height anymore or something like that.

Is it possible that we need less protein if we dont grow anymore compared to a growing child?

    @majormark alternatively is it possible that as adults we need more protein than growing children?  Growing children have growth hormones.  That's why they grow.  When we eat raw meat, we make healthy growth hormones.  Then we use the hormones we make from the grass grazed non-injected meat for repair, healing or any other bodily functions that would be more difficult for people who undernourish.  

[goodsamaritan]

What is protein's purpose besides building muscle tissue,hari,nails, skin, and organs.
amino acids etc. I know on Zero carbs they can be used to create glucose

I attended a health seminar by Michel Tetrault and he put it this way:

He subdivided the "systems" of the body into 7 or 9 different ones and he tabulated the requirements of each:

protein - fat - carbs

And only one system, the muscular-skeletal system requires carbs, all others require protein and fat.

[lex_rooker]

The truth is that we don't need to eat protein every day.  In fact, we don't need to eat anything at all every day.  There is probably an average amount of protein that we must have over time, just as we must eat enough food to supply our energy needs over time, however, there is nothing that makes eating any specific amount of anything a requiremnt on a daily basis as long as, on average, our nutritional and energy needs are met over several days (or maybe even weeks) time.  If this wasn't true then it would be impossible to miss eating for a day or more without suffering some deficiency or illness.

Our bodies are breaking down cells and recycling protein all the time.  It is only when there is no additional dietary protein for an extened period of time that the shortfall becomes a problem.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

...and the musculoskeletal system in healthy people does not "require" carbs, ever--once it is adapted to using fat for energy. If it did, those of us who eat ZC diets would not be able to move and our bones would have turned to dust and VLCers would not be able to engage in much vigorous activity. We are living proof that intake of substantial carbs is not essential for survival or good health. Carbohydrates appear to be the only nonessential macronutrient (though they reportedly can help with extreme physical activities like extreme weightlifting and extreme long distance runs and can give an added temporary boost of energy). That's not to say that no one should eat them, just that it's not essential.

So it's not necessary to eat any macronutrient every single day, and it's also not necessary to eat carby foods any day.

[alphagruis]

The truth is that we don't need to eat protein every day.  In fact, we don't need to eat anything at all every day.  There is probably an average amount of protein that we must have over time, just as we must eat enough food to supply our energy needs over time, however, there is nothing that makes eating any specific amount of anything a requiremnt on a daily basis as long as, on average, our nutritional and energy needs are met over several days (or maybe even weeks) time.  If this wasn't true then it would be impossible to miss eating for a day or more without suffering some deficiency or illness.

Our bodies are breaking down cells and recycling protein all the time.  It is only when there is no additional dietary protein for an extened period of time that the shortfall becomes a problem.

Lex

Yes absolutely.

At any rate our paleo ancestors HGs certainly didn't eat protein or anything else every day on a regular basis. Such a modern behaviour is just made possible by civilization and the absurd requirement to "balance" every meal is one among many others of those non-sense recommandations of the mainstream dietary dictocrats. The only requirement of the organism is a balance in nutrients and energy over an extended period i.e. an average over several weeks or months.

It is not unlikely that our paleo ancestors actually really balanced their diet in every fine detail only over the natural period that ruled their lives, namely over a whole solar year, in particular for those living in higher latitudes such as the inuits. 

[Hannibal]

...and the musculoskeletal system in healthy people does not "require" carbs, ever--once it is adapted to using fat for energy. If it did, those of us who eat ZC diets would not be able to move and our bones would have turned to dust and VLCers would not be able to engage in much vigorous activity. We are living proof that intake of substantial carbs is not essential for survival or good health. Carbohydrates appear to be the only nonessential macronutrient (though they reportedly can help with extreme physical activities like extreme weightlifting and extreme long distance runs and can give an added temporary boost of energy). That's not to say that no one should eat them, just that it's not essential.

But even on ZC your body makes glucose from glucogenic amino acids and glicerol. Cells which do not contain mitochondria (some brain and eye cells, erythrocytes) cannot utilize anything but glucose. That's simple biochemical fact.

[lex_rooker]

But even on ZC your body makes glucose from glucogenic amino acids and glycerol. Cells which do not contain mitochondria (some brain and eye cells, erythrocytes) cannot utilize anything but glucose. That's simple biochemical fact.

You are correct that some tissues of the body need glucose, but that doesn't alter Phil's statement that we don't need to eat carbs to obtain it.  As you point out, our bodies can make whatever glucose is needed from protein and fat, so not sure what point you are trying to make.  ZC is about the foods you eat, and has nothing to do with what your body does with that food.  Because my body creates glucose from non-carb sources doesn't mean that the foods I eat contain any significant amont of carbohydrates.

Lex

[Hannibal]

@Lex -
I didn't say that we need to eat carbs to obtain glucose.

[PaleoPhil]

Lex understood my post quite well.

A corrollary to what Hannibal said is that the bodies of people who consume very low levels of fat also produce more fat, but I don't call them high-fat dieters. They are still low-fat dieters regardless of what their body does with the food they eat (but it is very useful to also know what the body does with the food, of course).

One minor note that sometimes gets brought up is that there are small amounts of carbs even in organs and meats, particularly liver, and I do occasionally eat carbs (just as wolves and other facultative carnivores do). That's why I generally prefer the terms raw carnivore or RAF, but ZC is more common, so I use that too. I take a bit of license with the carnivore term, because carnivory is based on physiology rather than diet, but since my physiology currently seems to fare best on a raw carnivore diet, I don't think it's a stretch to consider myself a de-facto facultative carnivore for the time being.

[redfulcrum]

I agree with person before me.  Protein turnover is a joke.  I fast and lose pounds of muscle, but when I resumed eating the muscle came back, without working out.  I wouldn't worry about daily requirments of anything.  Just make sure you get oxygen and water on a daily basis, everything else your body will probably have enough stores of for a very long fast anyways, assuming you're healthy from the start.