About P:E Ratio

OVERFAT
We are at the apex of a massive epidemic. 85% of adult Americans are 'overfat', and 70% of adults globally carry
more body fat than they should. This increases risk of chronic disease and shortens healthspan. Treating obesity-
related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, and neurodegenerative diseases is a huge global financial
burden, added to by the loss of productive years of life in those who are overfat.

IT'S THE FOOD

We know the answer is 'Eat Less Move More', but attempts to consciously eat less of the same food that made
you fat are doomed to failure. Why? Hunger due to lack of satiety.

WHAT TO EAT VERSUS HOW MUCH TO EAT

For millions of years, no animal on earth including humans had to worry about eating too much, even if food was
plentiful. Now, all humans and animals under their care are at risk for storing too much energy as fat thanks to our
agricultural and industrial technologies which give us access to cheap and ubiquitous empty energy calories from
things like sugar, flour, and oil. These high energy foods add energy to our bodies without providing the protein
and mineral satiety of natural foods.

PLANTS ARE AT THE BASE OF ALL NUTRITION

Plants generate all animal nutrition. They draw up nitrogen and other
essential minerals from topsoil, provided by bacteria and other decomposers.
They then use solar energy plus atmospheric carbon dioxide to create
carbohydrates and fats. They store solar energy as the carbon-carbon and
carbon-hydrogen bonds in carbohydrates and fats (bonds that animals later
break in their mitochondria to extract this energy). They use nitrogen from
the soil which is a requirement for any type of protein (all amino acids, the
building blocks of protein, must contain nitrogen). When animals eat these
plants, they collect and concentrate the nutrients and energy within them
and use this to build their own bodies.

PROTEIN VERSUS ENERGY

All plants and animals have a certain amount of protein, which must contain nitrogen from the soil, and also a certain amount of energy (carbohydrates and fat),
which contains carbons from atmospheric carbon dioxide. So every plant and animal could be thought of as having a nitrogen to carbon ratio, or a protein to energy
ratio. As you go higher and higher in the food chain, you tend to see higher and higher nitrogen to carbon (or protein to energy) ratios. For example, grass is fairly
high in carbon but low in nitrogen, because the grass plant has limited access to nitrogen (only as much as its roots can touch) but essentially unlimited access to
carbon (carbon dioxide) for energy. So grass will have more carbons than nitrogen, or a low protein to energy ratio. A cow, however, walks around and eats all the
grass it wants. It is getting both nitrogen (protein) and carbon (energy) from the grass, but it concentrates the nitrogen as it builds the proteins in its body. When
you eat a cow, you are getting a much higher protein to energy ratio, thanks to this concentration of nutrients. A cow however stores quite a bit of carbon energy in
the form of fat. If you go even higher on the food chain and look at a carnivore such as a lion, you will see an even higher protein to energy ratio, as carnivores are
always leaner than herbivores.

STORED ENERGY
Plants concentrate and store energy mostly as carbohydrates, and to a lesser degree as fats. Animals concentrate and
store energy mostly as fats, and to a lesser degree as carbohydrates (we have small amounts of glycogen, or stored
glucose, in our liver and muscles). Not only will every plant and animal have a slightly different amount of stored
energy, but also various PARTS of plants and animals will have different amounts of stored energy. For example, a
cow concentrates energy in its milk, designed for its offspring. Milk contains a lot of both sugar (lactose) and fat (milk
fat) energy, and is actually fairly low in protein by comparison. So the protein to energy ratio of milk is fairly low
because milk concentrates a high amount of energy (carbs and fats). If you eat any other part of the cow, or the entire
cow, you are getting a much higher protein to energy ratio-unless you were to cut off some tallow, or pure beef fat,
which would be extremely high in energy and thus have a low protein to energy ratio. Similarly, plants will concentrate
energy in various locations. Tubers such as potatoes, for example, are a specialized plant organ where the plant stores
a lot of carbohydrate energy (as starch, which is just chains of glucose). So a potato has a low protein to energy ratio
because it is very high energy. Plants also tend to have high energy concentration in their nuts and seeds and fruit, so
you will get a lower protein to energy ratio from eating these as compared to eating an ENTIRE plant (think something
like asparagus or celery), which will have a higher protein to energy ratio.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

This is important because humans have a very high protein satiety drive. We also require minerals for satiety. So we will
eat and eat until we get enough protein and minerals. If you are eating a food that is very high in energy but low in
protein and minerals, you will have to overeat energy to get enough protein-and your body stores that excess energy as
fat. We also see the bodies of animals start to gain a protein to energy ratio that reflects the protein to energy ratio of
their diet. As an extreme example, imagine eating nothing but pure energy, like sugar and butter. Your body has to either
burn or store this energy, so unless you start running marathons or something, the energy you store as fat will start
lowering the protein to energy ratio of your body. Now imagine that the only thing you eat is some very lean protein, like
fish and chicken breasts. You will have plenty of protein to support your lean mass (muscle etc), but you will barely have
enough energy to survive and as your fat mass goes down, the protein to energy ratio of your body will go up.

ENERGY CONCENTRATION
We like eating energy. Why? Because for 2.5 million years, we struggled to get enough energy to survive.
Imagine that you are a hunter-gather in the Paleolithic era, prior to agriculture and the cultivation of plant foods.
Maybe all you have is a spear and that's pretty much it. You are not going to find a lot of carbohydrate energy in
wild, uncultivated plants-in fact, you might struggle just to find any plant that is non-toxic (most plants are
poisonous). Eventually you're going to have to kill an animal and pretty much eat the entire thing. These
animals, however, are also trying to get enough energy to survive, so they certainly don't have lots of spare
energy in their bodies. So our hunter-gatherer ancestors were eating a very high protein to energy ratio-so high,
in fact, that they were always looking for any way possible to increase the energy content of their diet. Cracking
open up animal skulls and long bones to get the high-fat brains and bone marrow? Definitely! Braving bee
stings just to get some honey? You better believe it.

TECHONOLOGY TO THE RESCUE

Humans have always used technology to feed themselves. That is really our special niche. We don't have great
fangs for biting gazelles like a lion. We don't have specially designed hands to dig up tubers, or climbing skills to
live off fruit and foliage like our primate cousins. We don't have the large flat teeth and multiple stomachs to
ferment cellulose and live off grass like a ruminant. BUT we excel at using tools and technology. We can throw
weapons with far more skill and accuracy than any other animal on earth, and we are smart enough to build
traps and hunt in groups and do whatever we have to in order to kill our prey. We also evolved food processing
and cooking in order to extract more nutrients and energy from our food, so that our brains could get bigger at
the same time that our gastrointestinal tracts got smaller. Humans evolved to be 'cucinivores', which means
that we literally live on cooked and processed food. In modern times, 'processed food' usually has a LOWER
nutrient density than unprocessed food, but historically, processing has improved nutritional value. For
example, soaking and sprouting beans and grains and other seeds improves nutritional value. Fermenting
vegetables (and dairy) improves nutritional value. And of course cooking and processing meat increases nutrient
yield.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

About ten thousand years ago, humans invented agriculture and we domesticated plants and animals to ensure that we had a readily available source of food. We have
slowly improved the energy yield from these cultivated plants and animals, producing larger and more energy-rich foods. Take corn for example. Pre-agriculture corn was
a tiny wild grass with a tiny seed head. We have now cross-bred and hybridized and genetically modified corn to be a giant energy-filled food, with so much stored carbon
energy that you can simply squeeze it and evaporate it and make corn syrup AND corn oil from it. The protein and mineral yield of the corn did not increase, but the amount
of energy stored as carbon in the corn (as carbohydrates and fats) has increased exponentially. In the Paleolithic, when humans were hunter-gatherers, our dietary protein
to energy ratio was much higher, and the agricultural revolution significantly lowered this ratio, by adding in a lot more energy. Energy from animal foods was also
increased, as animals under our care are well-fed and have more stored energy (fat) in their bodies compared to wild game.

CELLULAR VERSUS ACELLULAR NUTRITION

Enter the industrial revolution, with the bulk refining and transport of sugar, flour, and oil. These nearly empty
carbohydrate and fat calories, mostly devoid of protein and minerals, add energy to our diets without much in the
way of satiety. These 'acellular' food-like ingredients are, generally speaking, always vastly inferior to eating food
that is still in a cellular structure. Any whole plant or animal food will remain in a cellular form that usually conveys
superior nutrition, with higher satiety and a better macronutrient and micronutrient profile. For example, any whole
plant or animal food will always contain a significant amount of protein-but processed and refined empty acellular
energy calories such as sugar and oil are pure carbohydrates and fats with no protein whatsoever.

PROTEIN DILUTION
Back in the Paleolithic, we ate a very high protein diet, and we constantly looked for ways to add extra energy to this diet. We solved this problem with the technology of
agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals for food. Now we have plentiful and readily available energy from plants as well as a higher concentration of
energy in our well-fed fattened domesticated animals. As a result of this 'protein dilution', we developed shorter stature and diminished health after the agricultural
revolution. But this protein dilution dramatically worsened with the advent of the industrial revolution and the bulk refining and transport of empty energy calories like
sugar, flour, and oil. Now the majority of humans on earth are overfat, thanks to our exposure to unlimited energy calories.

$$$$$
Unfortunately, there are huge economic factors
here. Protein is always the most expensive
macronutrient. Refined carbs and fats are always
less expensive. This is why obesity and poverty
now go hand in hand.

THE HYPERPHAGIA OF CARBS+FAT

Another huge factor is the combination of high carbs with high fat. This combination is almost never found in nature. Notable
exceptions include mammalian breast milk, designed to grow baby mammals as fast as possible, and certain nuts, such as
acorns, which are only available in the autumn when bears and squirrels are trying to store as much fat as possible. Foods high
in carb and fat together produce more brain reward and as a result they can be quite addictive. They are also designed to drive
overeating (hyperphagia), as this combination was historically only seen in late summer/early autumn when we had access to
much higher food energy thanks to the solar energy of summertime (more plant carbohydrates and also more fat from fatter
animals). All of our problematic foods are carbs plus fat: doughnuts, ice cream, french fries, etc. The perfect obesity ratio is also
the ratio of specially designed obesogenic rodent chow used to study obesity and type 2 diabetes. This appears to be at a fairly
low protein percentage of about 10%, with high amounts of carbs and fat together (about 50% fat and 40% carbohydrate). These
happen to be the exact macros of many obesogenic foods.

LOW CARB VERSUS LOW FAT VERSUS BOTH

The reality is that by either going low fat or low carb, you are significantly increasing the protein to energy ratio of your diet.
With either strategy you will see more protein and mineral satiety. Also with either of these strategies you are going to avoid
the hyperphagia of carbs+fat together. So we see huge successes with either a low fat or a low carb approach. This is why there
will never be an end to the macronutrient wars. In actuality, both sides are correct. The smartest approach is actually a
combination of the two-by avoiding both refined added carbs AND fats you will achieve the highest protein to energy ratio of all.
This is a strategy employed by many bodybuilders, to great success. You can accomplish this by targeting foods that are the
highest in protein and fiber and the lowest in fats and non-fiber (glucose-producing) carbohydrates. Enter the Protein:Energy
Ratio. To calculate this, you take grams of protein and divide it by grams of non-protein energy (non-fiber carbs plus fats). As
you eat higher protein to energy ratios in your diet you will see higher protein to energy ratios reflected in body composition.

PROTEIN TO ENERGY RATIO

Simply enter four numbers into the calculator:

• protein grams
• fat grams
• carbohydrate grams
• fiber grams

The equation is protein divided by non-protein energy (which is net carbs plus fat).

To eat this way intuitively, simply target foods with either protein or fiber as the dominant macronutrient.

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