Tracking Food: Where My Protein Comes From – Source and Location
Over the summer, I began seriously tracking the food I eat. As my junior year of college concluded, I realized my athletic career was rapidly approaching its inevitable end. With that realization came a determination to get serious about all the little things I knew would help my performance in the pool. Thus began operation “Leave No Stone Unturned” for my senior year.
As an athlete, I knew I needed to fuel my muscles for performance and training, and that meant eating a lot of protein. Did I mention a lot? I was tasked with consuming upward of 200 grams of protein a day, and staying within certain limits for carbohydrates and fats. I began counting my macros, all to provide my muscles with the fuel they needed to grow and adapt to the physical demands of training. To make sure I hit that daily macronutrient goal, I downloaded My Fitness Pal to track the foods I ate everyday.
Prior to this, I was not eating anywhere near the amount of protein for new muscle growth or sustaining the muscle I had already worked so hard to gain. Athletes, and really any physically active person, should consume 0.5 to 0.9 grams of protein for every pound of body weight. My former diet consisted of a lot of processed foods, to fuel my raging sugar addiction, which do not hold much nutritional value, and definitely no protein.
I learned that eating a high protein diet is expensive. The foods that are higher in protein, like different meats and fish, tend to line the outside of grocery stores, and also have higher prices. This new knowledge got me thinking about where all these foods I have come to rely on to support my athletic endeavors come from. How many of them are local? Would a high protein diet be possible without the importation of certain foods?
Now back at college for my senior year, I set out to add a bit more depth to the food tracking I already do. For a couple of days, I dug around the internet to figure out what places were fueling my body.
Admittedly, I am a huge creature of habit, and eat nearly the same thing every day. My first day of Food Tracking 2.0 began on Tuesday, September 24, with one half of a Quaker Oats Chewy Bar at 5:00 a.m. as a chaser to the medications I take every morning before practice. This chunk of a Chewy Bar, produced in Danville, Illinois, is the only thing that stops me from throwing up my medications.
Breakfast was slightly abbreviated due to the fact that I have a class at 8:30 a.m., and since I do not leave practice until 7:45 a.m., I did not leave much time to make myself my usual protein-packed meal. I drank a Fairlife chocolate protein shake, made with 100% Canadian milk, as I cooked two large eggs, from Westview Farm in Millersburg, Ohio, sunny side up on the stove, and toasted two slices of Trader Joe’s Sprouted Wheat Multigrain Bread. With breakfast down the hatch, I dashed down the hill to my photography class.
I was unable to find where the Trader Joe’s bread was from, which became a common theme for many of their products I eat. For lunch I had chicken breasts, purchased from Trader Joe’s, and Barilla pasta that I had prepared a couple days prior. Barilla has a U.S. office in Illinois, though they are based in Italy, and mainly make their pasta in facilities in Iowa and New York. Accompanying my chicken and pasta was a cup of coffee, provided by Ethiopia.
Following another grueling swim practice, I added Jif peanut butter, Lexington, Kentucky, to a Fairlife protein shake, and drank that as I prepared a dinner that consisted of two large eggs, and the same pasta and chicken from lunch. Special guest snacks for the day included two Trader Joe’s string cheese sticks, from a farm in Wisconsin, and two Nutella and Go! Breadstick packages. The ingredients for Nutella seem to be from everywhere but Ohio. The hazelnuts come from Turkey, cocoa from Nigeria, palm oil from Malaysia, sugar mainly from Brazil, and the vanilla flavor from China.
Protein total for the day: 165 grams. Amount of protein from Ohio, 15.27 percent.
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Wednesday, September 25, did not begin nearly as early as the previous day, so the early morning bite of a Chewy Bar was not necessary. I ate a breakfast that I have been making every day, time permitting, since my protein journey began over the summer. I started by blending Daisy cottage cheese, produced in Texas, Ohio or Arizona, and Lucerne carton egg whites, Northern Maine, in my magic bullet blender. I poured the liquid protein into a bowl and added two eggs, shredded mild cheddar, and turkey breast deli meat. The cheese, Kraft, is from Wisconsin and Upstate New York, while the turkey, Hillshire farm, is from New London, Wisconsin. Adding the cottage cheese to my morning eggs is an easy way to sneak in 13 grams of protein into my morning. To top things off, I drank another protein shake with peanut butter.
For lunch, I had the same chicken and pasta from the day before. I also had a Chewy Bar and string cheese stick. My 1:30 p.m. class that afternoon took a trip to Lynds Fruit Farm, Pataskala, Ohio, and we were all given a pixycrisp apple from their cold storage to try. While at Lynds Farmers Market, I purchased their natural peanut butter and apple cider donuts.
After practice that evening, I added the peanut butter I bought that day to my protein shake. For dinner, I ate the same chicken and pasta, and finished off the day with an apple cider donut.
Protein total for the day: 161 grams. Amount of protein from Ohio, 15.27 percent.
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The next day was another early wake up, which meant another half of a Chewy Bar accompanied my medication before I scampered down the hill for swim practice. Breakfast was the same as the day before, with the addition of a slice of the same multigrain bread from the first day.
I took a pretty long nap after my class, so lunch was two string cheese sticks, a Nutella package and another apple cider donut before I went down the hill again for physical therapy. For dinner, I ate at Slivy’s, a marketplace underneath one of Denison’s senior apartments, and ordered the Italian sandwich. Unfortunately, even after scouring everything related to Denison dining, I could not find where any of the ingredients were from. I finished the day off with another protein shake.
Protein total for the day: 171 grams. Amount of protein from Ohio, 9.71 percent.
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After an early morning Chewy Bar, Friday’s breakfast was the same as the day before. I also had a cup of coffee, Kodiak power pancakes, Park City, Utah, and a protein shake with peanut butter from Lynd’s. I am not sure what happened during lunch time, but all I ate was two string cheese sticks. Dinner consisted of a protein shake and chicken lo mein from Dragon Village, a restaurant in Granville, Ohio. I was unsure how to log my restaurant meal in the app I use, so the numbers are not as representative for that day.
Estimated protein total for the day: 157 grams. Amount of protein from Ohio, 16.94 percent.
In fact, the whole weekend my tracking was off. That weekend was family weekend, so I ate out a lot with my family. I only tracked breakfast Saturday morning, which was the same as the day before. Since the weekend was an outlier in terms of meals I ate, I am not going to include it in my data.
On average, less than 20 percent of my daily protein intake is from Ohio, which is where Denison is located. Based on that information, I think that eating a high protein diet while only eating local foods would be challenging, unless I purchase a cow from a local farmer. However, I do not think it would be as challenging as my numbers show, as I admittedly was not trying to eat only local foods. I am sure I could have tried to find cottage cheese that was at least somewhat local, as well as egg whites. Even the chicken breasts I used in that pasta that I seemed to eat all week could have easily been local if I decided to shop somewhere else.
As a college student, it is nearly impossible to truly find good local sources of protein on a student budget. Eating to build and maintain muscle is expensive. When having to reach a certain protein goal daily, it is all too often that I look in the refrigerator and see that it is once again time to stock up. Yes, it would be nice to find a nice farm to serve as my source of food or maybe that cow I mentioned earlier. That will have to wait till I make it big and own a freezer large enough to store protein in bulk.