Is Diet Cabbage Soup a High Protein Diet?

Actually the cabbage soup diet is a high protein diet.  Cabbage is about 50% protein.  It is obviously a vegetable protein though.  Most people think of a high protein diet to mainly consist of meat and eggs.  Meat does have a lot of highly concentrated protein, whereas cabbage has a less fatty type of protein.

Cabbage has more protein than even a white potato or oatmeal.  The benefit of cabbage is that although it has 50% of the protein that red meat has, and more than white potatoes or oatmeal it is much lower in calories.  So you will not get a low level of protein by eating the cabbage soup diet.  You need to get protein from a couple of different sources though.

You can get protein from dairy products, but they also contain a lot of fat.  If you get most of your protein from cabbage soup, you can still get some from other sources and still not get too much from the other sources.  Cabbage just provides the right protein for rapid weight loss.

An ounce of steak will give you about 3 grams of protein. An ounce of cabbage will give you about 2 grams of protein.  The meat though will have a much higher level of cholesterol and fat.  These are not good things, so the less meat you eat the better.

Problem with Too Much Protein

The problem with too much protein in the body is that it cannot be stored.  Glucose and essential fatty acids can be stored in the body and used later.  Protein cannot be stored in the body.  This is one substance that has the ‘use it or lose it’ characteristic.  If the body has all the amino acid from protein it needs for the day, it will turn it into glucose or urea.

Urea is excreted from the body as urine.  It has to be neutralized by the kidneys with a chemical made from calcium and the amino acid glutamine.  If the body has a deficiency of glutamine, the body strips protein from the muscles to neutralize the urea.

This will weaken bones and muscles.  So too much protein is a detriment to bones and muscle.  This can cause a lowered functioning of the thyroid which can lead to weight gain.  Another problem is this leads to a higher production of the stress hormone, leading to greater production of cortisol and a larger deposits of belly fat.

Cabbage Soup Diet is the Right Protein

The cabbage soup diet can be the right type of protein to help you lose weight.  If you eat a bowl of cabbage soup before lunch and dinner, you will tend to eat less of the other forms of protein and therefore maintain a healthier body.