Dr. Diego Bohórquez

Do as you choose.

And then you add the lettuce or the vegetables.

And here's the first stop in that discussion, because this is fascinating.

There is some recent work showing that if you remove the protein from a diet, the animal swallows that meal, the gut evaluates that there is no protein in there, and it stops eating that meal.

So here's the second part of that.

And in fact...

If the protein is low, not completely absent.

If the protein is low, the animal consumes more of the diet because it's trying to compensate for the lack of protein.

And obviously, if it has sugars or fats that are more pleasurable, it keeps eating that meal, right?

I see.

If the protein is completely absent, the animal avoids that diet.

Unless...

unless that diet is very rich in dietary fibers.

And the study that I saw, which I thought it was fascinating, is that because somehow the microorganisms in the digestive tract, if they have enough highly digestible fiber, now they turn on the ability to synthesize essential amino acids.

That's right.

The idea is that the body or the gut will be able to detect that and then will try to compensate, right?

I see.

And this I actually learned recently from a friend, Laura Duval at Columbia, who does some beautiful work on mosquitoes and how it is that they feed on blood.

She came for the gastronauts.

Is she from Leslie Valsal?