What Animal Protein Does in Your Colon 

There’s a take-off of the industry slogan, “Beef: It’s What’s For Dinner” – “Beef: It’s What’s Rotting in Your Colon.” I saw this on a shirt once with some friends and I was such the party pooper—no pun intended—explaining to everyone that meat is fully digested in the small intestine, and never makes it down into the colon. It’s no fun hanging out with biology geeks.

But I was wrong!

It’s been estimated that with a typical Western diet, up to 12 grams of protein can escape digestion, and when it reaches the colon, it can be turned into toxic substances like ammonia. This degradation of undigested protein in the colon is called putrefaction, so a little meat can actually end up putrefying in our colon. The problem is that some of the by-products of this putrefaction process can be toxic.

It’s generally accepted that carbohydrate fermentation—the fiber and resistant starches that reach our colon—results in beneficial effects because of the generation of short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, whereas protein fermentation is considered detrimental. Protein fermentation mainly occurs in the lower end of colon and results in the production of potentially toxic metabolites. That may be why colorectal cancer and ulcerative colitis tends to happen lower down—because that’s where the protein is putrefying.

Probably the simplest strategy to reduce the potential harm of protein fermentation is to reduce dietary protein intake. But the accumulation of these toxic byproducts of protein metabolism may be attenuated by the fermentation of undigested plant matter. In my video, Bowel Wars: Hydrogen Sulfide vs. Butyrate, you can see a study out of Australia showed that if you give people foods containing resistant starch you can block the accumulation of potentially harmful byproducts of protein metabolism. Resistant starch is resistant to small intestine digestion and so it makes it down to our colon where it can feed our good bacteria. Resistant starch is found in cooked beans, split peas, chickpeas, lentils, raw oatmeal, and cooled cooked pasta (like macaroni salad). Apparently, the more starch that ends up in the colon, the less ammonia that is produced…