Quote Originally Posted by badger View Post
nobody's ever lacking protein in the developing countries.
you're not serious, are you?!


As for "complete" protein, what that means is that the human body needs eight amino acids in a certain balance to be able to repair tissues. Those are called "essential" amino acids. Only meat contains all those amino acids in that balance (because basically, our bodies need to be able to make meat out of our food). The concept of complementary proteins means combining foods like beans and grains which together provide all eight amino acids in roughly the balance the human body needs. That's why historically people learned to combine those foods in traditional diets.

In traditional cultures, where people are able to raise and hunt the food they've learned to eat for millennia, it's true that they don't usually have a protein deficit without a corresponding calorie deficit (but crops do fail and hunger is very common). In "developing" countries, where people have been forced out of subsistence farming and into either cash-cropping or non-agricultural work, protein deficits are EXTREMELY common.