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Indian Express
25-04-2025
- Health
- Indian Express
Protein deficiency? How to get 60 gm daily from natural food and not depend on supplements
When a 32-year-old patient with protein deficiency came to meet Bhakti Samant, chief dietician at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, Mumbai, he had thought she would prescribe a protein supplement. But he was surprised when she told him he did not need any supplement at all and gave him a diet chart that had whole food sources of protein spread across meals and snacks. He is now fit and energetic. 'All he needed was to balance his diet with protein in every meal to meet his daily requirement. This is the myth that everybody falls for, that protein from natural foods is not enough to meet your nutritional requirement. The body needs 0.8 gm-1gm of protein per kg of body weight to avoid deficiencies. Unless one is an athlete or recovering from illness, any normal, healthy person can easily get between 60 gm to 65 gm of protein from natural food sources. Regular people do not need supplements, just practical meal plans,' says Samant. WHY INDIA LAGS BEHIND PROTEIN TARGETS? All nutritional guidelines suggest that 10-35% of our daily calories should come from protein-rich foods. 'Estimates show that only 10 to 11 per cent of the Indian diet is protein, compared to 12 to 15 per cent in the US. We are stuck at a consumption level of 0.5 gm per kg of body weight. That's because we are largely vegetarians, with plant proteins not quite matching up to animal ones. But the bigger problem is behavioural. Our diets are carbohydrate-heavy. By not having enough protein (a quarter of your plate in every meal), you are creating a protein vacuum which you fill up with more carbohydrates, the root cause of blood sugar, inflammation and other problems,' says Dr Seema Gulati of the National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation (NDOC) Centre for Nutrition Research, Delhi. Myths around having protein-rich diets pose another challenge, according to Ritika Samaddar, regional head, Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, Max Healthcare. 'While animal protein is easier to incorporate, even plant proteins, in the right variety and combinations, can easily meet your daily protein requirement. Some plant-based sources like soy (tofu, soy milk), quinoa and chia seeds offer all nine essential amino acids. Plus they don't have saturated fat,' she says. WHAT ARE THE MYTHS AROUND DIETARY PROTEIN? Most of Samaddar's patients feel that a protein-rich diet is only for athletes and bodybuilders. 'Apart from building muscle, repairing tissues and producing hormones, proteins lend satiety, prevent quick breakdown of sugar and keep hunger pangs at bay, managing both weight and calories,' she says. Many believe high protein diets harm the kidneys. Yet a moderate protein intake with hydration is safe for most people. 'What many don't know is that even patients of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), not on dialysis, need 0.6 gm of protein per kg of body weight per day. Those on dialysis need 1.0-1.2 gm per kg of body weight per day, and that too from whole food sources. Yet such patients don't have more than 0.2 per gm per kg of body weight,' says Samant. The elderly, too, require 1 to 1.2 gm per kg body weight to avoid sarcopenia, a progressive wasting of muscle and skeletal mass. HOW EASY IS IT TO GET DAILY PROTEIN QUOTA FROM DIETARY SOURCES Dr Gulati has a chart ready. 'Let's assume you need between 60 to 65 gm of protein per day. Let's begin with pre-breakfast, where you can have 10 nuts, soaked or raw, all yielding between 3 gm to 26 gm, depending on the portion. You can even split them into two parts. For breakfast you can have moong dal chila, which yields 9 gm of protein per serving, so two would be 18 gm with chutney. Have a tofu salad which can give you 20 gm straight per 100 gram or a cup. Have a glass (200 ml) of buttermilk which amounts to 15 gm of protein,' she says. For lunch, she recommends multigrain millet rotis (4 to 7 gm from two diskettes) a cup of dal (12 to 20 gm), sauteed vegetables (between 2 to 4 gm per 100 g), which should be half your plate, and a bowl of curd (15 gm). Round it off with a cup of warm milk (3 to 4 gm). Snacks can be about roasted chickpeas (15 gm), a cup of grilled paneer (46 gm) cubes or sprouts (3 to 6 gm per 100 gm). For dinner, Dr Gulati recommends besan roti (a 30 gm roti contains around 6.6 gm of protein) or soybean flour roti (4.6 gm per roti), paneer, vegetables and curd (as listed above). For beverages, one can have a sattu drink (7 to 8 gm). 'There are enough high value plant proteins that can more than make up for your quota,' she says. For those used to animal protein, eggs (6 gm per egg), fish (a large piece or two small pieces contain 20 g protein) and chicken (24 to 32 gm per 100 gm, which is a biggish piece) are good sources. 'These in combination with plant proteins provide a rich bioavailable source. Who needs supplements then?' asks Dr Gulati. WHAT IS THE BIG MISTAKE THAT WE MAKE? Samant says most of us load up on protein in one or two meals and think we are done for the day. 'Remember the body can absorb only 20 to 25 gm of protein at a time. So if you have extra protein in a single meal, the surplus will go into storage as fat. That's why you need to evenly distribute protein intake through the day for the best results,' she adds. That way you can keep your normal protein range between 6.0 and 8.3 g/dL.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lombardo seeks to turn back time on criminal justice reforms
The bill proposed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, a former sheriff, is introduced on the heels of the revelation that the Nevada Department of Corrections has a $53 million budget deficit. (Photo: Richard Bednarski/Nevada Current) Legislation touted Tuesday by Gov. Joe Lombardo and law enforcement officials from Northern Nevada would turn back the clock on modest reforms passed by lawmakers with bipartisan support in 2019. 'This legislation was drafted to put teeth back into Nevada's penal code, hold criminals accountable, empower judges and prosecutors and support victims of crime,' Lombardo said at a news conference Tuesday in front of the Carson City sheriff's office. The bill's introduction comes on the heels of the revelation that the Nevada Department of Corrections has a $53 million budget deficit. 'I was convinced the Governor's crime bill being released at the same time NDOC shockingly shared it paid $60m in overtime and predicted worse deficits in the near future was a joke, but it was apparently serious,' ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Athar Haseebullah said via email. 'It's incumbent on the Governor to share how he plans on paying for his relic-of-the-past crime bill.' Prison guard musical chairs incurs $60 million in overtime, $50 million shortfall Last session, Lombardo spearheaded the Crime Reduction Act, which increased penalties for drug dealers, and limited early discharge from probation for gun violations. 'It's evident that more work remains in our fight to secure our communities,' Lombardo said Tuesday. Lombardo, on the campaign trail in 2022, blamed increases in crime on Assembly Bill 236, which was passed in 2019. His current legislation comes amid a reduction in a number of crime categories and increases in others. According to data from the State of Nevada, from 2023 to 2024: Property crime was down 12.37% Domestic violence was down 2.81% Violent crime was down 6% Crimes against the elderly were up 31.86% Hate crimes were up 88% from 2023, but down slightly from 2020 The legislation, Senate Bill 457, would enact multiple measures to toughen penalties and broaden the scope of infraction on the books. 'Historically, partisanship has prevented meaningful progress for public safety, but I am hopeful we can push past this session,' Lombardo said. Lombardo's Safe Streets and Neighborhoods Act would increase costs for the Nevada Department of Corrections by $3.6 million in the current biennium, by just under $7.2 million for the next biennium, and by $42.2 million in future bienniums, according to a fiscal note. 'Much of the long-term increase is due to habitual criminal convictions with delayed effects,' NDOC wrote in the fiscal note. 'For lesser sentences, this delay will take on average a year after implementation for an effect to begin.' NDOC projects the reforms would add 38 offenders a year to the prison population, with an average incarceration of 6.5 years. 'For greater sentences, effects are expected to take up to 20 years to begin to materialize due to sizable average existing sentence lengths, even when the habitual criminal sentence is excluded,' according to NDOC. The department estimates 111 additional offenders would return in the first fiscal year after their release, increasing to 215 the next year. 'This increase is expected to continue until a plateau is reached at 632 additional offenders. The average total daily cost per offender in FY 2025 is $91.43,' NDOC notes. Last week, NDOC director James Dzurenda testified the department is racking up $60 million in overtime a year because of the need to shift correction officers from one post to another to address staffing shortages, resulting in a $50 million dollar budgeting shortfall that took lawmakers by surprise. 'It's the utmost importance to me to ensure that the law enforcement community has the tools in order to change the crime picture in our communities, and we will figure out a way through the government processes and all the available funding resources available to us to address those particular issues,' Lombardo said Tuesday, adding he is 'evaluating time served for non-violent offenses' and projects a savings of $37 million a year as a result. 'Additionally, we will work through the existing bills that are going through the state process, and we can balance the budget to address this,' he said. 'In my level of importance and triage we deal with in state government, nothing is as important…' Haseebullah says Nevada's district attorneys' offices should disclose how much it will cost to prosecute the additional cases envisioned by Lombardo's legislation. The D.A.s, he says 'have opposed record sealing bills for bullshit arrests that were dismissed with their opposition based on cost considerations, but magically, something like this is free for them.' Lombardo's legislation: Enacts tougher penalties for theft, burglary and for repeat offenders; Provides an additional penalty for offenders who commit new crimes while released from incarceration but are still under sentence; Allows separate charges for each sexual image of a person under the age of 16; Lowers the threshold for felony theft charges from $1200 to $750;. Imposes mandatory minimum sentences and increased penalties for trafficking large quantities of fentanyl; Eliminates diversion programs for offenders who victimize children, the elderly, and vulnerable adults; Imposes a sentencing enhancement for felonies committed by offenders on pre-trial release; Revises stalking crimes to include dating relationships, social media and other electronic means; Lowers the threshold of the number of felonies required for conviction as a habitual criminal; Expands marijuana and marijuana metabolite thresholds for intoxication; Increases penalties for DUI offenses resulting in death; Domestic batterers would be required to surrender their firearms; Increases burglary punishments, which were reduced in 2019; Extends the time for a bail hearing, set in 2021 at 24 hours, to 72 hours; Requires that any payments collected from a criminal defendant be first applied to pay restitution to the victim; Requires that any money collected from a defendant be used to satisfy restitution before it can be applied to court fines and fees; Ensures that a felony DUI offender who is in a diversion program will be subject to another felony for driving impaired; Increases the penalty range for DUI causing death to one to 20 years to five to 25 years; And allows DUI offenders to be charged in certain cases with second degree murder. 'Nevada has no money left to experiment on antiquated tough-on-crime policies which continue to devastate our budget and don't make our community safer,' Haseebullah observed. 'We're about to face cuts statewide on basic services. I have no idea how anyone with any common sense would view this type of exorbitantly expensive regressive idea as a plus, but these types of performative messages seem to be the Nevada way.' No hearing has been scheduled on the governor's bill.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Prison guard musical chairs incurs $60 million in overtime, $50 million shortfall
Nevada Department of Corrections Director James Dzurenda. (Legislative stream screengrab) The Nevada Department of Corrections is racking up $60 million in overtime a year because of the need to shift correction officers from one post to another to address staffing shortages, resulting in a $50 million dollar budgeting shortfall that took lawmakers by surprise during a hearing Thursday of the Interim Finance Committee. NDOC Director James Dzurenda told lawmakers he was instructed by the Governor's Finance Office last year that the department's personnel shortage could not be addressed until a staffing study initiated in 2024 is completed in June. Dzurenda testified the department is 'usually about $60 million short on day one' of a biennium because of overtime demands. He predicted the study will 'be devastating' and reveal a biennial shortfall of 'over $100 million.' 'So you're saying that your agency told the governor's office… 'hey, we're going to run into huge deficits. We're going to overspend like nobody's business in overtime,' and they were aware of this, and they just didn't bring it to our attention until March?' an incredulous Sen. Rochelle Nguyen asked Dzurenda. 'I don't know when they brought it to your attention, but these discussions have been happening since I got here in '23,' Dzurenda responded. 'We knew we were going to be short, and I'm telling you, we're going to be short next time, too.' Lombardo did not respond to a request for comment. The governor, when asked about economic concerns in recent months, has repeatedly referred to 'triaging' the state through any fiscal storm. Triaging in the state prison department amounts to reducing visitation and shifting in-person educational programming to correspondence courses. The overtime problem, Dzurenda said, 'is complicated' and involves a number of variables, such as delays in obtaining a staffing study to substantiate the need for additional positions; unbudgeted costs such as transporting prisoners; staffing NDOC's training academy; and the cost of overtime provisions included in a collective bargaining agreement negotiated in 2023 for correction officers. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro told Dzurenda if he was aware of a 'regular, ongoing use of overtime monies,' a request should have been made for 'a reserve of X amount of dollars that we believe we are going to have to pay overtime.' Instead, she argued Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo's administration 'turned a blind eye to it,' leaving lawmakers 'halfway through a legislative session, to figure out how to fill that hole.' One corrections officer has racked up 1,600 hours of overtime since the fiscal year began, 'which puts you on track to work 80-hour weeks,' Nguyen said, adding she was 'incredibly disappointed' and branded the episode 'a failure on so many levels.' NDOC's current solution, she added, cuts the education programs that 'from what we've heard from you, Director, over and over and over again, actually make those prisons safer for your correction officers and safer for the people that are incarcerated in there. Is that my understanding?' 'Yes,' Dzurenda replied. Democratic Assemblywoman Danielle Monroe Moreno, a former corrections officer, voiced a 'need to apologize' to Dzurenda, adding she didn't know if the governor or the Legislature had put him in a situation that 'is not winnable.' 'We have a responsibility to make sure that you get what you need for your staff to be safe and the inmates in our charge to be safe,' she said, and directed NDOC to seek additional funding during the legislative interim. In other IFC developments, Monroe Moreno warned agencies with projects funded by American Rescue Plan funds, which will revert to the federal government if not spent by the end of next year, that because of President Donald Trump's tariffs, increasing costs of construction and goods could jeopardize their timely completion.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
$15 million for Nevada prison recreation yards part of requests in state budgets
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Three budgets seeking nearly $15 million to fix up outdoor recreation yards at three of Nevada's biggest prisons are just part of spending plans reviewed Tuesday in Carson City. It's part of millions budgeted for better security in areas for outdoor recreation, inmate shower stalls, door locks and new swamp coolers as the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) works to fix lingering problems at prison facilities statewide. More people behind bars means more taxpayer funding for prisons. NDOC Director James Dzurenda described what's planned at High Desert State Prison, just northwest of Las Vegas on U.S. 95. He said regular chain link fencing had been used in a prison yard 'for higher-security offenders that have to either be separated or have continuous gang issues between each other.' That wasn't good enough, he said. New psychiatric facility near CSN campus in Las Vegas priced at $420 million 'There was an incident last year. It literally took less than five minutes for an offender to break out of one of the cages and there was a homicide as a result of that,' Dzurenda said. The word 'cage' didn't sit well with Democratic Sen. Melanie Scheible. Dzurenda said 'enclosures' is the preferred term, and he proceeded to describe the difference between regular fences and the 'expanded steel enclosures' or 'recreation enclosures' that NDOC intends to use to get inmates out of their cells. He said the holes are smaller, but big enough for guards to see what's going on inside. The cost for each prison: $6,148,299 — High Desert State Prison $5,724,454 — Lovelock Correctional Center $2,814,398 — Ely State Prison But those aren't nearly the biggest budget items among a list of projects for 2026-27. A total of 10 deferred maintenance projects add up to $35.7 million. Add on another four major projects and the total hits $138.4 million. (See second image in slideshow above.) The biggest item on the list is the replacement of evaporative coolers at 12 buildings at High Desert State Prison, priced at $58.8 million. That would pay for new rooftop coolers and fans. There's also a request for construction of a new culinary facility for the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City, which initially carried a price tag of $25.6 million. That has risen dramatically, now at $41.8 million due to inflation. Officials said the potential effects of tariffs have not been added in. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Shocked': Lawmaker bristles at where funds come from to bury Nevada's indigent prisoners
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Sometimes it's the details that get under your skin. As state lawmakers went through a minor part of the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) budget on Thursday, Democratic Assem. Howard Watts heard something he just didn't like. Prison stores do a good business, with close to $15 million in sales projected this year. That funds most of the budget for the 'Offenders' Store Fund,' and the standard markup for the items that are sold is between 50% and 60%. Vending machines bring in another big chunk, adding up to almost $200,000 last year. Inmates don't have a lot of other things to spend their money on. And there are currently 10,800 inmates in Nevada prisons. Red light cameras coming to Las Vegas? Lawmaker wants exception that would allow them Some of the money from the Offenders' Store Fund gets funneled to another budget, the inmate welfare account, which provides things that indigent inmates get for free. One of those things: burial when they die. The budget presentation continued, and Watts heard NDOC's requests for a weight bench, two stationary bicycles and a new scoreboard for the Lovelock prison. 'Recreational equipment, scoreboard for the basketball facility. To me, those are things that really benefit the welfare and provide benefits to the inmates,' Watts said. 'Frankly, shocked that markup on commissary items is being used to cover burials and cremations for inmates who pass away in our care,' he said. State budgets are complex, changing dramatically as leadership changes and government agencies tighten their belts. A past practice of paying for four positions out of the store fund is ending this year, and officials are trying to break even despite a big loss of revenue from phone commissions, something the federal government ordered. With the constant shuffle of how the government pays for things, budgets can become very strange. Nevada prisons director points to 4-mile fence, better staffing; inmate food issues persist Any suggestion that the state profits on the backs of inmates is hard for some lawmakers to stomach. They asked questions about how state money is being spent on everything presented Thursday by NDOC officials. Republican Minority Leader Sen. Robin Titus, a doctor, wanted more information on the state's effort to treat hepatitis C in the prison population, and she wanted assurances that female inmates were getting the medical care they needed. Democratic Sens. Rochelle Nguyen and Angie Taylor, along with Democratic Assem. Natha Anderson asked questions about how much prisoners were allowed to keep out of the wages they earned from prison jobs. They learned that 24.5% goes for room and board, 5% goes back to victims' funds, and other funds are directed for various other uses. There's a maximum cap of 50%, according to Bill Quenga, who runs NDOC's industrial programs. For inmates who do earn wages while they're in prison, the state takes part of that to pay for their burial. 'There's every incentive to do nothing,' Nguyen commented. With no wages, you get your room and board for free, she said. Wages can go as high as $14 for welders, and other inmates make minimum wage. All participation in the state's prison industry program is voluntary. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
