Yes, this is absolutely the correct metric. For instance, nuts are touted as a high protein food but from a calorie perspective they are often worse than bread - 15% of calories from almonds are protein, compared to ~20% in many breads. Lentils and beans are also touted as a high protein source but are only ~20% protein by calories. Compared that to non-fat Greek yogurt (70-80% protein) or tofu (~50% protein).
A good rule of thumb for finding high protein foods is to look for foods that have calories/10 grams of protein (or more). This equates to 40% of calories from protein.
> Most people's health issue is too many calories.
It's like saying the issue of a murdered man is too much metal inside the body. Technically correct but misleading.
If you replace the carbs by exactly the same amount in fats, most people will lose weight. Many of them would be unable to eat so much because they would feel stuffed and stop feeling hungry all the time. And for those that eat the same amount of calories, they would not be in fat storage mode so excess is secreted.
This is misleading. If they don't eat as much due to higher satiety, then you are not replacing with equivalent calories.
Calories are meant to be and are calculated as the lingua franca of macronutrients. 5 calories of one really will have the same effect on your waistline as 5 of another, holding all else equal.
Regardless, the grandfather is discussing macronutrient distribution and you seem to be in favor of optimizing it as well, so I don't think there's disagreement here.
The thing most “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie” people miss is that, according to the Low Carb, High Fat hypothesis, different types of calories affect the rate at which you expend calories. So, the theory is that a high fat diet makes more calories available as fuel and your body responds by making you feel more energetic, which leads to behavior that expends more calories. Whereas high carb diets, because of the way the body processes carbs, make less calories available as fuel and your body responds by making you feel less energetic, which results in behavior which expends less calories. So a calorie is not just a calorie.
> If they don't eat as much due to higher satiety, then you are not replacing with equivalent calories.
That's one factor of why eating fat instead of carbs defeat the calories-in-calories-out idea. But it's not the only one. Both the lack of release of insulin and ketosis helps the body work much better.
> 5 calories of one really will have the same effect on your waistline as 5 of another, holding all else equal.
That's the problem, nothing else is equal when you have a vastly different proportion of macronutrients.
OK let's ignore protein for a second. You're saying that if you eat the same number of calories, but as fat instead of carbs, your body will store less of it. i.e. that the human body is much more efficient at extracting energy from carbohydrates than it is from dietary fat, i.e. more of the energy from dietary fat is wasted. Macronutrient choice cannot affect the amount of work that your body does, only what percentage of the calories are wasted (inefficiency).
On the face of it this makes no sense because fat is such a good energy source that it's what our bodies use to store energy, so why would our bodies have problems extracting energy from dietary fat?
I didn't say that our bodies extract less energy from fat. It stores less energy as fat. Fat storage mode is stimulated by insulin, which is stimulated by glucose or by lack of sodium. Insulin brings other health problems in addition to weight gain.
See my other response, but the theory is that high fat diets make more energy evailablw for use, rather than storing it in adipose (fat) tissue. This makes someone more energetic, which is how a high fat diet can result in weight loss at the same calorie intake, but still have the energy balance equation work out.
> If you replace the carbs by exactly the same amount in fats, most people will lose weight.
The body barely converts carbs into body fat, thus the fat you eat is pretty much the fat you wear. You can eat mostly fat and still have a calorie deficiency, sure. And you can go for a keto diet (but please not too long and with a doctor/nutritionist supervising you).
Without any portion restrictions, calorie counting or exercise, the best diet for loosing weight is... a whole plant food diet.
De novo lipogenesis is inefficient, but that's not the point. It happens because carbs stimulate release of insulin, which puts the body in fat storage mode. Eating fat alongside carbs only makes things worse. If you eat the fats alone (and if you get enough sodium, too), you don't store them.
Take a look at these videos (or any other of that channel, I'm not affiliated but happens to explain a lot of things I've learned myself), or read the sources in the description.
The other one is grams protein per kilo of bodyweight. This depends on if you are working out or not. Common recommendations for those working out are really high (like 2g/kg). And taking too much protein is not very healthy.
Now a lot of nutritionists are lowering their recommendation to, like, 1g/kg or even less. And many seem to be putting on muscle just fine with those amounts.
An article about getting enough protein without meat and doesn’t talk about essentials aminoacides is worthless. You should read about Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score and the new Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score all plant proteins are not equals, and should be eaten simultaneously to avoid deficiencies to have a complete profile to bring muscle protein.
Also anabolic response is lower with plant based protein versus animal based and it should talk about B12 as deficiencies in it is a silent killer.
B12 is the only real deficiency vegans experience and it's easily solved by taking a supplement. B12 isn't some miracle vitamin, exclusive to animal products either. It's produced by bacteria in the soil and since we're usually sterilizing our food, it's not usually found on our produce anymore. That's why livestock are getting it supplemented, just the way vegans are supplementing it. It's not even like eating meat and animal products saves you from B12 deficiency as a big chunk of the population is actually deficient.
I don't completely agree with you about the "essential amino acid myth".
While true that plant proteins are not “incomplete”, it is also true that some aren’t absorbed as well [1] and are lower in certain essential amino acids than others. The article/video that you linked suggests that the essential amino acid profiles don't matter, even from plant proteins, because you get more than you need anyway but that's not true for everybody.
Importantly, if you're someone who is physically active or looking to gain muscle mass! When you're physically active, your body _does_ use almost all of the protein that you give it (at least, all of the protein it's able to absorb through digestion). And if you give it a deficiency in certain essential aa's that it can't create for itself, you can see less muscle growth. In that case, it is important to either stick to some of the more complete veggie proteins or to consume a combination of proteins that satisfy a complete amino acid profile.
I'd be happy to see research to the contrary.
I'd also encourage anyone reading to consider a vegetarian or vegan diet. Cutting out meat is pretty easy, even if you have to complement proteins for bodybuilding, and it's one of the best individual contributions you can make to inhibiting climate change.
This is not a myth, and the video you linked doesn't say it is a myth, it is AA your body can't synthesis : phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, and histidine.
The sulfur-containing amino acids, methionine and homocysteine, can be converted into each other, cysteine can be made from homocysteine, and phenylalanine with tyrosine. Likewise arginine, ornithine, and citrulline, are interconvertible.
But for example if you only eat rice, you think you get 2.56g per 100g, but just 3.8% of lysine and 8.2% of leucine in its proteins, when you need 23% of leucine and 18% of lysine.
Genuine q- can you explain what you mean by- "It's produced by bacteria in the soil and since we're usually sterilizing our food, it's not usually found on our produce anymore. "
What if we didn't sterilize? Would the bacteria then produce it in our stomach? Once I "get " those bacteria in, do I have to replenish?
I am not suggesting you ingest the soil bacteria, for it to produce the B12 inside your body. If you were to ingest small amounts of soil (on fruit or in water) it should already contain B12. I don't know why anybody would do that, if they could just take dirt (hehe) cheap supplements instead though.
So there's a good deal more at stake here than just optimal protein digestibility uptake rates.
Anecdotal, but I recently placed first in my age group and 5th overall in a trail marathon on a nearly vegan diet. Two other the other four in front of me were vegans. In another recent half marathon with over 1,000 runners, a near-vegan diet helped secure 4th out of 90 in my age group, close to the top 10% overall. I wasn't counting calories and certainly not protein. I did lose to close to 30 lbs while also getting faster. I used to have an "afternoon slump" at work, but that's rare now, even when running 7 miles before work.
For more interviews with scientists, the Cowspiracy movie (bad name) helps explain why animal agriculture has ended up as a top cause of climate change, and the newer movie "What the Health" interviews a number of doctors and scientists about the relationship between plant-based foods and health.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the original author was not arguing that we should eat meat for our protein.
They were suggesting that if you get your protein from plant sources, you should make sure to hit a complete amino acid profile and you should understand that digestibility is also lower for plant-based proteins.
> Drawdown.org places "Plant-rich diet" as the 4th most effective change we can make to combat climate change.
This seems to be a point of confusion for a lot of people: the thing you want to pay attention to is not plant vs. animal, but the amount of inputs that went into providing a calorie. If you use calories per dollar as your metric, and I think this is an imperfect but quick and dirty metric, you’ll see that chicken, for instance, is an order of magnitude cheaper per calorie than most leafy green vegetables. I wrote about this in detail here: http://www.thinkfundamental.org/why-kale-is-actually-terribl....
So what you really want to eat, if your goal is reducing your environmental impact, are grains, legumes, and plant oils. But eating a lot of kale, broccoli, and spinach would negate any gains from avoiding animal sources.
>As a vegan health professional, I am sometimes mortified to be associated with the junk science that permeates our community. And as an animal rights activist, I’m disheartened by advocacy efforts that can make us look scientifically illiterate, dishonest, and occasionally like a cult of conspiracy theorists.
I'd say it is easy to get enough of all animos from a whole plant food diet. Using cronometer[1] it is very easy to demonstrate this, I've done it countless times.
On the topic of B12. Many omnis are also B12 deficient, 1 in 5 iirc. In vegans all are eventually B12 deficient under the modern hygiene practices and without supplementation. All B12 originates from microbes that live abundantly in the soil. We are very clean with our food and water, so our plant foods and water are mostly devoid of B12. Pasture fed animals get it "naturally", their factory farmed relatives usually get a B12 supplement. I recommend everyone to get tested for B12 (and D) deficiency as it is very common, and supplement accordingly. Vegans with modern hygiene standards for sure need to supplement (or eat B12-fortified foods).
> B12 as deficiencies in it is a silent killer
Yes. So get your blood tested, and supplement accordingly. This is not something unique to vegans (though a lot more common). For good supplements consult: https://www.toxinless.com
I am starting to feel the nutritionfacts.org is bad science too, you can't seriously believe the IGF1 video when it is regularly used as performance enhancing drug for bodybuilders. Also the steroid in meat as been debunked.
Stupid but genuine q- can you explain what you mean by- "We are very clean with our food and water, so our plant foods and water are mostly devoid of B12 "
What if we didn't sterilize? Would the bacteria then produce it in our stomach? Once I "get " those bacteria in, do I have to replenish?
Or you mean I have to eat those microbes as they themselves contain b12? In which case dead or alive, what does it matter?
Did anyone else find it bizarre that they quoted "grams of protein per ounce/cup" of food? America seems to have slowly adopted the metric system, but it's not what I expected to look like...
Per cup is weird, especially to the rest of the world, but what really is maddening to me is the 'serving'. Every food app is riddled with nutrients 'per serving' . Completely ridiculous.
Servings differ greatly between brands, packages, countries.
> Per cup is weird, especially to the rest of the world
Cups are not weird, just just a pain in the arse because US cups are 240ml and metric cups are 250ml. If you're following a recipe that needs exact measurements it often trips you up.
Yes they are. For example, the article talks about "dark leafy greens (about 5 grams per cup)". Is that cups of dark leafy greens before chopping them up or after? If you specified the amout per weight, it would not make a difference. If you specify them by volume, it does.
It does seem like an odd unit of measure, but might make sense in the following way: Most people don't know or care what a gram of protein looks like. What they might know is how much they're supposed to eat, in grams. And they know what a cup is. So they can do the mental math and estimate how many cups are needed to make up their daily requirement.
More generally, and anecdotally, I had a health scare that resulted in going through a fairly standardized regimen including exercise and dietary advice. I received many pamphlets and handouts! There seems to be a substantial effort to convey health advice in a way that downplays or minimizes any kind of math. People just freeze up when they see math.
This could give rise to an effort, from a public health perspective, to come up with units of measure that people can use without being put off by math.
It makes sense to me: when measuring stuff like you would in a lab use metric, when measuring stuff like you would in a kitchen use imperial. I think it only seems weird because we rarely do both in the same sentence.
My guess it's a convenience compromise. Nutrition labels list macro nutrient amounts in metric, but packaging still has the product amount more prominently in imperial measurements.
This drives me crazy. It’s ok if we’re talking about a liquid, I guess, but what is 1 cup of cheese? Or 1 cup of broccoli? 1 cup of walnuts?
Using volume for those, the amount you’re actually using can vary by a factor of 10 depending on how granular it is, how finely chopped or shredded it is, or how it fell that day.
I do everything in grams, but with some recipes and labels it’s just not possible to know how much of something it’s talking about. Which is unfortunate because that’s the entire purpose of a recipe or a label.
> but what is 1 cup of cheese? Or 1 cup of broccoli? 1 cup of walnuts? ... depending on how granular it is, how finely chopped or shredded it is
Well, the recipe should give you an indication of granularity, although you won't get an ASTM number. That said, for cooking you're supposed to eyeball it a bit and judge through experience. Rarely does a little too much broccoli kill.
It sucks when it's a new dish or you are inexperienced -- but if you can't afford practise runs where the result is allowed to be sub-par, then it's probably a good idea to switch to a different source of recipes.
What's the void volume in a packing of spheres again? I seem to remember it's 74 %. You underestimate the weight by at most 25 %.
Broccoli is really an edge case. The traditional measuring cup for the kitchen (looks like this: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Messbecher.jpg) has more typical ingredients: semolina, raisins, flour, pearl barley, pulses & so on.
It could be becuase there's a rule of thumb that says you need a gram of protein for every 3 lbs you weigh (or 1g for 2lbs if you're trying to build mass.)
I've gone (ovo-lacto) vegetarian recently and I couldn't be happier. My body feels lighter, my mind more productive and my mood improved somewhat.
My initial intention was to be somewhat "flex" and have meat and seafood once in a while, like once a month, but I've eaten meat only once in 4 months and it was not specially satisfying: it tasted overwhelmingly salty and I wasn't able to enjoy the flavor. I guess I lost interest. Biting into a dead animal now feels wrong, it feels like eating food from a garbage can. Even eggs, milk and sometimes cheese seem like a stretch for me now. I did not anticipate that. In fact, I thought I was going to really enjoy my "meat day" but now I dread it.
Friends ask why I did it. I don't have one particular reason. Just did it. I'm not sure if the planet's better because of me not eating meat. I don't want to sound moral, but it does feel civilized, in an almost naive way, not to crave other animals. But I know I'm vegetarian because my body, and not my conscience, asked for it.
I've always been a proud meat eater. I laughed at my sister when she turned vegan. But I now feel relieved like a criminal that confessed his crime after 40 years in hiding. Trust me, eating meat is not important when you eat from a wide range of sources. Eating meat, poultry, seafood should be a special, almost mystical thing (in some religions it is), reserved for special occasions. It should be local, not global. The massive processing of animals is not only cruel and insanely wasteful, but is quite unhealthy from the epidemiological and physiological perspective.
As a long term lacto-ovo vegetarian, who is went mostly plant-based for health reasons: dairy causes many ailments, a quite unnatural food for humans to eat...
Others of us are well adapted to dairy and, for us, dairy is a miraculous food category. It is a great source of protein and fat. It adds a wonderful dimension to so many recipes. And, aside from meat, milk is one of the few single foods that you can largely sustain yourself on (I think of it as mother nature’s Soylent).
No one is properly adapted, that why milk consumption is associated with shorter lifespan and some diseases.
> And, aside from meat, milk is one of the few single foods that you can largely sustain yourself on (I think of it as mother nature’s Soylent).
What? Do yo mean to only drink milk (or eat meat)? In that case you lack fiber, big time. I've mentioned, and provided you with a video revealing how damaging milk is to the human body.
It will sustain your medical bill, until you die. :)
> It adds a wonderful dimension to so many recipes.
That's an opinion, and I must say I also really like the taste of some milk products.
> No one is properly adapted, that why milk consumption is associated with shorter lifespan and some diseases.
Adaptation to a lifestyle dependent on milk and it's derivatives was a huge inflection point in the evolution of Europeans. It gave the bearers of this adaptation a tremendous advantage over people who lacked it and consequently spread rapidly.
If I were you, I would be very suspicious about diet advice derived from epidemiological studies, since those studies can only ever infer correlation, not causation, and are likely mostly useless as a result of this shortcoming. This article by Gary Taubes goes into great detail about why (and, seriously, this is one of the most important things I've ever read):
Yes. See the Maasai (huge milk consumption) and Inuit (who historically ate a diet consisting entirely of meat from sea mammals).
If you're interested about diet and how it relates to health, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes is an amazing book, which is, on the surface, about how dietary fat and carbohydrates affect health, but is really a deep dive into how we ascertain knowledge and how the political process of scientific recommendations gets corrupted by human shortcomings.
Anecdotal, but my vegetarian friend had "excessive protein" show up in a blood test. Which was surprising, because he's not trying to get extra protein. Personally, when I'm vegetarian (95% of the time) I just make sure to get some beans and grains and variety, and call it a day.
Does nutritionfacts.org pay for studies? Nope. (Exxon does)
Sorry, bad comparison. But I understand what you mean: Greger eats a plant based diet himself so he must be biased and the probably goes about cherry picking studies to match his beliefs. After a lot of research I've come to the conclusion he's honest and works in the interest of people's health.
So the article that you linked focuses on cancer, and even the claim about testosterone links to another article on the site that also focuses on cancer and not on testosterone.
Turning to the article's sources, you find [1] source for the testosterone claim. And the summary at the beginning of that study states the following:
"Vegans had higher testosterone levels than vegetarians and meat-eaters, but this was offset by higher sex hormone binding globulin, and there were no differences between diet groups in free testosterone, androstanediol glucuronide or luteinizing hormone."
So higher overall testosterone, the same amount of free testosterone. I think this is a perfect example of selectively reporting on scientific studies. The author of that article may not technically be wrong, but it encourages spreading bad advice when you repeat that claim over and over again without the caveats mentioned in the actual studies.
It's worth noting that it's even in the title of the study: "Hormones and diet: low insulin-like growth factor-I but normal bioavailable androgens in vegan men". There's no excuse for misrepresenting that.
There have been studies that show high concentrations of estrogen-like compounds in soy-based products. People trying to maximize their testosterone levels while ingesting high amounts of protein are generally advised to stay away from soy
Edit: here's an article from a bodybuilding website that tries to summarize the conclusions of various journal articles on the topic:
See my other comment on T-level being higher in vegans (Even higher then in vegetarians). There's a huge vegan-fitness movement going on, and it rapidly moving into professional sport in general. They simply self-report to perform better, thus stick to the diet.
Can't read the article because of the paywall. But if you are looking for protein without consuming meat, then usually dairy protein is great.
1) Milk based products that are high on protein (either whey, or casein). Most shakes are usually whey. Otherwise yogurt is a great source (Icelandic skyr is mostly protein). Some cheeses have more protein than fat, etc...
2) Egg protein. Either full eggs, or just whites, or powder egg protein.
3) Peas, Beans, Peanut Butter are good protein sources as well... but you can really eat so much in a day
4) Avoid soy, (for many reasons, but mainly because it is thought to be andrenogenic).
If you can't eat either milk or egg based products and I think you are a bit out of luck. Yes, there are people that manage fine with (there even vegan bodybuilders), but it really becomes tough diet wise as it is very restrictive....
That article has me baffled. So many players talking about how much weight they've lost. One of them lost 40 lbs!
In every sport I've ever participated in, the diet dilemma of the top tier athletes is how to keep the weight on...not how to lose it. I don't even know what to say, just that it seems so weird.
Just something to consider: professional athletes are just about the worst examples to look toward for diet and fitness pointers. The reason is that pro athletes are genetic freaks, which means they can get away with all sorts of suboptimal behavior and still exhibit incredible performance.
It seems pointless to me when people become "vegetarian" to opt out of the factory farming/animal cruelty machine...only to eat massive amounts of eggs and dairy.
Well, in one case the animal dies for the calories that you consume and in the other they continue to live. Now, the animals may have a terrible quality of life, but that is a different issue (which also applies to animals who are killed for meat).
It's a question of degree. One hundred gram of meat vs 200g of yoghurt implies a significantly higher energy use and on average is more crucial pretty calorie.
I also referenced the cruelty? The point being that to get the same amount of energy out of milk/egg based products you'll need fewer animals than for meat based production (where animals have to grow for multiple months to years just to be slaughtered). Which means fewer animals will suffer to feed one person. It's obviously possible to reduce further.
Hard to compare the cruelty involved in breeding-for-slaughter, breeding-for-milking-then-slaughter or breeding-for-egg-laying-then-slaughter. Or to compare suffering in a chicken with the suffering of a cow. How many chicks convert to one cow?
Bottom line is vegan, period. And even that line is blurry if you zoom in enough :)
Just in case you check your replies now and then - yes, you get what I was saying.
One can opt out of meat and meat products for reasons of health (which are complicated and debatable, but a personal choice), reducing environmental impact, and not taking part in the way we currently handle animals for food.
The latter one is complicated, as it is technically possible to opt out of supporting the chicken/cow "matrix" if you really truly only ever eat meat/eggs/dairy from animals that are raised, used, and finally killed on (likely) local farms that generally treat their animals with "dignity" for whatever that's worth until they kill them. I personally don't think that real free range cattle and chickens that are eventually slaughtered have bad lives for what they are - but being able to only eat such animals is definitely a choice only available to the upper-middle class and up, given the current system.
But if you're a vegetarian and you routinely buy 48 egg cartons for $6 at your local safeway and eat tons of cheese? You just have a restrictive weird diet.
I keep hearing that soy proteins promote estrogen production but I've never found an actual study with significative results proving this. Any sources?
Regarding the paywall, it's really annoying. I know journalism isn't free. I have a paid NYT subscription and The Guardian as well, but these companies have to realize that you can't ask people to pay a subscription to every major newspaper in the world. By the same token, I'll pay for streaming but I'm not going to pay for separate streaming services for every corporation out there that wants to build its own streaming service.
There needs to be a service that brings together several major newspapers or streaming services so you can pay one subscription for all of them.
That's why a lot of newspapers ey provide a number of free articles poet month? I'm not a huge fan, but I've yet to see good sustainable models for quality news...
Most people's health issue is too many calories.
In grams of protein per calorie, many plants score high. You just have to eat more, which, if you make delicious food, is a benefit.