Nutrition: The problem with VEGAN and PALEO

[Aractus]

If this is boring to you then DON'T READ IT. On the other hand if you want to defend veganism or paleo with science then go right ahead...

Modern veganisim is somewhat like a religion as is paleo (to an extent). The biggest difference between the two is science: Cordian did produce an impressive paper in 1999 to argue his ideas, whereas vegans are somewhat more resistant to listening to facts.

Nutrition is a science, not some load of nonsense made up by corporations. So while Cordian is correct when he says that seeds have unfavourable amounts of lectins in them, what he doesn't then say is that breakfast cereals in particular and commercially available breads to a lesser extent are fortified with nutrients that humans need, just as Taurine and other essential nutrients are fortified in cat food. Which is why you shouldn't feed your cat dog food, for instance. Eating more vegetables is, however, a great idea and there's no harm in replacing non-fortified grains with more vegetables in the diet.

The other thing that concerns me is his attitude towards diary. True the aurochs (or whatever we domesticated modern cattle from) were not providing us with dairy before 10,000 years ago, but then who's to say that hunter-gatherers were not calcium deficient? Or the fact that 10,000 years of consuming dairy, which has resulted in two new mutated genes that activate lactate persistence in humans, possibly changed our physiology to require more dietary calcium? After all people who don't eat dairy - people like south-east Asians - have smaller bodies. But even assuming that argument is correct, it doesn't change the fact that the EAR for calcium is 840 mg/day, and the RDI is 1000 mg/day (see Aust. NRV and USA NIH). The EAR is calculated by surveying healthy people and then plotting their nutrient intake - it's the average. 50% need more, 50% need less. The RDI is set at the point that includes 97% of the healthy people - i.e. 97% of healthy people aged 18-50 (both male and female) need 1000 mg/day or less, and 2-3% need more than that.

--edit to add...-- Oh and by the way there's no way to know what plants we were eating back 200,000 years ago through to 10,000 years ago at the start of agriculture. We only know what animals we ate from animal bones. We could have had a plant in our diet that provided more calcium than any that we have now, and switching to dairy made it obsolete. Same thing has happened in other species that have shifted their diets overtime. Or, as I mentioned before, it may well be the fact that we started consuming so much calcium that made us more reliant on having higher amounts in our diet. In my view it's wrong to ignore the published evidence and just "assume" we don't need as much calcium as the evidence shows because we didn't have it 11,000 years ago.

Mind you that's just calcium, some of the other important nutrients for bone health are magnesium, vitamin D, and potassium. Deficiencies in the latter two are believed to stimulates the body to de-mineralise the skeleton, as well as D3 deficiency being linked to inadequate calcium absorption. Now what about the lectins I was telling you about before? Aha yes, from the first link I provided you can see that plant sources of calcium have only 10-50% of the absorption rate of the calcium present compared with dairy. In the average diet, 60% (in Aust./NZ) of calcium comes from dairy, 40% comes from plant-based sources. So if you weren't eating any dairy that 840 mg/day number rises to 1344 mg/day, and the RDI would be 1600 mg/day. Pretty simple calculation, and that's based on best-case plant scenario. Spinach has an absorption rate of 10% compared to dairy of its calcium. So if you wanted to get all your calcium from spinach (which has an impressive 99 mg of calcium per 100grams) you'd need to consume 6400 mg/day or so, which would be 6.3 kg of spinach. Even I know that's not possible. That equates to 110 servings (and the national guidelines suggest 6-7 servings of vegetables per day, which most Australians don't meet as it is - and by the way that's exactly the same recommendation that's in the USA and Japan).

I can't imagine vegans being too impressed with those numbers either - sure you can drink "soy milk", but depending on the product itself, and you as an individual person with individual digestion, you may have to drink twice as much as compared to dairy. Soymilk would be a no-no for Paleo though because it's a nasty grain filled with too many lectins.

Yeah so there are the three biggest problems I can see with paleo: 1. discouraging dairy, 2. discouraging fortified cereals, 3. discouraging salt. You should eat dairy if you can - it is very healthy for humans. Yes cereal grains have very little nutrition I agree 100%, but fortified cereals are different and do provide important nutrition which would otherwise missing in average western diets, by all means cut down on the corn, the peas, and the white rice. Soy products are in the main very healthy, however there is some discussion as to their role in B12 deficiency, off-hand I believe that's the only real area of concern for the over-consumption of soy products at present. Iodised salt is very important nutritionally because we get too little iodine from other foods - at least that's the case here in Australia.

The vegan movement concerns me greatly. In addition to the things I just talked about with meat, they also prohibit eggs and meat. Interestingly enough, although in the average diet 15% of cholesterol comes from the diet and 85% is synthesised by the body, there's no EAR or RDI and officially it's not considered an essential nutrient. The problem is that gives vegans the impression that it means that meat is not essential to the human diet, which simply isn't true. Cholesterol deficiency leads to mental health problems, because it's the precursor to steroids (e.g. the sex hormones) and vitamin D. It leads to aggression, depression, and anxiety. And vegans are the most likely to become deficient, of course. So-called "high cholesterol" refers to a condition where a person has a high level of LDL in the blood. In my nutrition book ("Understanding Nutrition", 2011, Whitney et al.) they wrongly call it "LDL cholesterol". As do vegans, all the time. They do this because they've never looked up a physiology book or studied nutrition, or have even the slightest idea what cholesterol is. I digress... high levels of LDL are caused by high levels of saturated fat in the diet, and low levels are caused by low levels of saturated fat in the diet. Therefore if a vegan becomes "cholesterol deficient" (which actually means LDL deficient), well the only known way to raise it is by raising saturated fat in the diet - so perhaps they'll be drinking straight coconut oil or something. That doesn't really sound like a natural diet to me, especially since in caveman times we didn't have processed or distilled oils in the diet either. And besides oil - where else do you suppose a vegan can find a food high in saturated fat??

They don't take it very seriously either. Or B12. Or calcium and its brother nutrients that are required for healthy bones. In fact long-term vegans often develop osteoporosis. Most of them have an eating disorder called Orthorexia nervosa.

I wish I could link to the original version, but it's been moved or removed or something, so here's the cache, which shows that our ex-drug using 80/10/10 enthusiast Harley "Durianrider" Johnstone had an extremely low level of B12 when interviewed on TV in 2007. The dietician told him "My biggest concern is that your vitamin B12 is one of the lowest clinical levels we have ever seen!" Interesting isn't it that people take dietary advice from someone who isn't qualified, developed an extreme B12 deficiency, and probably is having his bones demineralised as we speak. Because, after all with osteoporosis your blood-work can still look fine because your bones are being demineralised, and providing the "healthy" blood levels! I guess no one's explained that to him yet. To my knowledge doctors don't use blood tests at all to diagnose osteoporosis, they look for fractures in x-rays or do bone-density tests.

The creator of 80/10/10, "dr" Doug Graham, as you can see on p. 134 of this ebook, he too became B12 deficient! Oh what a shock. Yet this chiropractor, with no formal education in nutrition, doesn't seem to give it a second thought and continues about his dubious nutrition advice.

Leanne "Freelee The Banana Girl" Ratcliffe - she's looking thinner than when she was suffering from anorexia, which leads me to believe (as a layman) that she suffers from orthorexia. After all, having one eating disorder is a risk factor for developing another. Also, I would speculate she suffers from body dysmorphia. Again I really wonder why people would want to get their nutrition advice from an ex-anorexic, ex-drug user, with no qualifications, credentials or nutrition education? My only explanation is that it appeals to their blind religious-like belief in veganisim.

I do want to remind you that I firmly believe it's wrong to victim-blame anyone who suffers from a disease/disorder, I hope it hasn't come off that way. And yes, there are plenty of people who don't think that orthorexia is a legitimate eating disorder and it's not listed in DSM-5. But when you see their youtube channels with hundreds of videos spanning back a number of years, all referencing to anecdotal "evidence" and not to any published literature, you do have to try explain where the delusion comes from. Clinging to beliefs that can be disproved both scientifically and with examples of people who suffered from following vegan diets. Now I could even reference other people who call themselves "experts". An expert is (generally) someone who is involved in research and the publication of evidence. Evidence being a peer-review journal article, or other academic publication. Even dieticians are not "experts" unless they are actively involved in this. Your GP is not an "expert" if he's not researching and publishing - he's just a "practising" doctor. The distinction would become very important for instance if your child suffered from a rare disease that only a few doctors research - and you'd want to go see them because any other doctor is just relaying second-hand information that they don't comprehend to the level that the experts do.

With that said I do still find EARs to be a rather arbitrary number. Especially because they only include "healthy" people. The midpoint of "healthy" people. It's also a lot more complicated because other nutrients change the behaviour of the one that is looked at. Vitamin D deficiency, which is actually quite common, reduces the absorption of certain other nutrients. Plant lectins reduce the absorption of most nutrients. An EAR is just a number, as I discussed at the start, the number becomes very different depending on which food the nutrient comes from. Protein is a fine example - even with complete protein the lectins interfere and reduce absorption, there would be two different EARs. Any nutrient from animal based sources will be absorbed in higher amounts than from plant sources.

I suppose I should acknowledge the three arguments that most vegans use: 1. it's the best diet for human health; 2. it's more environmentally friendly; 3. meat is murder. PETA's "facts" are a great example. Carpet can be made from wool or synthetic fibres. Wool is renewable and recyclable, synthetic is not. Wool's other main application is of course in upholstery. The vast majority of office chairs, for instance, are covered in either wool or leather. Just on fabrics alone it can be shown that the natural ones are more environmentally friendly, let alone when it comes to agriculture vs pasture on farmland. I wish we didn't grow cotton in Australia, it is notoriously bad for our land. Sheep on the other hand are not, they're a great use of the land. Meat is murder? Maybe it is, you know cavemen didn't like slaughtering animals. In fact they disliked it so much they developed customs where they blessed the animal for its meat before and/or after doing so. The customs that found their way into Judaism and Islam. They're not going to be doing something they don't really like to do unless it's necessary for their health, which I think for now adequately addresses the first argument as well.

The arguments I would propose are: 1. veganisim is an experiment that has largely failed because it's led people into health problems; 2. there's nothing environmentally friendly about creating more grain, or in the use of synthetic fabrics where natural ones are available; 3. most nutrient deficiency in the world comes in places where people cannot eat enough meat and a variety of vegetables, and have a staple diet of low-nutrient non-fortified grain; 4. Paleo is also an experiment, it is based on science but for the reasons I gave earlier should be approached with scepticism.

[aitm]

Interesting read. Over my head mostly but interesting. Personally I have recently started to cut down on starches and breads. I also shun salt because here in the states it is so much into everything. I am now more into fruits and salads with good doses of nuts daily. I still eat plenty of meat and chicken but am trying to find more ways to get better fish. I avoid all sugars that I can. My problem is that  I NEED some taters and pasta once in awhile and good bread, I only buy quality hand made bread but that is no guarantee that it has any nutritional value, but me loves my bread. So it has only been a month or so and nothing really has "changed" other than I have a little more hunger pangs as I have cut down on volume as well. I handle this with pistachios and almonds at night. I have thought about a more vegan diet but it purely due to emotional not nutritional issues that  I have dismissed as irrational. I am not overweight at all, but would like to get back to a little trimmer.

I do find vegans to be somewhat paradoxical in some of their approaches to their whole outlook on diet and health. Good stuff there though.

[SGOS]

I used to prefer a good burger over a steak when I was young.  That's gradually turned around.  These days a burger almost makes me gag.  They've got too much stuff that doesn't seem like meat.  Yeah, OK, those bits of bone and gristle might be actual animal parts, but I don't consider that meat.  I haven't bought burger for a couple of years now, and my experience just before I quit buying it was such that the thought of eating burger is nothing short of revolting.

[caseagainstfaith]

I'm not vegan. I'm mostly vegetarian.  But, there's a lot of bullshit in the OP.  For one thing, it is true that calcium is less prevalent, less absorbable in vegetable matter.  So, you'd think vegans would have more osteoporisis.  I notice the OP didn't point to any studies that would indicate this. Because they don't.  Humans would ordinarily need very little calcium.  Problem is, high protein diets leach calcium.  Despite the fact that indeed milk has lots of calcium, the more dairy people consume the more osteoporisis they have.  I can dig up some studies on this if you like.

As far as B12, yes, vegans can be B12 deficient.  Its not because vegetables are naturally devoid of B12.  B12 is actually created by microorganisms and would be prevalent in a vegan diet, except for the fact that we wash vegetables and wash off the B12 that exists on the exterior of vegetables.

The only nutrient that has actually been shown to be deficient in vegans, as far as I know, is B12.  So, fine, be a vegan and take B12.

As far as "nothing environmentally friendly about creating more grain".  Are you a paid huxter for the meat industry?  This is such astonishing bullshit.  Currently MOST of the world's grain is fed to animals, not to people.  Meat is a way to turn a large amount of good food into smaller amounts of bad food.

So, please, spare me your complete fucking bullshit.

[aitm]

...and then there is another side eh?  LOL

[Youssuf Ramadan]

If this is boring to you then DON'T READ IT.

And how am I to know whether it is boring or not until I read it?   

[Hijiri Byakuren]

[Desdinova]

And how am I to know whether it is boring or not until I read it?   

I read about the first three sentences, scrolled down to see how long it was, and promptly moved to the replies.

[Aroura33]

Yeah, I scanned it.  Some interesting points, some other stuff just big speculation.  Orthorexia nervosa is just a proposed disorder, for instance, it isn't recognized (yet) as one.

We try and eat things like meat, cheese, etc, in moderation.  Since I was raised on a farm, I have no problem with the moral issues of killing animals to eat (I'm not grossed out by dismembering an animal...sorry), but I DO believe those animals have a right to a decent life while alive.  We kept good care of our animals, and now that I'm an adult I only buy free range meat, eggs and dairy.

But I do think moderation is key.  Yes, eating too much of anything (ven veggies) can have some negative effects.  I know a few vegans (I DO live near Portland(ia) after all!!!), and most of them have bad teeth, bad breath and body odor problems, and all of them look 10 years older than they are.  None have cancer or heart disease that I'm aware of, so there is that. Personally, I do think any extreme diet is going too far.

We no longer buy ground beef either.  We eat meat about every other day.  Rarely beef (St. Patties day I made a corned beef and that was the first piece of beef I've bought in months and months), usually it's chicken, turkey, or local fish.  In Oregon, fortunately for me, it's not hard to buy local fish and local free range chicken.  We've double the amount of fruits and veggies, and reduced our grains as well.  I do not claim to have celiac disease or anything, but found that when I stopped eating bread products (even "good" bread), I felt a lot better. We've moved to brown rice for most of our grains. Including pasta.  There are a lot of brown rice pastas out there now.  I also stopped drinking milk because of lactose intolerance, but I still ADORE real cheeses and yogurts.

I'd like to make one comment about those "fortified" cereals.  The vitamins and minerals you get from fortification are not as good as ones you get from nature, they tend to be less readily absorbed and digested by the human body.  Breakfast cereals are mostly crap, IMHO.

I'm still on the "eating local" bandwagon.  95% of what my family eats is grown in Oregon, Washington, or Northern California.  I DO buy a few cans of things like baked beans, and cambles soups for emergencies.  I'm damn glad to access to such things, too!  My whole family just got a terrible case of gastroenteritis (I don't think I've ever had it before, believe it or not.  I have never had such an illness in my memory), and I didn't have the energy to do more than heat up some chicken broth served with saltines for days.

Anyway, to each their own.  I still <3 my vegan friends.  Someday I may chose vegetarian (the lacto/ovo kind, because I cannot see stopping cheese or eggs), because I can now totally see shunning actual meat. But for now I follow these 3 things, and they feel right for me and my family.
1) Buy local.  Local is stuff that can be shipped to you in one trip, so about 8 hours drive away. Also, buy free range and sustainable if you can.
2) Shop the outside of the store. 50% of our grocery cart should be from the fresh fruit and veggie isles, another 20% from the meet, dairy and breads together, and only 5% from the center "processed" isles.
3) Moderation.  Do I want a steak and a piece of cheesecake for my birthday dinner?  Go for it!!  Just don't eat like that every day. 

P.S.  I love me some taters too, aitm!  We eat potatoes almost daily.  Bakers, reds, Yukon gold, baby varieties, sweet potatoes, etc. I feel like Samwise Gamgee.  I cook them fresh, mashed, baked, roasted, fried, in casseroles, veggie stews, and more.  They are good for any meal!

[PickelledEggs]

tl;dr

related note/joke

How do you know someone is a vegan?
[spoiler]don't worry, they'll tell you[/spoiler]

[PickelledEggs]

anyway, I also saw your intro, but out of laziness, I don't feel like switching threads again....


sooooooo......

welcome!

[Aractus]

I'm not vegan. I'm mostly vegetarian.  But, there's a lot of bullshit in the OP.  For one thing, it is true that calcium is less prevalent, less absorbable in vegetable matter.  So, you'd think vegans would have more osteoporisis.  I notice the OP didn't point to any studies that would indicate this. Because they don't.  Humans would ordinarily need very little calcium.  Problem is, high protein diets leach calcium.  Despite the fact that indeed milk has lots of calcium, the more dairy people consume the more osteoporisis they have.  I can dig up some studies on this if you like.

I gave you two links, both of which are government sanctioned guidelines (one from Aust. one from the USA) both of which are based on evidence (including relevant studies, that's how the EAR is obtained), both of which provide a comprehensive reference list. As for your claim regarding "high protein diets", where's your reference?

Here's one showing the exact opposite of what you just claimed to be true: "Recent epidemiological, isotopic and meta-analysis studies suggest that dietary protein works synergistically with calcium to improve calcium retention and bone metabolism. The recommendation to intentionally restrict dietary protein to improve bone health is unwarranted, and potentially even dangerous to those individuals who consume inadequate protein." Kerstetter et al., 2011.

As far as B12, yes, vegans can be B12 deficient.  Its not because vegetables are naturally devoid of B12.  B12 is actually created by microorganisms and would be prevalent in a vegan diet, except for the fact that we wash vegetables and wash off the B12 that exists on the exterior of vegetables.

Absolute rubbish. Again, you got any scientific literature that would suggest that? It's certainly true for iodine that's since been leached out of the soil and now can only be found in seafood (including seaweed), dairy, eggs, iodised salt and commercial bread. The one thing that is true is that in most diets (i.e. non-vegan) B12 deficiency is caused by inadequate absorption of B12 not inadequate intake, and there's some discussion over the possible role that a high intake of soy products plays with this, and with masking the deficiency. From Understanding Nutrition (Whitney et al.) 2011 p. 339: "Vitamin B12 is unique among the vitamins in being found almost exclusively in foods derived from animals. ... Vegans, who restrict all foods derived from animals, need a reliable source, such as vitamin B12-fortified soy milk or vitamin B12 supplements. ... yeast itself does not contain active vitamin B12. Fermented soy products ... and sea algae ... do not provide active vitamin B12. Extensive research shows that the amounts listed on the labels of these plant products are inaccurate and misleading because the vitamin B12 is in an inactive, unavailable form." (emphasis in source). B12 is produced by all herbivorous in the gastrointestinal tract. If they could get it from plants, as is your claim, given the very small amount of B12 that animals need in their bodies then they wouldn't need to produce it internally.

The only nutrient that has actually been shown to be deficient in vegans, as far as I know, is B12.  So, fine, be a vegan and take B12.

Incorrect. Deficiencies associated with vegetarian and vegan diets include: iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin B12, and vitamin D.

As far as "nothing environmentally friendly about creating more grain".  Are you a paid huxter for the meat industry?  This is such astonishing bullshit.  Currently MOST of the world's grain is fed to animals, not to people.  Meat is a way to turn a large amount of good food into smaller amounts of bad food.

So, please, spare me your complete fucking bullshit.

No, I'm a nutrition student. Why don't you provide any evidence that shows that "most of the world's grain is fed to livestock"? And more importantly, whey not provide evidence that more grain in the human diet would be healthier?

Loren Cordain (the creator of Paleo) is PhD qualified in the correct field (Exercise Physiology) and provides excellent quality evidence that shows that it's not good. As I mentioned before, I don't disagree, the problem is that there's fortified grains which provide us with nutrition we are missing in the average diet. And you can't get all of that nutrition just from vegetables, an example is omega-3 fatty acids. It's all very well and good to say "get it from your lean meats" - but in order to do so you have to eat considerably more fish than the average Australian or American is willing to eat. And in fact we don't have the ability in Australia to provide enough omega-3 from fish - if everyone suddenly decided they were going to eat the "correct amount of fish" (which from memory is only 2-3 times a week) we would run of fish almost immediately. We don't have the ability to catch enough either, so we'd have to import a lot of fish.

Grains are a perfectly good source for some nutrition - most B vitamins, iron, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and zinc. Assuming you're eating the wholegrain anyway, refined grains have had most of the vitamin and mineral content removed. That's why I refuse to eat white bread or white rice. But most people refuse to eat the wholegrains. In fact McDonald's refuses to even provide wholegrain buns as an option in their restaurants. We could change this - we could force them by law to provide wholegrain buns as the default bread option in all restaurants. I think that would be a great idea.

But that said, they are totally inadequate at providing nutrition as the staple part of our diets without fortification. Which is why under the official dietary guidelines (Aust.'s, Japan's, USA's, etc) it's vegetables that are supposed to make up the staple.

[Aractus]

Yeah, I scanned it.  Some interesting points, some other stuff just big speculation.  Orthorexia nervosa is just a proposed disorder, for instance, it isn't recognized (yet) as one.

That's correct, however binge eating disorder was added to DMV-5 having previously not being recognised as a disorder in its own right, and the thing about orthorexia nervosa is not that it's not a disorder, but rather that it may be a symptom of another disorder rather than being its own independent disorder. So while it can't be officially diagnosed by a doctor, a person can still receive professional treatment.

We've moved to brown rice for most of our grains. Including pasta.  There are a lot of brown rice pastas out there now.  I also stopped drinking milk because of lactose intolerance, but I still ADORE real cheeses and yogurts.

You can buy lactose-free dairy.

I'd like to make one comment about those "fortified" cereals.  The vitamins and minerals you get from fortification are not as good as ones you get from nature, they tend to be less readily absorbed and digested by the human body.  Breakfast cereals are mostly crap, IMHO.

That's not at all entirely accurate, aside from the last bit - i.e. most cereals are sugar-filled crap in a packet. The right ones are not and provide a number of important nutrients through fortification.

You never mentioned eating fish - how do you expect to get the omega-3 fatty acids in your diet? And no, cooking oils don't count for much because they all have more omega-6 fatty acids.

And think about this - I don't know what the case is in the USA, but in Australia the vast majority of fish sold in general takeaways and in clubs in crumbed or batter is flake (shark). It's very high in mercury - if people were eating it 2-3 times a week like the quantity of fish we're supposed to eat - then they'd be developing mercury toxicity for sure! So even if it wasn't deep fried, it still wouldn't be the best choice...

[Deidre32]

I think if you eat a balanced diet of lean protein, ‘good’ fats, and carbs…with a moderate to high amount of exercise…you should end up faring pretty well in the health/wellness/fitness bracket. Nutrition, diet and exercise isn’t all that complicated. But, humans like to make it complex as to make money off all those who think there is somehow, an easier route to health and fitness.

(Only read part of that opening, sorry Aractus!)

[Hydra009]

And think about this - I don't know what the case is in the USA, but in Australia the vast majority of fish sold in general takeaways and in clubs in crumbed or batter is flake (shark).

Over here it's salmon, tuna, tilapia, Alaskan pollock, etc.  Tuna's the big one, iirc.  Source