Interesting twitter post. Pretty much the same macro breakdown as me except my fat intake is a few percentage points higher. I eat WFPB so no honey but my LDL cholesterol has sat in the 40s for years now (Before WFPB it was just over 100mg/dl). My HDL is also a little low (30s) so can confirm his experience of it dropping. Generally if your LDL drops your HDL will also drop (although ideally the ratio should improve).
I eat about 14% percent of calories from protein but my caloric intake is higher so total grams of protein end up about 1.1g/kg (obv all plant protein). I have not lost muscle mass. Before becoming vegan I was 188cm and 93kg and now I am 94kg with body comp looking pretty much the same. https://imgur.com/a/67UVPux (recent photo approx 94kg warning male torso)
Assuming you are not eating in a calorie deficit it is very difficult to get as low as 0.8g/kg assuming a balanced diet. If I were to try to get lower I would have to limit food groups like legumes/nuts which I donāt think is healthy. Bear in mind I am on the younger side at 30 so older people may need a bit more protein.
The sports science data points to 1.2-1.6g/kg for optimal muscle growth but carbs are known to be protein sparing so you could possibly get away with a bit less if your carbohydrate intake is as high as this guyās is (70%).
I havenāt done this in a systematic fashion, but I have been consuming approximately this level of protein (70-90g protein @ 184 lbs) in the context of a 16/8 time-restricted feeding for a year and a half. Anecdotally, I have been able to increase my strength as measured by lifting weight and reps. I wouldnāt say that my muscles have increased much in size, since my weight has been stable, but I have lost a little body fat (from ~14% down to ~12% currently), so I supposed there has been some modest muscle mass increase.
Despite my reservations about harvard, the red pen review guys like Harvards diet health book (willett md). Overall score of 97%. Whereas āHow Not to Dietā (Gregor md) only gets a 68%
I liked the video, @RapAdmin, thank you. I skimmed the paper so Iām probably not the best analyst here.
I keep seeing epidemiological studies such as this where they associate āincreased meat consumptionā with true carnivore diet; many even have processed meats included as āred meatā. I am fully prepared to agree that a vegetarian or animal-protein-rich diet is vastly superior to a SAD diet, and even to a carb-rich meat-rich diet. But to paraphrase A Few Good Men: āthe Defense is willing to acquiesce that all 27 studies will report that higher plant base percentage of diet is better for longevity, iIF the Plaintiff is willing to agree that none of these studies compare long-term impacts versus a low carb diet, keto diet, or carnivore diet using clean whole foods (no processed foods) ā. I have no idea if the carnivore diet (or keto, etc) is good for longevity, but I can absolutely say that you donāt either: there arenāt studies out there for this specifically (if there are, Iād love to see them for my own health goals). I think the most work Iāve seen has been done by Matt Kaeberlein, Thomas Seyfried, and Dom DāAgostino on this and they donāt have a definitive longevity answer.
Iām personally concerned that my high protein intake (animal or plant) while being great for my muscles and skin and other tissues made of protein (and moderated my four-day fasts every 45 days to clear out the junk) is a step back for longevity even though it is helping my healthspan: I worry that among other potential hazards, higher methionine levels may be aging me prematurely. Iām not sure how to get around this: if you consume protein, methionine is aging you. If you are low in protein, you have less available for other things such as muscle building. I have been working under the assumption that āpulsingā different strategies will get me further along (with multiple ātwo steps forward one step backā across multiple dimensions) than simply following one course, and eating high protein is one step back but possibly two steps forward in not being frail, etc. But what do I know.
As a semi-related aside to epidemiologists: I have hired a number of quantitative finance engineers over my years in business, and while I find them very intelligent and with excellent math skills/tricks, I find they often come up with nonsensical conclusions because they have little experience with assumptions and fundamentals (or actual data). I now wonāt hire them and instead focus on people with good grasp of the underlying assumptions, such as physicists and chemical engineers ā who understand how to make reasonable assumptions to start with and how they may impact conclusions. I am working under the assumption that epidemiologists are pretty much the medical fieldās version of quantitative finance engineers ā great at using math tricks to try and understand a highly complex system with many confounding variables (many not even understood) and that they can oftentimes come up with nonsensical conclusions (without knowing if this is one).
Overall I agree that plant based cheese is, um, not like cheese. The one exception is https://www.miyokos.com/. Unfortunately, the founder just left, but hoping they keep innovating. There is a good clip on Miyokos in the netflix documentary, āYou are what you eatā. The liquid pizza cheese is super cool!
Iāve heard of Miyokos! I donāt think we have it in England yet though. As soon as I see it I will definitely try itā¦ I have spent a small fortune trying vegan cheese - whats one more thank you for the suggestion.
Whey Forward is completely animal-free, thanks to Perfect Dayās four-step fermentation process. Tiny organisms called microflora are fed simple plant sugars, which they convert into dairy-identical protein.
Sugar free
Animal-free and environmentally friendly protein powder
No lactose or hormones
As creamy and delicious as your usual whey protein
Compared to whey protein from cows, Whey Forward uses up to 99% less water, 60% less non-renewable energy, while creating up to 97% fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Iām not sure Iād want the 4.7g BCAAS on a too frequent basis though from a longevity optimization perspective though?
Itās only made of beta-lactoglobulin which is why the BCAA content is so high. It might even be superior to regular whey because of this for muscle building.
Weāre finally working out why the Mediterranean diet is so good for us
We have known for decades that the Mediterranean diet lowers the risk of heart attack and other conditions ā now we are starting to understand how certain components of the diet work their magic
ā¦
One of the most widely used definitions of what it should include is the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS). This was developed in the 1990s by Antonia Trichopoulou, then at the National School of Public Health in Athens, Greece. An updated version was published in 2003. According to the MDS, a fully Mediterranean diet is one containing lots of vegetables, legumes, fruits and nuts, cereals and a moderately high amount of fish. It also contains little meat, poultry and dairy ā and, perhaps surprisingly, it includes a moderate amount of alcohol, typically red wine.
āThis is the most commonly used definition,ā says MartĆnez-GonzĆ”lez. However, he and his team developed an alternative in 2011 called the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener that also considers the use of olive oil in cooking (desirable) and the consumption of fizzy or sugary drinks (undesirable).
āThe best evidence is for cardiovascular disease,ā says Hoffman. āThe Mediterranean diet is generally considered to be the best dietary intervention to prevent somebody getting a heart attack or a stroke.ā For instance, in 2022, a study called CORDIOPREV suggested that following the Mediterranean diet rather than a generalised low-fat diet leads to a statistically significant reduction in the chances of a second cardiovascular event in people who have already had one.
They look really interesting, have you tried all of their cheeses? Iām really tempted to put an order in for one of everything, happy valentines to me
Low sodium/no sodium doesnāt erase taste pleasures for me. Without salt food tastes much better as you can taste each ingredient separately. Salt masks real taste of food. Itās like a constant background noise.
Back to the OPās question. I am not currently on a plant-based diet, although Iāve spent a few years as a whole-food vegan in my early 20s and about 17 years as a vegetarian, starting in my 30s. My journey has been strict vegan > lazy omnivore > vegetarian > low carb > keto > currently whole food high protein, low carb, low saturated fat with periodic micro/macro tracking. Interspersed with this is experimentation with fasting, intermittent and long (up to 30 days).
thank you for the suggestion.