Comment by gralx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gralx | Hacker News Reader

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I looked seriously at veganism after reading a WHO report that attributes 13% of world greenhouse gas emissions to animal farming. [Strike that. The figure is 18%, and the source is a 2006 FAO study sponsored by the World Bank and the European Union, among others.] I built a database from the USDA's and whatever credible recommendations for daily micronutrition I could find, and then I built a diet around that database. All recommended micronutrients can be had from non-meat, non-dairy foods except two: it is not possible to be a healthy vegan without also taking choline and vitamin B12 supplements.

An athlete would face extra challenges. Tudor Bompa cites research showing athletes tend to be deficient in important micronutrients compared to the general population, likely because of the stresses of training. And though the position paper on sports nutrition published by the world's most important scientific journal on nutrition recommends that athletes consume up to 1.4g of protein per 1kg of body mass per day, for a vegan athlete this means consuming approximately 1kg to 2kg of beans a day, or even more if the food is less protein-dense than beans. It's hard to eat that many beans.

Sources:

Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental issues and options, p.112, Food and Agriculture Organization, 2006

United States Department of Agriculture Food Composition Databases

Tudor S. Bompa, Periodic Training for Sports, 2015

"Nutrition and Athletic Performance", Dietitians of Canada, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American College of Sports Medicine, December 2016

I didn't remember hearing about choline before.. I'm vegan so I looked into it.[0] "Humans make a small amount of choline in the liver. ..no reports of choline deficiency in the general population... the choline made by the body (assuming a dietary intake of zero) may be enough" There are many plant sources. So not sure why you're saying choline can't be gotten from vegan sources. That seems both untrue and misleading (It seems nobody may need to get choline from food sources)

B12 is a different matter, but as it seems a standard additive to soy milk, which I often have on breakfast cereal, I've never worried about that either.

No supplements needed. (Anecdata: I've been going strong for almost 30 years of vegan diet)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline#Dietary_sources_of_cho...

I didn't say choline cannot be gotten from vegan foods. I'm saying, rather, that I was conservative in my sources for daily recommended micronutrient amounts, and the amount of choline those sources recommended were impossible to obtain from food sources given in the USDA database, which is the international standard for the nutrient composition of foods.

As an example of such a source, see tsmoctl's first link in this same thread to a US Department of Health & Human Services article on choline. Its authorship alone would have justified choline's inclusion in my database, though I acknowledge the National Institutes of Health may not be correct in their assertion.

One can be micronutrient deficient and still be athletic or observably healthy. Nutrient deficiency is not a guarantee of disease; it merely increases the likelihood of disease. Or you may be right about choline, and the NIS may well be wrong.

EDIT: I consider food additives to be supplements, such as vitamin B12 to soy milk. If you don't, then our disagreement on the point of vegans requiring supplements is a semantic one.

> Humans make a small amount of choline in the liver.

I thought old “Element 17” was made by fusion in stars.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis

<Oops: choline not chlorine!>

It's "choline", not "chlorine".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choline

That’s “chlorine”, not to be confused with “choline”

> Cruciferous vegetables and certain beans are also rich in choline, and other dietary sources of choline include nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

From https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Choline-HealthProfessional...

And in regards to B12,

> It has long been assumed that B12 is produced by bacteria in the large intestine (aka the colon), but since B12 is produced below the ileum (where B12 is absorbed), it is not available for absorption. This theory is reinforced by the fact that many species of totally or primarily vegetarian animals eat their feces.

https://veganhealth.org/intestinal-bacteria-as-b12-source/

I don't blame you for taking a supplement instead.

Thanks for the links.

Note how obtaining all of one's choline from its most concentrated plant source, roasted soy, still requires eating two and a half cups of it daily. Though I suppose that can be done, eating two coffee mugs of soybeans every day would quickly become unpalatable.

As for the second link? Oof.

There are vegan protein powders. Most athletes aren't getting all their dietary protein from food and are supplementing with protein powder.

> An athlete would face extra challenges. [...]

Meeting that recommendation requires a diet with slightly higher average calories-from-protein than potatoes: 60kg * 1.4(g/kg) / 8(g/serving) * 290(kcal/serving) = 3045 kcal, which is around the TDEE of an active person of that weight.

[ nutrition info from here: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetabl... ]

That page uses the same source I do, which is the USDA's databases. The USDA gives a protein mass fraction of 0.0196 for baked potatoes.[1] Since

  60kg*1.4g/kg/0.0196=4386g

a 60kg powerlifter would have to eat 4.3kg of baked potato to satisfy their daily protein prescription by eating baked potato alone. That is 3986kcal of potatoes, which is 1.3 times the TDEE we assumed, but in line with the food energy requirements of a high-level athlete in training (about twice their basal metabolic rate).

[1] https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/11829?fgcd=&manu=&fo...

Interesting that there's a discrepancy as large as 1.3x between different varieties of potatoes, but my point is it's not hard to meet that protein goal given the corresponding calorie requirements. "Slightly more protein dense than potatoes" is not a high bar and mostly boils down to not getting a large proportion of calories from refined carbohydrates and fats, or supplementing proteins to match.

> It's not hard to meet that protein goal given the corresponding calorie requirements

Just to reiterate the scope of this, it's easy to get sufficient protein from plant matter if your protein requirements are nearer the consensus daily minimum of 0.8g protein per 1kg body mass.[1]

But it is hard if 1.4g/kg is your goal, as it would be in a power-dominant sport like NFL football. I should have used the exact source of the data you linked to the first time around (mea culpa), which reports a protein mass fraction of 0.0250 [2]:

  60kg*1.4g/kg/0.0250=3,360g

It is exceedingly difficult to consume 3.3kg of plant matter in a day, assuming these potatoes are representative. Beans are much easier, and even those are hard to sustain at the 1.4g/kg level.

Also consider that we're talking about the mass of a female powerlifter here. I believe most women in training would balk at more than three kilograms of plant matter every day. The 95kg, 175cm running back Emmitt Smith would have had to eat 5.3kg of plant matter every day, and he was a smaller man in the world of power athletics.

At the minimum daily protein requirement for seniors of 0.8g/kg, the numbers are more palatable:

  60kg*0.8/kg/0.0250=1,920g

Assuming the protein content of potatoes is representative of plant food generally, an inactive senior citizen could get by on 1.9kg of plant matter every day.

Sources:

[1] Protein and Amino Acid Requirements in Human Nutrition, World Health Organization, p.114, 2007

[2] https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/11674?fgcd=&manu=&fo...

Ok, I'm not sure what's going on here. That does sound like a lot of plant matter, but potatoes don't have much fiber or other low-caloric content; they're 3.7 kcal/g dry mass (going by the same Russet data point), compared with 4 kcal/g for pure starch. Is it really such a struggle to get enough calories (and protein) from something with 92% of the energy of pure carbohydrates? Do power athletes normally eat a very high fat diet to get enough calories?

In my own experience: I eat 3 meals, generally within an 8 hr window, and it's not unusual for me to cook myself a 1 lb bag of lentils as the major ingredient of any one of them. I don't weigh my prepared food, but comparing usda data for "lentils, raw" vs "lentils, boiled" I'm getting a factor of 3 mass difference for isocaloric quantities; I usually have 1.5-2 x 4 cup bowls of food per meal, which is consistent with the calorie-based estimate of their weight increase on cooking. (Sorry to mix imperial units into it, but I'm surrounded by them!) Translating to respectable units, that comes to over 4kg/day of plant matter. I'm apparently smaller than a female powerlifter and certainly get less exercise; the reason this is an equilibrium amount of food for me is I only eat every other day[1]. I don't have any trouble eating that much, though the quantity of food was daunting when I starting alternate day fasting a few years ago. So, I'm inclined to think that the answer is: what sounds like a huge amount of plants is actually a manageable amount of food once you get used to it; it is a lot of volume, but digestive tracts are adaptable and plants are mostly water.

[1]: if I have convinced you yet that I am crazy, please try not to let that cloud your judgment of my reasoning :)

After reading about your personal experience, I felt some nagging doubt. I went back to my database to see how much my food would weigh if I set the protein ratio of my diet to 1.4g/kg body mass by increasing the protein-rich bean and grain meals. The total mass of food eaten per day would come to 2840g. That would be sufficient protein for hard weightlifting, and it sounds doable.

But my experience was different. At 1.1g/kg I found it too hard to eat the amount of food my diet prescribed. I would just stop salivating.

Then maybe the underlying problem isn't the amount of food but my lame-ass cooking.

The fact that the article is about athletes might lead you to think that the protein needs of people(even athletes) are highly exaggerated.

I run ultra marathon distances, am vegan, and am Type 1 diabetic. I do no special meal or protein planning beyond estimating and somewhat limiting the amount of carbs I eat.

I just wanted to say that as the father of a 6 year old type 1 diabetic (diagnosed at 19mo) - it's encouraging to hear that this is possible. Thanks!

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