Hacker News Reader

Comment by UweSchmidt | Hacker News Reader

The problem is the availability of vegetarian / vegan meals in western society. Sophisticated food culture revolves around meat. It requires planning and work (in addition to dealing with the lizard brain).

In particular, as a gym-goer I want my protein, and if soya is out too, then it's quite a bit more difficult. Excuses, I know.

View on HN

I wouldn't say soya is out. It's about relative impacts: soya has a vastly lower environmental impact than meat.

and actually all the soya for actual human consumption could easily be farmed locally.

Is this a response to the beef question though? You can quit beef and find countless alternatives on menus involving pork, chicken, lamb, etc.

(I eat meat including beef, but try to stay aware of red meat consumption.)

"Western society" (which is diverse and fragmented) started to eat a lot of meat when it became wealthy. There are plenty of low/no meat dishes in Western culture. The often cited Southern European/Mediterranean diet does not include that much meat.

Cereals (expecially in the form of bread and pasta) and vegetables used to be staples that accounted for most of our food intake.

While we probably eat too much meat in general, going vegetarian/vegan is going from an extreme to the other. I'm sure most 'normal' people can cut their meat consumption by half without noticing it too much.

Globally the issue is that people are starting to be wealthy enough and we are probably too many.

Also, relying on ready-meals in general is not a good idea for both health and environment.

unfortunately the no-meat dishes of our grandparents are not especially tasty in their "peasant"-version (northern europe) and making tasty vegetarian meals is an art not really known anymore (was it ever?) in my family, nor in any of the everyday restaurants/employee-cafeterias I visit.

Well I would suggest you get yourselves a book on Southern European/Mediterranean cooking (or just look around online).

It's very easy and quick to make tasty dishes with no meat, even just salads. Plenty of possible variations on the theme: pasta salads, rice salads, potato salads, for example. Of course there are also plenty of hot dishes to cook with potatoes, tomatoes, etc.

Curries are also an endless source of tasty dishes that do not need to include any meat.

yes, for myself, I've taken that step for some time. It's just the case that most corporate cafeterias have not really jumped on the bandwagon already (offering 80% meat-dishes, e.g. all but one – take it or leave it then...) and frankly I think I would've gotten a lot more used to vegetables as a child if it would not have been some variation on steamed cale-likes together with salted potatoes most of the time as a purely "vegetarian" meal (my mother and grandmother cook pretty well - I tend to like it most if there's a pinch of animal in it though...).

How many calories are you eating daily and how many grams of protein? Unless you're a bodybuilder at the end of a cut it wouldn't be very hard to get enough protein on even 2000 calories. I know this because I'm a large, military serving man who has been full vegan and now chooses to eat vegan where possible.

The big loss is food culture. It revolves around meat and animal products.

I’ve looked in to eating more non meat meals. What I struggled with is getting the macros right.

For example to hit 190g of protein a day, eating vegan my carbs would be way up compared to my current diet. At the moment I’m trying to drop body fat and from dexa scans/metabolic test they recommend I keep my protein high, increase fats and try to reduce carbs. I’ve tried doing the macros on a few vegan recipes but struggled to get the numbers right without increasing calories which I can’t do when trying to drop body fat.

When I have more flexibility in calories i.e bulking some of the vegan recipes look quite good as calorie dense when you add beans, lentils, nuts, oils etc. I reckon I’ll do better on this than when I was eating 5kg of beef a week as the dexa scan then was terrible with high visceral fat.

From a quick search, common dietary recommendations for protein seem to be 0.8g to 1.4g per kg bodyweight per day. 190g per day would likely be way more than most people need, being that both a) a lot of people weigh less than 190/1.4 (much less 190/0.8) and b) a lot of people won't need more than the standard dietary requirements of protein.

Definitely seems like you're not in at least one of these sets, though, so definitely not going for a "I know more about a healthy diet for you than you do", because hahaha no I don't. Mostly just posting to emphasise to casual readers that they (likely) don't need to target 190g protein per day.

Yes, I do strength training and also trying to cut body fat.

I’m on 2.5g protein per kg body weight which is high as I’m trying to maintain muscle while on a calorie deficit.

If I didn’t need to be in a deficit on lower carbs it does look like I could achieve the macros I need from vegan meals. It’s not I need 190g protein right now, it’s I need to aim for 190g on about 2300-2500 calories with a bias towards gaining those calories from protein/fats. Hitting 190g protein would take me above 2300-2500 calories due to the amount of carbs consumed from vegan protein sources.

Bean burrito - 450 calories, 28 grams protein

Wheat protein based shake - 120 calories, 25g protein

Two soy coffees - 300 calories, 16 calories.

Those 3 proteins complement the amino acid profiles of each other. I typically only aimed for around 130g, so with two protein shakes daily and those other foods I'm very close after only 1000 calories.

Black beans are one of the highest protein beans from what I read and a complete protein. Even so it’s 20g carbs to 7g protein. So for 190g protein that’s nearly 540g carbs a day which is over double what I need for my macros.

I also prefer real whole food over shakes as it keeps me from getting hungry as doesn’t digest as fast. Right now I eat 6 times a day and only my late afternoon snack is a shake with a rice cake, 20g almond butter and banana.

You mentioned in another comment here that you're eating 2.5g per kg of bodyweight, nearly every recommendation I see is between 1.4-2g/kg. Be careful with too much protein, one of my gym buddies put himself into hospital with serious kidney issues from going overboard. I'd assumed you were about 100kg lean eating that much protein.

If you don't want to eat vegan food, the only excuse you need is "I'd rather eat meat 6 times per day". The vast majority of western people could eat bodybuilder vegan diets if they needed to. If it is something you're interested in then there is a TON of vegan bodybuilders. Google Nimai Delgado or Torre Washington, for example.

If you order a normal salad in a restaurant, not the salad with chicken, you get very little protein I assume. Where is the vegan protein, non soja, anyway? Rhetorical question, it's on me to do the research, but here we are. A piece of meat is always available and estimating "enough protein today" is easy. It's getting better of course, restaurant and supermarket selections are improving.

Are you aware it's basically a meme in vegan culture that non-vegans assume they only eat salads? The food culture part I mentioned is difficult since a lot of places don't have vegan options.

I don't eat out a lot. A 450 calorie bean burrito that I make (zero soy) has about 28 grams of protein. A wheat protein based protein shake is 25 grams of protein for 120 calories. Two shakes and 1 burrito and I'm already on 78 grams of protein off 700 calories for the day. A couple soy based coffees pushed me near 95g for 1000 calories. All 3 protein sources here have complementary amino acid profiles.

Maybe loss in western food, look into Indian food as a solid replacement.

Watch https://gamechangersmovie.com/

Plenty of options for 'protein'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com