What Key Nutrients Come From Meat, Fish, And Milk?

Intro

so now I want to move on to talking about the key nutrients from meat fish and milk and where they are in plant-based diets how you can get them and if there are advantages so we’re going to talk a little bit about protein will talk about vitamin b12 and in meat poultry and fish iron we could talk about zinc as well but we’re going to talk just about iron calcium and we’re going to talk about EPA and DHA from fish so those are the nutrients that have chosen to cover and you can see they’re not all there we could have talked about vitamin D from milk but I had to be a little bit selective to keep within the time so the first question is can we get enough of these key nutrients from plant foods so the approach we’re

Protein

at where protein is concerned I love this denden Bizzaro did this this cartoon and it says this it’s this little guy here this little rodent down here saying to this big gorilla no meat at all you sure you’re getting enough protein and and really the point being that the largest land mammals on the planet are vegetarians and they seem to be able to build these huge muscles without any meat and so we probably can whoops we probably can – and this is Derek tres eyes or tree sighs I think it’s tres eyes he says no meat no problem he’s a vegan bodybuilder and has been for many years and I think if he can do it probably the rest of us can – yeah it’s

Protein RDA

pretty impressive so how much protein the big question is how much protein do we actually need well the RDA is point eight grams per kilogram body weight and of course a kilogram is 2.2 pounds so we need a little more for infants and children per pound of body weight or per kilogram of body weight we need a little bit more for athletes possibly more for seeing years and people eating whole food plant-based diets maybe plus 10% because of the digestibility issue and so where we talk about digestibility if you look at protein digestibility fiber in plant foods reduces the amount of protein you can absorb into your bloodstream because you lose some in your feces and so let’s take a look well you absorb about 30 to 2/3 or I’m sorry 92 to 96 percent of the protein from things like white bread or flour soy protein isolate peanut butter tofu so more the foods where the fiber has been extracted right so the fiber is not reducing the absorption that’s about the same as you get from beef milk eggs cheese all of those things you absorb about 94 to 97 percent so right in the same ballpark but you can see that you absorb less from oatmeal 86 percent lentils 84 other legumes around 72 to 89 percent and so that’s why we have that 10 percent added in to allow for that little bit of loss in the feces and the digestibility however is increased by soaking sprouting cooking blending when you break down the plant cell walls you increase the availability of that protein so all of those things can help

Average Protein RDA

so let’s talk about average requirements well average requirements this is a RDA again women 46 grams men 56 grams per day now if we add the 10% on to that it would be about 51 grams for women and about 62 grams for men so this is all kind of Google de Kock or whatever you want to call it it doesn’t mean a lot when we talk about grams of protein so we need to look at how much protein is actually in food as well but first then the seniors this is a whole other issue which were just starting to learn about we don’t actually have a separate RDA for seniors in North America although protein digestibility and protein synthesis are reduced and there is a separate RDA in some countries like Australia so in Australia for people 70 or older the recommendation their RDA is about 25% higher than it is for younger adults well you can imagine the challenge because seniors eat less they need fewer calories and so if you need fewer calories but you need more nutrients that can be a huge issue it means you don’t have as much room for cookies you don’t have as much room for the foods that don’t provide a lot of nutrition so that’s important the consensus is actually building that around a gram per kilogram per day up to 1.3 reduces age-related muscle loss in seniors so for people who are who are vegan that means that they may want to consider having things like very highly available protein foods like hemp seeds like tofu and these kinds of foods can be very helpful for seniors so what are the

Protein Intakes

actual intakes for for vegetarians and non-vegetarians and in terms of protein and we’ve talked quite a lot about the Adventist Health Study 2 and epic Oxford well in the in the Adventist Health Study to take a look at this meat-eaters averaged about 75 grams of protein a day vegetarians about 70 point 6 or 71 and vegans about 70 70 point 7 there not a big difference between any one of those groups it’s really quite interesting whereas in epic Oxford we saw a little bit bigger range with the meat-eaters getting closer to a hundred the vegetarians around the 74 and the vegans around the 67 but all of them were well above that sort of recommended intake of 46 grams or 56 grams for four men or even adding that 10% so all well within the recommended range so now let’s take a look at how much protein is actually present in plant foods so here you’ve got soy beans tofu veggie meat are all around somewhere around 20 to 30 grams generally that’s really similar to what you would get from a serving of meat poultry or fish and then we see a fair bit in legumes like lentils and other legumes about 14 to 18 grams in a cup of legumes and then see the foods like hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds and and intact grains like camel spelt amaranth quinoa all somewhere between 8 and 13 grams per serving that’s very similar to what you would see in a couple of eggs or a cup of milk or an ounce of cheese so very very similar amount and then you get little bits from all the other plant foods like nuts and oats and spinach and other vegetables so you’re getting bits

Plant Foods

in just about everything you eat so if you think about meeting 50 grams or 60 grams of protein well all of these options provide you with about 15 grams so you might need you know how many servings of maybe four or five six servings of these foods depending on your needs but a third of a cup of sprouted peas a half a cup of almonds sunflower seeds or peanuts a cup of lentils or beans 3/8 of a cup of pumpkin seeds about a pound of broccoli which is a fair bit of broccoli or 2/3 of a pound of kale about a third of a cup of firm tofu 3/4 of a scoop of P protein or 2 cups of quinoa so what I want to point out is if we look at meat versus some of these plant foods this is important so

Meat vs Plant Foods

ground beef has about 39% of calories from protein one ground beef patty has about 22 grams of protein so let’s compare to tofu tofu has 41 percent of calories from protein and about 0.55 cups of tofu would give you 22 grams of protein so very very similar serving sizes very similar amounts of protein on the other hand if we compare ground beef to spinach for example well ground beef has 39% of calories from protein as we said 22 grams of protein the spinach also has 39% of calories from protein however because it’s so low in calories you would actually have to eat 25 cops to get 22 grams of protein or you could cook it and then it would be about 4 cups cooked down so you need to understand some people say oh well the percent of protein in broccoli or spinach is the same as meat but in fact because they’re so low in calories you would have to have quite a large volume to give you the same amount of protein so plant-based eaters generally get plenty of protein unless they get insufficient calories how many people get insufficient calories not that many right we most of us amble along reasonably well getting enough calories the people that don’t get enough calories are people who are sick or people who are anorexic right and so they may not get enough protein if they’re not getting enough calories and then the people that eat nutritionally inadequate diets that are low in protein so for example people that are eating high-fat high-sugar junk food diets they often don’t get enough protein sometimes I see teenagers come in and they’re you know they wanted to become vegan because of the animals or the environment and they just drop meat milk from the menu so instead of a burger and fries they get a double order of fries with their coke they’re not going to get enough protein and so that’s that’s an issue and then the others are very poorly planned for terian diets because fruitarian fruit is a little low in protein it’s between 1 and 10% of calories from protein we need about 10 to 15% so if all you eat is fruit it you may not get enough protein so if you’re eating a diet that’s very high in fruit you would need to be eating some nuts and seeds and greens and so forth in the mix so what are the most healthful plant choices well legumes leggings are really the plant protein powerhouses so the best choices are the ones that are not stripped of their value before we eat them beans peas lentils are really wonderful soybeans and the products like tofu tempeh and edamame that aren’t highly processed are also really good options