Getting It Right… Meeting Nutritional Needs On A Plant-Based Diet, By Author: Brenda Davis, R.D.

Intro

thank you so much and thank you Steve I just am in awe of the amount of work that Steve does to put on the this event which is just absolutely phenomenal I’m so honored to be here and I now live in in Calgary Alberta which is western part of Canada and I have to say I need to update my my little bio for Steve because I’ve written two books since that time kicked diabetes essentials and the kick diabetes cookbook and I’m actually working on a twelfth with a pediatrician right now called nourish and it’ll be out probably in the fall so today what I’m going to be talking about is getting it right meeting nutritional needs on a plant-based diet and I’ll just provide a brief outline we’ll actually touch on three specific questions the first are plant-based diets especially vegetarian and vegan diets actually safe and adequate number two how can we ensure sufficient nutrients so we’ll look at protein iron b12 omega-3 fatty acids calcium and iodine and the final question is will address are there benefits beyond ourselves to eating plant-based so the first question are plant-based diets safe and adequate this

Are plant-based diets safe and adequate?

man that you see here his net name is dr. Mervyn Harding and he was one of the original pioneers of vegetarian nutrition research and I was at a conference it must have been in the 1990s when he said this and I thought it was quite profound ad attitudes towards vegetarian diets have progressed from ridicule and skepticism to condescending tolerance – gradual and sometimes grudging acceptance and finally to a claim I can remember 40 years ago when I

Attitudes in the 80s

was in university we learned two things about vegetarian and vegan diets number one we learned that vegetarian diets are risky and not appropriate for those under 20 years of age or for pregnant and lactating women and number two we learned that vegan diets are downright dangerous for everyone that was 40 years ago attitude started to change in the 80s people became skeptical like dr. Harding said they thought well it may be okay to be vegetarian if you’re super careful but be ultra cautious with vegan diets and at the time I was working in Canada as a public health nutritionist the four food groups just like the basic four in the states were the foundation of nutrition education programs and I

Things Have Changed!

can tell you thankfully things have changed the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics position statement in 2016 is the following

AND Position Statement 2016

appropriately planned vegetarian including vegan diets are healthful nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases now listen to this these diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle including pregnancy lactation infancy childhood adolescents older adults and for athletes and this is the number one evidence-based resource in the world this is used by physicians and dietitians and hospitals all over the planet so this you can rely on and I showed you Canada’s Food Guide from

Canada’s Food Guide 2019

several years ago in a previous slide while this is Canada’s Food Guide today we have come a long way you can see half the plate fruit and vegetables a quarter of the plate is a whole grains and the other quarter is protein rich foods and they’ve got a little bit of dairy and a little bit of animal products but they also these are all just options they also have lots of legumes and tofu and and nuts and seeds and so forth there is not a distinct dairy group anymore it’s not considered one of the essential four and this was a long time in the making and I’m very proud of Canada for taking the turn that they did but what you notice is things are changing and so I

The Evidence at a Glance The Most Vulnerable Years

want to take a look at the evidence at a glance the the most 44 them the people in the most vulnerable years so let’s talk about pregnancy well vegetarian including vegan pregnancy outcomes such as birth weight and pregnancy duration are similar to non-vegetarian pregnancy outcomes and the difference is reported are the following there is a lower risk of excessive weight gain in the vegetarians and the rates of pregnancy complications are generally lower among vegetarians the largest vegans study to date was done a long time ago it was

Largest Vegan Study to Date

done on the farm in 1987 and included 775 of vegan women the vegan diets did not affect the birth weights of the children but preeclampsia was point one percent among the vegetarian women compared to five to ten percent in the general population and the authors of this study concluded that it is possible to sustain a normal pregnancy on a vegan diet and then a vegan diet could alleviate most if not all signs and symptoms of preeclampsia so what about infant and Elda outcomes well we know for lacto-ovo

Infant and Child Outcomes Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian (LOV) Diets

vegetarians that there have been studies multiple studies over decades that have proven that lacto-ovo vegetarians are safe and adequate lacto-ovo vegetarian diets are safe and adequate for infants and children well what about vegan diets well there are far fewer cohorts and mostly we have dated studies we have consistently positive results on children being fed well-planned vegan

Infant and Child Outcomes Vegan Diets

diets we have also seen negative results on children fed very restrictive vegan diets and especially when parents are using homemade formulas instead of breastfeeding and there were a number of studies back in the 70 in 70s and 80s of very grossly malnourished children who were being fed a formula that contained about 17 calories per hundred mils compared to about 70 if they were having breast milk so these children were essentially starving to death so that’s not a good plan every time we see a child whose Mel nourish because they’re consuming a plant-based diet it sets us back 20 or 30 years it’s really important that we get it right and it’s not that difficult either so let’s talk about the vegan studies there are really two classic studies one that and and they they basically reported that well-designed vegan diets support normal

Vegan Studies

growth and development the first was by Saunders in 1988 this one was out of the UK and they followed 39 vegan children into adulthood and although they were slightly smaller and lighter than omnivores they were very healthy and then the bigger one was O’Connell in the United States this is the farm study again 404 vegan children they had slightly slower growth between 1 and 3 years and that was because they were being breastfed and not being fed formula and but there were no differences after the age of 5 and those chil and very well the take-home message here is well-planned plant-based diets are safe and adequate at every stage of the life cycle but infancy and childhood are stages of life where adequate growth and development are really the number one nutritional priorities the diets for children must be designed to meet the unique needs of infants and children they need to be a little higher in fat than they do for adults for example in the position paper the the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics outlines the advantages of well-designed plant-based diet diets for children and what we see in children being raised on plant-based diets is greater consumption of vegetables and fruits fewer sweets and salty snacks lower intake of a fat

Advantages of Well-Designed Plant-based Diets for Children

especially saturated fat reduce risk of overweight and obesity and the establishment of lifelong healthy eating habits and so there are many advantages for children so what about adults do adult eating mostly or entirely

Do adults eating mostly or entirely plant-based meet nutrient needs?

plant-based meet nutritional needs well – there have been multiple studies looking at this but the two biggest are

EPIC Oxford 2016

Epic Oxford in 2016 and the Adventist Health Study in 2013 and I just want to show you the results because they’re they’re actually really quite surprising for people so an epic Oxford they examined over 30,000 individuals and and they were all health-conscious people but with different dietary patterns so some were meat eaters some were vegetarian or vegan and the meat eaters have the highest intakes of protein vitamin B – which is riboflavin b12 D zinc and iodine and the vegans had the highest intakes of fiber vitamin C and E folate magnesium iron copper and polyunsaturated fatty acids what about Saba optimal intakes well the meat-eaters about 50% were low in vitamin E and the meat eaters so what the highest calorie in takes the highest intakes of total and saturated fat and the lowest intakes of fiber all of which of course are not good now vegetarian and vegans tended to have low b12 levels about 17% of lacto-ovo vegetarians were low and vegans probably 85 to 90% were low in this study and iodine again the vegans over 90% were low in iodine so that’s something to consider the conclusion of these researchers were was that compliance with dietary goals was high and the prevalence of inadequate nutrition was low among all the dietary groups the vegan diets appeared most protective against cardio metabolic diseases and the vegans however do need to use fortified foods or supplements to ensure sufficient b12 and iodine so the Adventist Health Study – and this is this is where the surprise comes in they examined over 70,000 health conscious participants again with different dietary patterns the meat eaters have the highest intakes of protein vitamin D zinc and sodium there were no shortfalls

AHS-2 2013

among the meat-eaters except for vitamin D and although they had the highest intakes it was still below the RDA for vitamin D the vegans had the highest intakes of fiber vitamin C iron potassium and magnesium and they had no nutritional shortfalls except for vitamin D so that was kind of interesting and here just to give you an idea the non vegetarians had the highest intakes of vitamin D and zinc but you can see that vitamin D recommended intakes are 15 micrograms per day they were only at 6.1 so they were still quite low they had the highest intakes of saturated fat they of total fat of sodium and these are things that we are not so desirable lactose or e lacto-ovo vegetarians had the highest intakes of b6 b12 vitamin e and calcium so b12 isn’t that interesting they were even higher than the omnivores and the vegans you can see fiber and vitamin C and iron and potassium and magnesium were highest and and if you look you can see them the the vitamin b12 in the vegans was 6.3 micrograms per day which is well above the recommended unlike the UK where almost everybody was deficient and you can say vitamin D was was too low in both of those groups as well and then we

Nutrient Composition of Whole Food Plant-based Diets

have a study that that looked at nutrition composition of whole food plant-based diets compared to standard American diets they looked at something called the healthy eating index and it was 88 over 100 for whole food plant-based eaters was 58 over 100 for people eating the usual American diet and compared to my plate which is recommended intakes by the US government people eating whole food plant-based had a hundred and eighty percent more total vegetables two hundred thirty eight percent more green leafies four hundred and sixty percent more legumes a hundred percent more fruit one hundred and thirty two percent more whole grains two hundred percent more nuts and seeds seventy four percent less refined grains and a hundred and forty six percent more fiber so and if you look at nutritional there was another study this one out of Belgium looking at healthy eating index and the Mediterranean diet scores comparing vegetarians vegans and and semi-vegetarian pesco vegetarians and omnivores and the people that had the highest scores on both healthy food

Nutritional Quality of Various Diets

healthy eating indicators were vegans and and so that tells us something and I I didn’t mention but the differences between the UK and the Adventist Health Study the Adventists house dating we saw problems with iodine and and b12 whereas we didn’t in or I’m sorry we didn’t see problems with the Adventist Health stated but we did with epoch Oxford the reason for the differences are actually because of the use of fortified foods in by the adventists and not so much by by UK but will we’ll talk a little bit more about that later so are there any health benefits and the answer is absolutely vegetarians and vegans are reduced risk

Absolutely!

of of ischemic heart disease type 2 diabetes hypertension certain types of cancer and obesity and if you look at

EPIC-Oxford (EO) OR AHS-2 Results Similar, Health-Conscious People

the numbers and we won’t go through this in any detail but the red bars are the omnivores and these are health-conscious omnivores so these are people that exercise the same amount smoke the same amount drink the same amount of alcohol as the vegetarians and vegans and they’re conscious about their diets as well but look at this if you look at the the lacto-ovo vegetarians in blue here these numbers are the are the the sort of the the the risk the reduction that we see in various diseases so when you see poor 0.45 for hypertension it means that they have 55 percent less hypertension than than The Omnivore’s okay so these are risk ratio as you can see for vegans it’s even better so for hypertension 75 percent lower because it’s 0.25 and and you can see for for cardiovascular disease and kidney disease the vegans and vegetarians are combined but more than 50% of a risk reduction for kidney disease and and about 32% risk reduction for cardiovascular disease and you can also see I’m not quite as stellar results for cancer and mortality but still significant mortality was 15% lower among vegans and about 9% lower among lacto-ovo vegetarians in the Adventist Health Study – but one thing that we do need to know is some plant-based diets are less helpful than others and so when we’re designing a diet like this little girl is eating a hundred percent vegan snack coke and chips so we need to wreck nice that that you know all all plant-based diets are not created equal and there are a number of nutrients that people get concerned about where where

How can we ensure sufficient nutrients?

plant-based diets are when plant-based diets are consumed and so the second question is how can we ensure sufficient nutrients and we’ll talk about protein and iron and b12 omega-3 fatty acids calcium and iodine so let’s begin with protein I love this cartoon it says no meat at all are you sure you’re getting enough protein and it’s a bizarre-o comic of course and this little it’s it’s this little guy here at the bottom the little rodent is asking this big huge gorilla if if he sure he’s getting enough protein and the point being that if you look around the world the biggest strongest mammals on this planet build those muscles out of plants and so can we people do they can they do these guys are all a hundred percent plant-based and in fact the guy on the right is a raw food plant-based well planned a

Well planned 100% plant-based diets provide enough protein, even for some of the fittest people on the planet!

hundred percent plant-based diets provide enough protein even for the fittest people on the planet this is Scott uric he’s an ultramarathon world champion and he set the Appalachian Trail record running nearly 80 kilometers a day for over forty six days he has the u.s. record in the twenty four-hour run 6.5 marathons in one day can you imagine it’s insane anyway he’s been a hundred percent plant-based since 1999 so where protein is concerned there

Two Key Issues

are two issues number one is the quantity issue can we get enough protein from plants and number two is the quality issue can we get all of these sensual amino acids we need from plants so let’s address question number one how much protein do we actually need the RDA is point eight grams per kilogram of body weight infants and children need

The Quantity Question: How Much Protein Do We Need?

more than this athletes need more than this it’s probably more also for seniors and people eating whole very whole food plant-based diets that are extremely high in fiber don’t include soy or more refined foods we have to add probably 10% to the RDA so so here you can see

Protein RDA

the point eight grams per kilogram body weight and a little bit more for the pregnant and lactating women the children and the adolescents it’s only 0.85 so it’s not a lot higher for for adolescents just a tiny bit there is some suggestion that for seniors we you

Suggestions for Seniors (65+)

know right now we don’t have a separate RDA for seniors they do in Australia and in some other countries so uh and this is just because protein digestibility is reduced as we age we just can’t absorb as much and so there’s some consensus building that a consumption of one to 1.3 grams per kilogram body weight would help to reduce age-related muscle loss so that’s still being debated so why the plus 10% for people eating whole food plant-based diets well it’s really just to compensate for the reduced digestibility to do to the fiber in plant cell walls what it does is it takes some protein with it as it gets excreted so it’s not that the proteins any lesser it’s just that it goes out the other end and so we could add 10% and and this is not necessary for

Why +10% for WFPBD?

lacto-ovo vegetarians you don’t have to add the 10% or for those eating things like tofu and soy milk regularily because the protein is is so highly available from those kinds of foods so if we look at the protein digestibility what you see is you know refined flours

Protein Digestibility

soy protein isolate peanut butter tofu whole wheat flour bread things that aren’t that high in fiber you’re absorbing about 92 to 96 percent of the protein from those foods and and that’s about the same as it is for animal products beef and fish are about 94 eggs about 97 so it’s very similar range however for whole foods like oatmeal and lentils and most other legumes it’s lower and that’s why the plus 10% digestibility is increased when we soak and we sprout and we cook and we blend it makes the proteins more digestible when we do that so what are the average requirements where the average woman

Average Requirements

needs 46 grams of protein a day the average man 56 if we add that 10% it becomes 51 for women and 62 for men so and you can see for people of different body weights we’re looking at for a hundred and twenty pound woman it’s 43

Protein for Different Body Weights

grams for 195 pound man it’s 80 grams and and so I’m sorry it’s 71 grams for a large man now if it’s at 0.9 we’d be looking at 49 for a small 120 pound woman and about 80 for 195 pound man so that gives you some idea of where where things are at so what are the actual intakes well in the Adventist Health Study 2 meat eaters were close to 75

Actual Intakes?

grams of protein a day vegetarians 70 point 6 and vegans 70 point seven nine s– at all now there was a bigger difference in epic Oxford the meat eaters were higher at about 92 point nine vegetarians at 74 point two and vegans had about sixty 7.4 but you can see that all categories are well above recommended intakes so the richest plant sources of protein are things like soybeans tofu veggie meat they’re in about the same range as meat poultry and fish at around the twenty to thirty grams per serving and lentils and other legumes are very close at about 14 to 18 grams per cup of cooked legume and then we’ve got things like hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds and Khemu berries and spelt berries and Amer than quinoa that ranged from about eight to thirteen per cup of cooked product and that’s about the same as a serving of milk or eggs two eggs and then we get

Richest Plant Sources Protein in

a bit of protein in everything else that’s plant-based that’s not refined like oatmeal and nuts and spinach and other vegetables we need about 10 to 15% of calories from protein

10-15% Calories From Protein

vegans are almost always in that range usually around 13 or 14 unless they’re eating more of the more concentrated protein foods and you can see if you look at foods fruits are the only food that consistently falls below the 10% nuts are generally around 10 to 15 summer at the lower end of the range that are very high in fat around 5 to 8 a starchy vegetables around 8 to 12 seeds around 12 to 27 grains around 7 to 17 with a lot of grains in the range of of 13 14 15 non starchy vegetables 20 to 40% of calories from protein and legumes 20 to 30 and soy about 40 percent of calories from protein so the one thing that people need to be aware of though is is that in plant especially non starchy vegetables the protein is pretty dilute so ground beef is 39% of calories from protein and you get about 22 grams

Ground Beef us Spinach

of protein in 1/3 ounce patty spinach is also 39% of calories from protein but you would need to eat 25 cups of raw spinach to give you 22 grams of protein and this is really important because people often say oh well it’s the same percent of calories from protein so I can just eat a serving serving of spinach instead and get the same amount you’re not not quite your serving you need to be eating like a horse or a cow to get the same amount but if you compare ground beef to tofu ground beef

Ground Beef us Tofu

39 percent of calories from protein 22 grams in a patty tofu is 41% of calories from protein and about a half a cup you 22 grams of protein so in certain plant foods you’ve got very concentrated protein sources so this is really interesting I just gave a presentation

Protein in Typical Menus

to dietitians in Edmonton Alberta and they wanted to know more about protein in plant-based diets and so one of the things I did was calculate the protein in various menus to show them what you can get quite easily eating plants this is a menu with very few obvious protein sources so you’re having cold cereal and almond milk which is very low in protein and blueberries for breakfast you’re having a pita sandwich with a little hummus and an apple and an oatmeal cookie for lunch dinner pasta with just

Few Obvious Protein Sources 2000 Calories (ESHA) Amount

tomato veggie sauce a salad and balsamic dressing and your snacks are a fresh orange and a bit of trail mix so there’s not a lot of very concentrated protein sources in that in that menu but check this out your protein is 61 grams you remember even adding the 10% for women it was you only need about 51 and for men about 62 on average per day so even at a menu like this which doesn’t appear to have a lot of protein actually has a fair bit now here’s a whole food 100% plant-based menu so you’ve got camu berries and lentils as your breakfast boil this is I have it in my breakfast bowl almost every day apples and blueberries seed mix some soy milk and then lunch is a full meal salad tofu quinoa tahini dressing an apple with

Whole Foods 100% Plant-based

some nut butter dinners a sweet potato with a bean filling and a kale salad and a fresh orange as a snack and what we’ve got is 85 grams of protein and then here’s a menu for someone that’s really

High Protein Plant-based

focused on protein say an athlete they’ve got a green smoothie and they’ve added some frozen peas hemp seeds in soy milk they haven’t added any protein powder they’ve got pumpernickel toast with almond butter and banana lunch is a lentil soup with kale and a tofu salad sandwich on heavy whole-grain bread and dinner is a veggie meatloaf with some gravy mashed carrots and potatoes broccoli and then they have an energy bar during the day and with that menu you’ve got 124 grams of protein and there’s no protein powder added or anything like that just to give you an idea of how simple it really is to meet the RDA for protein and and one of the things I think that we need to be very

2017 Australian Study Protein Intales in First 5 Years

aware of is more protein is not necessarily better this is a 2017 Australian study that looked at protein intakes in children during the first five years of life and the children were averaging three times more protein than what was recommended and there were strong associations to early rapid growth we know how protein affects igf-1 levels insulin growth factor and and it contributed to overweight and obesity in these children and so we need to just know more protein is not necessarily better we need to get enough but we don’t need to oh D on protein like most

Plant-Based Eaters Generally Get Plenty of Protein Unless

North Americans do plant-based eaters generally get enough protein unless they get insufficient calories that is not a problem for most of us you know it’s a problem for people who maybe have anorexia nervosa or who are very ill they may not get enough calories and it can be a problem for people who eat inadequate diets that are very low in protein a high-fat high-sugar junk food diet so we see this sometimes in teenagers who swap out their burgers and fries for a double order of fries and a bigger coke and and they can end up with insufficient amounts of protein as can people who are on poorly planned for terian diets because fruits are tend to be quite low in protein so what about the quality question can we actually get all of the essential amino acids we need from plants and the answer is absolutely yes animals don’t even make essential amino acids there actually made by plants all plants contain all nine essential amino acids and we get them from plants either directly or indirectly directly by eating plants or indirectly by eating animals that ate plants or very indirectly by eating animals that ate other animals that ate plants they’re made by plants makes no sense to think we can’t get them from plants it’s where they come from so of course we can get them from plants but then people say well do we need to complement our

Do We Need to Complement Proteins?

proteins for example if we eat grains do we need to eat beans with the grains and the answer is no we’ve actually known for about 30 years now that we can get enough essential amino acids from plants providing that we eat a variety of foods over the course of the day including some protein rich choices and we get enough calories it’s really that simple the practical pointers where protein is concerned is we want to eat a variety of whole plant foods we want to limit

Practical Pointers

intake of foods rich and added fat and sugar and we want to select protein foods at each meal ideally three or more servings of legumes and there are lots of legumes Isis we can sprout legumes we can put them in soups we can you know make them into a loaf like a lentil loaf we can make hummus there are all kinds of choices iron is another nutrient that people often think those eating plant-based won’t get enough of because what food do we associate iron with meat right that’s the what people associate iron with so again we have to ask how

How much iron do we need?

much iron we actually need well the RDA is 18 milligrams for women in childbearing it’s women who are menstruating and for men or older women who are postmenopausal it’s only 8 milligrams and the tolerable upper limit is 45 milligrams and in fact the the Institute of Medicine recommends 1.8 times higher intake for vegetarians however this recommendation is highly

Special Recommendations for Vegetarians

controversial and is quite on I think unnecessary because it was based on one study and what they did in that study was they maximize the inhibitors of iron absorption and minimized the enhancers of iron absorption to make the diet as bad as it could possibly be to see how much more a vegetarian might need in a worst-case scenario people don’t really eat that way in the real world and so it’s an absolute worst-case scenario I think for most people a slight increase perhaps and for a lot of people no increase is necessary if you’re eating a lot of vitamin C rich foods and and other foods which I’ll mention in a second so if we compare the

Actual Iron Intake

Adventists the actual intakes of iron you can see in the Adventist Health Study to vegans ate the most iron non vegetarians the least same in epic Oxford’s same in the diet quality study from Belgium that we talked about vegans at twenty three milligrams non vegetarians at seventeen people go WOW huh I don’t understand how that could happen I always thought you know steak was some of the richest source but the reality is milk is an extremely poor source of iron and so when you take the milk out and you’re eating all plant foods well they all have some iron so the numbers just add up that way plant-based diets do not increase risk for iron deficiency anemia the

Plant-based diets do not increase risk for iron deficiency anemia.

prevalence of iron deficiency is about the same in meat-eaters and people who eat plant-based vegetarian and vegan iron intakes are generally either similar to or higher than non

Vegetarian Iron Status?

vegetarians but what about iron status because we know there’s a difference in the type of iron from meat and the type of iron from plants and won’t people eating the meat absorb it better and have better iron status and in fact vegetarians don’t have a higher incidence of iron deficiency however they do have lower iron stores typically which means lower serum ferritin levels however lower lower serum

Lower Serum Ferritin (Iron Stores)

ferritin levels may do not necessarily affect how a person feels they don’t appear to be a disadvantage to people when iron stores are replenished and we replenish losses and in fact having slightly within normal range but slightly lower iron stores may actually turn out to be an advantage because lower serum ferritin with adequate hemoglobin may reduce risk of insulin resistance metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes cardiovascular disease some types of cancers because it reduces oxidative stress heme iron tends to increase oxidative stress as we

Two Forms of Iron in Food

mentioned there are two forms of iron so in meat a certain percent of the iron is is in the heme form not all of it maybe 40 percent or so or 50 50 to 60 percent in meat is heme and and 40 in some less red meats I would say the 15 to 35 percent is is bioavailable of heme iron but it can serve as a pro-oxidant so that’s why it’s linked to all of these diseases where’s non heme iron in both plants and meat so the balance of the iron and meat is non heme it’s only 1 to 23 percent bioavailable but the bioavailability depends on physiological iron requirements so if your iron replete you absorb less if you your iron depleted you absorb much more in fact your your absorption can be 10 times higher if when you’re depleted in iron so your body knows how to compensate for that so maximizing iron status how do we do that

Maximizing Iron Status

we will want to moderate our intake of iron absorption inhibitors we want to boost our intake of enhancers we want to replace meat with legumes rather than dairy and we want to select iron rich foods within each food group so let’s address each of those so iron inhibitors what are they fight aids polyphenolic compounds zinc from single

1. Moderate intake of iron absorption inhibitors.

mineral supplements and calcium and dairy products all reduce the absorption of iron so phytates can reduce iron absorption by up to 90% we can partly counteract that with vitamin C rich foods wheat bran is the most concentrated source of phytates in the diet you should not especially if you’re eating a whole food plant-based diet do not sprinkle wheat bran on your food you don’t need it you get enough fiber from your whole foods you’re eating when you sprinkle wheat bran on your food you’re sprinkling your food with a phytate bomb and it reduces mineral absorption not just iron but zinc and other nutrients as well we can reduce phytates in foods by leavening sprouting fermenting soaking roasting all of these things will will start to break down phytates which are essentially the storage form of phosphorus in foods so that we can do and phytates aren’t all bad they actually can be anti-carcinogenic they can they can be anti-inflammatory so they can some phytates in the diet are not a bad thing polyphenolic compounds

Polyphenolic Compounds

like like tannins and tea can reduce iron absorption from a from a meal by about 50 to 90 percent and they’re most concentrated in black and green tea so if you have problems with keeping your iron status where it needs to be do not drink tea with your meals drink it between your meals at least an hour to separate from your meals and we see lesser amounts in coffee herbal teas like peppermint and chamomile cocoa and wine so and vitamin C and organic acids again can compensate a little bit for these polyphenolic compounds so the

Boost intake of absorption enhancers.

second thing we want to do is boost our intake of iron absorption enhancers and so as I mentioned before foods rich in vitamin C and organic acids like citrus fruits and red peppers allium vegetables like onions and garlic have been found to enhance iron absorption beta rich beta-carotene foods like carrot spices like pepper and tumeric and ginger all of these can help with iron absorption now we want to be choosing legumes instead of dairy to replace meat legumes are a rich iron source they and

Choose legumes instead of dairy to replace meat.

they provide iron in a form that’s very slowly absorbed and not a pro-oxidant so they’re preferable in my opinion the problems with dairy are dairy is low in iron and meat is high in iron so when

The Problems with Dairy

people swap out their meat and potatoes for grilled cheese sandwiches and lasagna and pizza with cheese there they’re losing out on the iron and meat but they’re taking in a food to replace it that’s extremely low in iron and also it inhibits the absorption of iron so it’s a double whammy and so we see iron deficiency sometimes developing people that become lacto-ovo heavy lacto-vegetarian too a lot of dairy products so we want to select iron rich foods within each food group

Select iron-rich foods within each food group.

so in within the legume family soybeans tofu lentils are very rich iron sources in the whole grain group it’s more the pseudo grains that are really concentrated in iron like amaranth and quinoa in the nuts and seeds category all seeds are rich in iron but especially things like pumpkin seeds cashews pine nuts almonds Brazil nuts are all pretty iron rich in the vegetable family peas string beans green leafy vegetables and then fruits like prune juice and dried fruits and then other foods fortified meat analogues blackstrap molasses actually have two tablespoons of blackstrap molasses has as much iron as an eight ounce steak and moving on to be vitamin b12 i think the first thing we need to realize is plants

Plants are NOT reliable B12 sources.

really are not reliable sources at this stage in the game of b12 and so seaweed and algae contain active and inactive forms of b12 and in act of b12 actually can attach to your b12 receptor sites and keep out active b12 so it can contribute to a functional b12 deficiency now there’s some blue-green lg’s like chlorella that may be a better source there are a couple of very small studies suggesting they are reliable but at this stage in the game we can’t say for sure so we need further research there’s this new thing called duckweed its water lentils they they’re saying that it actually inside the plant contains some b12 producing bacteria we definitely need further research on that one there’s some promise but I don’t know how many people are going to have access to water lentils and then fermented foods like tempeh black tea vegetables they they generally contain little act of b12 in North America now in some places like Indonesia they tested tempeh but in Indonesia and it had usable b12 but it’s fermented in these wooden vats that are contaminated with b12 producing bacteria whereas we tend to ferment it in clean stainless steel vats and so you don’t get as much b12 being produced so again not super reliable sources organic vegetables really don’t contain much b12 unless they’re grown on human manure mushrooms are minor sources of b12 but you can only get about 5% of your necessary b12 intake from from these foods so internal production is rarely sufficient it occurs mainly in the large intestine and b12 is absorbed mainly in the small things don’t usually go backwards so what you produce in your large usually goes out the other end b12 is produced in the a little bit in the small intestine in the oral cavity but it’s not sufficient to meet your daily needs unless you have extremely bad dental hygiene you may get more bacteria in your mouth but it’s still a questionable source and not a good good idea for most people you want to have good dental hygiene because if you have bad dental hygiene you cut about ten years or so off your life b12 stores stores can last two or two to three years in some adults but some people become deficient much more quickly

Vitamin B, Stores

breastfed babies born to b12 deficient mother can develop b12 deficiency within months of birth and and the it can cause severe permanent brain damage and this should never happen we have to make sure babies have an adequate b12 source so what kind of symptoms do you get if your b12 deficient well you get anemic you get this thing called megaloblastic or large cell anemia and all the normal symptoms of anemia like fatigue and and irritability and all of that you can get nerve and brain damage so one of the very first things that happens is numbness and tingling at the ends of your fingers and toes and even sometimes the end of your nose and you can get a lot of gastrointestinal disturbances and elevated homocysteine which can increase your risk of heart disease so what is the RDA it’s about for adults it’s 2.4 micrograms per day and the actual intakes if you recall in the adventist health study even vegans were getting 6.3 micrograms whereas an epic Oxford the vegans were only getting about 0.75 micrograms even the lacto-ovo vegetarians were just above the RDA and so the b12 status of vegetarians and vegans are reflected by that in the Adventist Health Study too about 13% of vegans had somewhat low levels and we’re talking under 200 pika grams per mil but in epic Oxford it was about 73% that that were on the low side below that number and and I mentioned before why the difference but the difference is really about the use of b12 fortified foods and supplements in

Why the differences?

North America that aren’t so available in the UK and and hopefully in Europe that will be changing so the one thing we need to know is we should not be messing with b12 vegans vegetarians and

Don’t Mess With Vitamin B !

everyone over 50 needs to ensure that they have a reliable source and monitor their b12 status so why everyone over 50 well the Institute of Medicine actually recommends that vitamin b12 for everyone over 50 comes from fortified foods and

Why Everyone Over 50?

supplements omnivore or vegetarian why because it’s bound to protein in animal foods and as you age your ability to cleave the protein or the the b12 off the protein it it is bound to diminishes so you need enough gastric acid you need enough enzyme production to build to do that job and it’s estimated ten to thirty percent of people over 50 just don’t produce enough so they make a blanket recommendation for the entire population and for people over 50 if you

Plant us Animal Sources

look at at plant versus animal sources unfortified plant foods we know are not reliable sources however fortified b12 fortified foods are more reliable than animal products for people over fifty years of age so how much b12 do we need well it’s debated still but generally we recommend at least a thousand micrograms from a supplement two to three times a week we only absorb anything over about 500 micrograms we only absorb maybe 0.5 to one percent of that b12 that’s why the number is so high relative to what we need per day and if you’re doing it per day probably 25 to 250 micrograms is a good idea if even 10 may be enough but to be on the safe side 25 to 250 and a multi would would do the trip if you’re relying on fortified foods you want a couple of servings per day with 4 to 10 micrograms per serving so you would get about 4 micrograms in a heaping tablespoon of nutritional yeast for example so reliable sources for vegans and lacto-ovo vegetarians would be supplements and fortified foods and additional sources for people under the age of 50 for lacto-ovo it would be dairy products and eggs so what are the best plant sources of b12 while meat analogues ready to eat cereals non-dairy milks nutritional yeast that are fortified with b12 and just to give you an idea of how animal products compare it’s very very similar amounts in these foods to what you would get in animal products so omega-3 fatty acids don’t we

Omega-3 Fatty Acids Don’t we need fish for omega 3s?

need the a question that people ask is don’t we need fish to get enough omega-3s and the answer is no we can actually get them from plants there are land plants we get ala from or alpha linolenic acid and sea plants we get EPA and DHA from and that

No! We can get them from plants.

includes microalgae in supplement form or macro algae which is seaweed but it only provides EPA I’m gonna have to go a bit faster cuz I see my time is running out I got 21 or 22 minutes left so fish this is the other very interesting thing as fish don’t make epa and DHA there they’re actually all made by micro and DHA are made by micro algae the fish get it because they ate smaller fish that ate the micro algae and so we can get it

Do plant-based eaters get enough?

from that source as well do plant eaters get enough well compared to non vegetarians EPA and DHA and blood tissue and breast milk is about 30 percent lower in lacto-ovo vegetarians and 40 to 70 percent lower in vegans so why the low omega-3s well diets may contain

Why the Low Omega-3’s?

insufficient plant omega-3 C alpha linolenic acid and usually contain no EPA or DHA diets also may not be very well designed to maximize the conversion of plant omega-3s into the more biologically active long big omega-3s EPA & DHA hmm so how can people who

How Can People Who Don’t Eat Fish Optimize Omega-3 Fats?

don’t eat fish optimize omega-3 fatty acids well you need to be aware of the factors that depress conversion so there

1. Be Aware of Factors that Depress Conversion

are non diet factors like genetics and gender and smoking and age and chronic diseases like diabetes and metabolic syndrome and hypertension that can depress the activity of the enzymes that convert the plant omega-3 to the more active long-chain DHA and EPA and then there are diet factors high intakes of omega-6 can reduce conversion because the enzymes that do the convert are shared between the omega sixes and the omega 3s so if you have a lot of omega-6 they hog all the desaturates enzymes inadequate nutrition so we need enough protein we need enough vitamins and minerals trans fatty acids and alcohol both depressed conversion as well and very high fat diets they compared a 40% fat diet with a 20% fat diet and there was much better conversion with the 20% fat diet than with the very high fat diet we need to ensure that we eat enough plant omega-3

Ensure sufficient ALA.

so enough ala so that we can do the conversion so for those that don’t eat fish probably about 2 to 4 grams a day is recommended and you would get that from an ounce of walnuts or a tablespoon of heaping tablespoon of ground flaxseed or a tablespoon or two of chia seeds or a couple of tablespoons of hemp seeds or about 20 or 30 cups of leafy greens so leafy greens about half the fat is omega-3 but certainly you would need to eat again like a horse or a cow to get enough from leafy greens 20 to 30 or 40 cups a day so and reduce omega-6 if it’s

Reduce Omega-6, if Excessive

excessive my time just increased which is just lovely we need to reduce omega-6 if it’s excessive so the what main source of omega-6 fatty acids for people in North America is these omega-6 rich oils like safflower grape seeds sunflower corn oil it has over 75% of its fat is omega-6 cotton cotton seed and sesame oil is is around 50 to 60 percent omega-6 and then Omega rich foods like like pumpkin seeds sunflower seeds sesame seeds can certainly be included because you’re not getting as much of the Omega 6s as you would if you were using the oils and these are really valuable foods with a lot of nutrients you don’t want to exclude them and

Consider Direct Sources of Long-chain Omega 3s

finally you could consider direct sources of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and I know that this is worms in the in the plant-based world right now there’s a lot of controversy over whether or not we should be taking EPA and DHA directly and the and the reality if we think about who might need it is we just don’t know we don’t know if we need it or not for sure what we do know is is that some people that vegetarians and vegans do tend to have lower amounts do can we can we make enough eating enough ala some people do and it’s not a problem but there may be some people for whom taking a direct source is not a bad idea just to maximize our our status and so pregnant and breastfeeding women we omega-3s long-chain omega-3s are extremely vital to the gray matter of the brain and say you one enough in your breast milk and so even though women who are young tend to convert about 36% of ala to either epa e-either epa or or DPA or DHA those three long-chain fatty acids I think it’s about 21% to EPA and about 9% to DHA and about 6% to DPA and that that is unbelievable it’s way higher conversion

Who Needs It?

than we see in anybody else because obviously women need to prepare be prepared for the birth of a child however we still don’t know if it’s enough and and so taking may be reasonable for that population but also there are some people who have very depressed Delta 60 saturates and can’t convert and so people with diabetes metabolic syndrome or hypertension may have reduced conversion ability populations people that come from places where fish was a very important part of the daily diet they may just make less of these conversion enzymes and so for them to have optimal status they may be better taking a little bit of of these supplements the supplements are based on microalgae

Microalgae-based Supplements

they’re very widely available and we’re still unsure as I said what would be optimal and I’m sure it’s very very different for different people and testing isn’t always reliable even though we can get tested you might want to get tested a couple of times with different companies but but many people suggest two or three hundred milligrams two or three times a week may be sufficient it’s kind of like eating a couple of servings of fatty fish that would be the amount you would get some fatty fish is much higher but that would be typical of a lot of fish there are huge advantages of choosing a

Advantages of Plant Options Clean, sustainable, cruelty-free.

plant-based option over the fish it’s you know where fish are a huge source of environmental contaminants so the microalgae would be clean it’s sustainable because we’re growing it we’re not raping the oceans to produce this microalgae and it’s cruelty free so it makes a lot more sense than getting it from fish oil calcium many people ask isn’t calcium or isn’t cow’s milk necessary for strong bones I can

Calcium Isn’t cow’s milk necessary for strong bones?

remember when my son was in grade 2 some people kids at school we’re saying well if you don’t drink milk you’re just gonna be a pile of blood and skin on the floor you’re not gonna have any bones he came away so it’s they there’s this very strong prejudice in our society that milk cows milk is necessary for strong human bones and I would say it is no more necessary than moose milk cows milk has a lot of calcium it’s got about 300 milligrams per cup but moose milk actually has 600 milligrams per cup and we don’t call it an essential food you know if you look at pre agricultural human history humans averaged one to two thousand milligrams of calcium per day without a single drop of cow’s milk and and in my opinion it really defies rationality to assume that this that that the that the that any species would require the milk of another species for it’s survival you know each species designs its milk uniquely to help their offspring achieve the growth they need to achieve you know a sixty five pound calf or whatever we’re blowing up into however many three or four hundred pound cow in in a fairly short order and that you know that milk is is uniquely designed to achieve that task human milk is designed for human infants and to me it just is you know doesn’t make logical sense that any species would need the milk of another species and calcium-rich we can get our calcium from plants and calcium rich plant foods offer some pretty impressive advantages over dairy so they’re generally low in total fat they’re low in saturated fat and the rich sources of vitamin C and K and folate the rich sources of magnesium potassium and boron they’re rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals and so all of these things to me make plants a preferable choice if we look at our recommendations recommendations for

Calcium Recommendations? Calcium RDA Life Stage Group

calcium are quite variable around the world so they’re they’re lower in the UK I think it’s about 700 milligrams there versus a thousand to twelve hundred in North America and so it’s a thousand for for most adults and four females fifty-one to seventy and males over seventy it’s twelve hundred so if we

Actual Calcium Intakes

look at calcium intakes and so again the red is the non veg the blue is the lacto-ovo and the Green is the vegans you can see the lacto-ovo vegetarians are well above that thousand milligrams a day in both the Adventist Health Study two and epic Oxford the omnivores are are pretty close to that thousand as well in Adventist Health Study two and epic Oxford but in the Taiwanese Buddhist Health Study they they’re actually only at five forty two then if you look at the vegans while in the Adventist Health Study two they’re very close to the thousand but EPIK Oxford it’s only 582 and in the Buddhist Taiwanese study at 6:44 so it’s actually higher than the omnivores in the Buddhist Health Study why would you think that would be well of course an Asia dairy is not a staple and so intakes would be lower but they would be higher in the vegetarians because they’re probably eating more tofu and more dark green leafy vegetables and things that are relatively high in calcium if we look at the studies on vegans and bone health we have about 15 studies that have assessed mineral density and vegans an eighth actually reported lower about 10 to 20 percent lower total bone mineral density among vegans and 7 found little difference in the bone health of veget two other dietary groups so about half and half saying you know they have worse and and/or there’s a little difference and if we look at fracture rates or fracture risk we have three studies one showing increased risk rates one showing increased fracture risk and one finding no difference so this is a little concerning for people who are eating entirely plant-based diets but here’s what’s interesting this is the epoch Oxford study and you can see over here I don’t have a laser pointer but the 1.3 means 30% more fractures so this is fracture rates in vegans compared to meat-eaters however when they looked only at the vegans eating at least five hundred and twenty-five milligrams of calcium a day look at this there was absolutely no difference between the meat-eaters the fish eaters the lacto-ovo vegetarians and the vegans no significant difference whatsoever but 45% of the vegans had intakes under 525 milligrams and 76% of the vegans had intakes under 700 milligrams and and so basically the take-home message here is that bone health of vegans can be compromised when calcium intake is very low of the need to consume like they need to consume at least five hundred and twenty-five milligrams of calcium per day and probably preferably should try to meet the the RDA for calcium and this is my personal show-off picture but anyway this is me and this is my personal experience so I’m 61 years old I have a very strong family history of osteoporosis my mom had osteoporosis in her 50s and I’ve been a vegan for about 31 years I had a bone mineral density done I haven’t had one for about ten years but I had one after about 20 years being vegan and when I was in my 50s because that’s about when my mom got osteoporosis and my bone mineral density was two to two and a half standard deviations above expected for my age my doctor said the he showed me my chart my bone density was too high to plot on the graph there was an arrow at the top of the chart and he said I’m absolutely shocked he said I don’t know what you’re doing but whatever you’re doing keep doing it and I can tell you what I’m doing I make sure I get enough vitamin D I can make sure I get enough calcium I make sure I get enough boron and magnesium and potassium I make sure my diet is well well planned but I also exercise because exercise is a message to your bones to stay strong and so that’s really really important I love this cartoon it’s just this guy here is saying to this this guy who works for the for the government good good and now the dairy he’s removing meat from the food groups and and he’s asking him politely to remove the dairy and I thought isn’t isn’t this funny because that’s exactly what the Canadian government just did I wonder if he was behind it so there are lots of reasons to get calcium from non-dairy sources lactose intolerance 70% of the world’s population is lactose intolerant milk is one of our richest sources of saturated fat which has been strongly linked to a cardiovascular risk it increases risk of prostate cancer of ovarian cancer it increases risk of acne if there are a lot of people that are allergic or sensitive to it it often contains hormones and pesticides it has been associated with increased risk of type 1 diabetes and then of course there are all the concerns about what we do to cows to get their milk and this is a everybody knows the story in this room I’m sure but it is not a very pretty story and then of course there are huge environmental concerns as well with you know the number of cows to produce this milk for the human species so but we do need to make sure we include sufficient calcium rich plant foods in our diet so the low oxalate leafy greens like kale and broccoli and turnip greens things like almonds and chia seeds and and sesame seeds figs and tofu that’s made with calcium and and the blackstrap molasses and we can include a lot of legumes are fairly rich sources and the non-dairy milks that are fortified with calcium are also very rich sources so you know 300 milligrams in a cop often can get people to where they’re they’re aiming to be in some of the books I’ve written like becoming vegan comprehensive and Express editions we developed a food guide that I think was pretty much foolproof so if you follow the guide you get what you need and in the middle of the guide you can see we we actually illustrate the calcium rich foods within each food group and and and so that’s helpful for people too and then there are things you can do that to make sure you’re getting sort of the bone builders in your diet it’s not just about calcium it’s about potassium magnesium boron and zinc the richest source of boron in the diet is flax seeds the key vitamins vitamin b12 cdk and folate and vitamin K a lot of people say you need k2 for your bones you do but k1 from kale is converted to kay – in your in your intestinal tract if you have a healthy gut microbiome which most people eating plant-based do isoflavones from soy may help with bone health fruits and vegetables are strongly associated with better bone health essential fatty acids are needed and sufficient protein do you remember the days when we used to say protein causes bone loss don’t eat you know keep your protein as low as possible now we know actually we need to make sure we get sufficient protein there really two phases of protein we had we had some things right but not all things right back then protein does increase urinary calcium excretion and it increases acid production especially certain types of protein those have negative effects on bone health the positive is protein promotes calcium absorption and it enhances bone building activities it maintains muscle mass and bone structure and the net effect ends of protein tends to be somewhat favorable except when you have in adequate calcium intakes and very high protein intake slike a paleo diet so Paleo diet no dairy lots of meat and so they would it could definitely work against them with the amount of protein they sufficient protein and plant-based diets is important for bone health and we have a study this is a Seventh day Adventists house study – with over 33,000 participants showing that people eating legumes at least once a day had 64 percent fewer hip fractures than those eating legumes less than once a week and those eating meat analogues even this is salty things and we know salt increases calcium excretion so this was a surprise to me but even those eating meat analogues had 49 percent fewer hip fractures than those eating meat analogues less than once a week you need to be aware also of bone robbers so the factors reducing calcium absorption or bone building capacity are oxalates phytates excessive preformed vitamin a from supplements excessive alcohol intake and caffeine factors except that enhanced calcium excretion too much salt high metabolic acid load and piles of protein like people eating a hundred and fifty grams or more a day especially so I remember the the advertisements in women’s magazines back in the 80s by the dairy industry there was one advertisement that said oh sure plants have calcium but it’s not bioavailable only the calcium from cow’s milk is bioavailable and so that was how they were trying to sell their products but is is the calcium from plants bioavailable well actually we absorb about 32 to 34 percent of the calcium from dairy products it’s about the same for tofu that’s made with calcium but we actually absorb about 20 to 30 percent from things like sweet potatoes and legumes and soy milk and we absorb the most from low oxalate green vegetables like broccoli and kale and Chinese greens and turnip greens and mustard greens we absorb the least from greens that are high in oxalates like spinach and beet greens and Swiss chard there’s so much oxalates that the calcium is bound to the oxalate and it just goes right through so we can’t get we still get about 5% maybe 10% of the calcium from these foods so then some people say well what if I eat a salad that has spinach and kale will the spinach inhibit the absorption of calcium from the kale and no it doesn’t in fact that we still absorb some of the the calcium from the spinach but but there’s no problem with it negatively affecting the calcium absorption from the kale so bone wise choices in terms of diet we want to meet our rdas for calcium we want to include some calcium and vitamin D fortified and we want to design the diet to ensure optimal intakes of all of those bone building nutrients but perhaps most important is getting a lot of weight-bearing exercise and maybe for people who are at risk who are starting to have low bone density to even consider wearing a weighted vest around the house to give you that extra weight bearing my recommendation would be 60 minutes of exercise 6 to 7 times a week so daily exercise an hour a day every day because we sit so much of the time we need that amount and finally iodine so people eating plant-based are definitely at higher risk for iodine deficiency why number one we do tend to avoid iodized salt and number two we do not consume the common sources of iodine which are fish and dairy products so if you look at the iodine intakes and status of vegans well they they have a shortfalls may we have a multiple study showing vegans having lower than optimal intakes and status where iodine is concerned but the risk is highest in places where they have low iodine content in their soil and in North America we have reasonable iodine content in the soil but in Europe we we have some places like Italy and the UK and even Finland a number of the countries in Europe really have very low levels of iodine in their soil iodine deficiency causes goiter if it’s severe which is an enlarged thyroid and your thyroid enlarges to try to trap iodine and it can call cricket can cause creighton ism which is the number one form of mental retardation in the world it can cause stillbirth and miscarriage so it’s in its real really important that women who are you know planning on getting pregnant that they be iodine replete mild deficiency even just mild deficiency can rob your baby of ten to fifteen i q– points and this can vary significantly affect learning ability so if you look at the RDAs you’re looking at about a hundred and fifty micrograms for for anyone over the age of fourteen years a little bit more during pregnancy and lactation but look at this for babies birth to twelve months you’re looking at a hundred and ten micrograms for birth to six months and one hundred and thirty-four baby seven to twelve months that’s a lot when you look at the relative weight of a baby versus an adult it’s almost as high as adult requirements so it’s a very important nutrient so what are the sources well iodized salt as a source seaweed and seafood are huge sources dairy is a source because iodine is used to clean cow teats it’s not that it’s naturally there it’s there because we use it in in cleaning the teeths some grain products iodine is a dough conditioner in those products some fruits and vegetables are reasonable sources as well and eggs as a sort are a source if you look at the iodine content of common foods you can see seaweeds between sixteen and almost four thousand micrograms in a gram of seaweed it’s unbelievable and then you’ve got cod and then iodized salt and then milk yogurt eggs tuna you know this is all animal products animal products and then when you go down to look at the fruits and and vegetables you’re looking at between about three and twelve or thirteen micrograms in a serving so they’re fairly low amounts and so we really hard to get enough from fruits and vegetables and even grains so for a hundred and fifty micrograms of iodine we could use a supplement whether it’s a a multi or a single nutrient iodine supplement iodized salt you can get iodized sea salt with all without other additives which you would want to read the label and make sure there’s there’s not these these witty call to make the salt flow properly there’s sometimes additives that you really don’t want but you can read the label and you don’t want to be eating a lot of salt anyway but you can get enough from about two mils which is about about a half a teaspoon will give you enough and now seaweed is a to me a healthier choice it’s a it’s got a lot of value so you can get in in about us you know a tenth of sixteenth of a teaspoon of kelp you’ll get of kelp powder you’ll get about a hundred and 50 micrograms that’s just a tiny sprinkle you don’t even taste it and you’re super on your salad that’s a very reasonable way nori is is the lowest and iodine of the seaweeds you need about one and a half sheets of nori to give you 150 micrograms and then ROM a or dulse you need a couple you know half a teaspoon so it’s again quite concentrated in iodine as well so these are really good choices the amounts in seaweeds vary so widely and it’s important to know that the upper limit is eleven hundred micrograms if you exceed that you can end up with thyroid issues and so we need to be careful of not overdoing the seaweed and just being really conscious especially if you’re using kelp you can very easily consume toxic amounts so if you’re using Kalp it’s very tiny amounts now what about the goitrogens and foods well goitrogens are substances in food that can reduce the thyroids iodine uptake and our production of thyroid hormones but they’re usually only a problem if someone has thyroid disease or iodine intake is insufficient so there so let’s say you’re on a raw food diet and you’re not eating seaweed and you’re eating a lot of cruciferous vegetables and a lot of goitrogens it can actually contribute to your problems with making enough thyroid hormone so what foods are going to genic well cruciferous vegetables flax seeds peanuts pine nuts peaches pears strawberries millet soybeans sweet potatoes spinach and green tea are all fairly reasonable sources of goitrogens so should we avoid them absolutely not healthy people don’t need to avoid these very nutritious foods but we need to make sure we get enough iodine some people with thyroid disease may need to moderate their intake of goitrogens and there are ways of doing that so if you cook like just steamed lightly your gaucho genic vegetables that will help to reduce the goitrogens you can ferment the vegetables that also reduces the goitrogens and just increase the variety of foods that you eat so don’t focus on just millet as your grain for example vary that so that you’re not getting as much of the goitrogens and then where where thyroid function is concerned we also need to be aware of getting enough selenium and of course the richest source in a plant-based diet is Brazil nuts vitamins ad iron and zinc are also very important to a thyroid function and the other thing we need to know is if you have some problems with thyroid you may have compromised ability to absorb vitamin b12 and so you need to be very conscious of your b12 so the take-home message is well designed whole food plant-based diets are nutritionally adequate and can provide very powerful protection against chronic diseases and so finally are there benefits to eating plant-based beyond ourselves and and the answer of course is absolutely positively yes if you eat a plant-based diet you’re probably taking the most powerful step that any human being can take towards the preservation of this planet and I want to tell you when my son was in his fourth year undergraduate degree in environmental sciences the professor had all of the students in the class calculate their carbon footprint and my son lived about a half an hour drive from the University or 20 minutes or something like that and so he was driving a car and there were a lot of students in the class that were super environmental keenest and they were taking two minutes hours and biking to school and all of those things and when they calculated their carbon footprint my son had by far the lowest carbon footprint in the class and the other students were just you know they were just outraged they said but sir he drives to school and the and they he my son called me right after this happened because he was so excited the teacher looked at the class and said read my lips he doesn’t eat meat it doesn’t matter how much he drives you will never touch him so I thought that was pretty cool of the teacher to say that and the reality is the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences released a report in their Journal in 2016 but that actually did the math and they said by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 29% if everyone followed the global dietary guidelines to eat more fruits and vegetables and eat less meat sugar and calories but they would be reduced by up to 70% if everyone went vegan and their recommendation a global shift to a plant-based diet you know we don’t dr. Walter Willett will be here speaking and he is I believe the most quoted epidemiologist in the world and with I think 1,700 peer-reviewed published journal articles to his name and and he was heading up this Lancet Commission and and what he said was transformation to healthy diets by 2050 will require substantial dietary shift global consumption of fruits vegetables nuts and legumes will have to double and consumption of foods such as red meat and sugar will have to be reduced by more than 50% basically to achieve our goals and plant-based diets when we think about benefits beyond ourselves we cannot ignore the benefits to our fellow creatures that we share this planet with eating plant-based to me is the most ethically justifiable choice I can remembering and it tell another story about my son when my son was three years old we were driving by a McDonald’s and he looked at me and he said mommy can we have a McDonald’s hamburger and I knew he had seen the commercials of the behin burglar stealing the burgers off the trees and I thought it was time to tell him that hamburgers don’t grow on trees so I said to him I said honey I said I I have to tell you something I said the hamburgers at McDonald’s are not the same as the hamburgers at home at home we make our hamburgers with beans and with knots and things like that and the hamburgers at McDonald’s are made of cows and he looked at me like I had just lost my mind and he said mommy people do not eat cows and and and and I I was trying to think of what to say and he and then he said do they mummy do they and and I I said yes they they do and he I could see the little tears coming down and he said but mummy he said them have eyes he said he said don’t they know the cows are people too and out of the mouths of babes I thought it’s it’s amazing how kids just get it and you know when we think about ethical justifiability if everyone ate plant-based the global calorie supply would increase 50% which could effectively wipe out hunger and of course the situation for animals I love this little eat more kale is I you know I became I became vegan because I decided to educate myself about animal agriculture when I had an interaction with a hunter who just happened to be one of our closest friends and he was on his way deer hunting and he said to me I I said to him I don’t understand why you could feel how you could feel good about going into the bush and shooting another beautiful deer and I said what is it it’s not a sport why do you have to do this and and it was what he said back to me that changed the course of my life he said you know Brenda just because you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger does not mean you are not responsible for the trigger being pulled every time you buy your piece of meat , flushed in cellophane in the grocery store he said at least the animals I eat have had a life can you say the same for the ones that are sitting on your plate and I was silenced because I had no reasonable response and I vowed that I was a public health nutritionist and I vowed at that point that I would find out more and take responsibility for the food I was eating and when I started to research it it took me about a week to say I’m not doing this anymore and I said to my Northern Ontario husband who was best friends with the deer hunter I said we had never really met real live vegetarians we were in Northern Ontario it’s beer bingo hunting and fishing basically there and I said would you be willing to become a vegetarian and he looked at me and he smiled and he said I thought you’d never asked he said I would love to be a vegetarian and I thought how did I get so lucky I picked very very well we this year will be our 42nd anniversary so I think I did I did okay you know the reality is 70 billion animals are slaughtered for food every year and the vast majority are raised in Capo’s confined animal feeding operations probably at least 90% in North America are raised in Capo’s and we don’t have time to go into detail but I’ll tell you just this is that what we do to pigs if we did to dogs we would be charged with a criminal offense it is beyond belief how we raise these sentient beings and it you know for me the thing that comes to mind is why would we as human beings cause pain suffering and death in our fellow creatures when it is not only unnecessary but it is ultimately destroying our planet and destroying our own health it makes no sense Albert Einstein once said we have a sacred we have to do the best we can this is our sacred human responsibility by getting our nutrition from plants we all win and we have a choice when we consider the consequences our food choices not just for ourselves but beyond ourselves a plant-based diet in my view becomes both an ecological and an ethical imperative and with that these are my books and with that I’ll say thank you very much for your attention and I’m going to be here for the next four days and I’m so honored to meet you and to answer any questions you might have at any time thank you [Applause] [Music] you