Top Nutritionist Weighs In On New Plant Based Burgers – Brenda Davis, RD – Interview

which nutritional supplements do you recommend everyone taking well nutritional supplements are not necessarily needed by everyone but for those who eat predominantly or exclusively plant-based diet i would recommend vitamin b12 a thousand micrograms twice a week or a hundred micrograms a day i know michael clappers or michael greger says 50 micrograms a day and that may be sufficient but i did some calculations based on absorption rates and i felt more comfortable with 100 micrograms especially during pregnancy and lactation and more vulnerable times of life seniors and seniors actually i would recommend a thousand micrograms daily so once you hit 65 i think that’s a very reasonable thing to do vitamin d somewhere a thousand to three thousand ius per day unless you have really good status and year-round sun exposure um iodine um if you’re not using uh iodized salt and you’re not eating seaweed uh i would recommend 150 micrograms a day and it’s it’s more it’s 220 for pregnancy to 90 for lactation so it would be higher for those individuals um i would suggest two to three hundred milligrams of epa dha every day or every other day or even twice a week although i know it’s still controversial but i would i would suggest that and then uh you know a prenatal supplement for people who are pregnant that includes uh iron choline and iodine and then other supplements just as indicated by your physician so if you’re you know if if there’s a concern about your iron status you may need to take iron and so forth

how do you protect your thyroid well for most people um the concern regarding thyroid health is about a condition called hypothyroid disease which means you are not producing enough thyroid hormone or hormones and and so the thyroid hormones are are really important to helping to control your metabolism your you know growth and and repair of cells when you have hypothyroidism you feel cold you feel tired uh you gain weight very easily your blood cholesterol levels go up um and there are some nutrients that i think you just need to be conscious of for optimal thyroid function and the first of those is iodine so iodine why is iodine so important it’s so important because you need it to make thyroid hormones so so um shortages can cause hypothyroidism because you’re not producing as many thyroid hormones and probably about a third of the global population doesn’t get enough iodine it’s less common you know iodine deficiency when salt is iodized uh or seaweed is regularly consumed vegans can be at increased risk because uh the main dietary sources of iodine other than seaweed are fish dairy and egg dairy products and eggs and dairy products are rich in iodine just because we cleaned um teats and and all of the milking machinery with iodine and so it gets into the milk so it’s no you know special thing about dairy it’s just that’s how it’s used and and so if you know if you’re relying on on iodine um you need to be really careful because it’s it’s actually easy to get too much iodine with with um with seaweed and the best example is kelp powder you get 150 micrograms which is you know sort of the rda with 1 16 of a teaspoon or thereabouts so you can imagine if you’re consuming a teaspoon you’re way over the upper limit of of 1100 micrograms so you need to be careful of that because too much can interfere with thyroid function as well and then there are two other nutrients that i think are are worth mentioning where thyroid health is concerned and one is selenium selenium uh and actually i’ll mention both of this because they do the same thing selenium and zinc actually both help to activate activate uh thyroid hormones so they’re important to thyroid function and selenium the best sources are brazil nuts other nuts and seeds legumes whole grains but brazil nuts are by far the most concentrated source some fish and eggs are also sources so you know omnivores would rely on those or maybe lactofold vegetarians or pesco vegetarians um but a single brazil nut can supply the daily needs of 55 it’s 55 micrograms a day that that are recommended so it’s and not very difficult to get if you do include a brazil nut or two in your diet and then zinc um you know legumes nuts seeds are are the most concentrated sources and then otherwise you just want to eat a very healthy diet if you have um a thyroid disease and and you wonder about soy and goitrogens and all of that um you may need to moderate your intake of of soy and other goitrogens and goitrogens are you know cruciferous vegetables are goitrogens and generally if you have enough iodine in your diet you don’t have to worry about goitrogens but people that actually have thyroid you know hypothyroid disease may want to moderate their intakes a little bit if you have hashimoto’s um there is some evidence to suggest eliminating gluten could be helpful for you so that is something you could experiment with um and and a lot of people think that vegans would have higher levels of thyroid disease because they eat more goitrogens goitrogens are in plant foods like soy and christopher’s vegetables and peaches and strawberries and millet and flax seeds and all sorts of foods but in fact there was an interesting study uh from the seventh-day adventist health study that actually reported that vegan diets reduced hypothyroid disease by about 22 so we see lower levels of thyroid disease in vegans so that that i thought was really interesting

do you recommend eating the new vegan burgers that are made from a variety of pea and similar proteins you know i wouldn’t say i actually recommend eating them but i i would recommend eating them over meat certainly and i am cheering on the the people that are producing them um i think they have the potential to remove or to move people away from eating meat and and that in my mind is is worth celebrating the more similar they taste to meet um the the more acceptance there will be for for their consumption by omnivores so from an environmental perspective they use about 99 less water 93 land 90 less and produce about 90 percent less greenhouse gas emissions so that in in of itself is a major environmental win so i think you know they don’t contribute to pain suffering and death of animals that’s a major animal rights win

many people believe they offer no advantage over beef burgers in terms of health i disagree i think they do um they provide similar amounts of protein and fat but they have slightly less saturated fat and they have no cholesterol they contain fiber they contain no trans fats whereas beef burgers do they are higher in iron they’re higher in calcium they don’t contain any new 5gc or carnitine that gets converted to tmao they don’t contain uh the endotoxins that regular meat burgers would contain they contain fewer environmental contaminants fewer heterocyclic amines because they don’t produce heterocyclic amines when they’re when they’re cooked uh they don’t you know so they do have nutritional advantages without any question and of course beans and lentils are a better choice than these you know burgers however again they you know they have a place and and i think it’s it’s okay that they’re in the market i think it’s okay when you have you know relatives who are mediating relatives over to make some you know beyond or impossible burger burgers to serve them or the sausages or whatever i wouldn’t make them a regular feature in the diet but i think occasional use is is really fine