In an effort to do my part saving the planet, I’ve adopted an at-home vegetarian diet. Meaning, just how it sounds, that all my meals prepared in-house are vegetarian (NOT vegan). At restaurants I get whatever I want to break up the monotony a bit.
Is there an easy/recommended percentage where it becomes deleterious to resistance training vis a vis animal vs plant protein? Obviously more animal is better but given that I’m only in this for health/aesthetics, no competitions of any kind, what would be a good recommendation? To clarify I don’t think vegan/vegetarian is automatically “healthy”, just letting you know my goals
For example always get at least 1/2 of protein intake from egg whites, casein, etc. vs. mycoprotein, soy and so on. It’s no problem to add in BCAA/EAA as needed. If it matters I’m just starting the 12 week strength template; post novice 40M.
2nd Q, in a different vegan thread you said something to the effect of “there is currently no sustainable diet due to farming practices, economic factors …” Can you recommend some further reading on that? I certainly agree with you based on the way things are, just looking to go a bit deeper into what we can do it about. I guess in my case I wondering if I’m wasting my time, specifically, given the systemic changes required to make any serious impact.
There isn’t, unfortunately. Ideally you’d be getting ~2-3g of leucine per meal and whatever amount of protein/combo of protein you need to do that seems reasonable.
It’s just a huge topic and I don’t have a go-to list off hand, unfortunately. Perhaps if I get some down time I’ll put together a list of my readings on this, but I don’t have that handy for you.
I’m also very interested in this topic as well. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, but I don’t eat animal products for every meal or every day. I follow your recommendation of 3 grams of leucine per meal though.
I’m interested in knowing how the amount of animal products effect health and longevity. Is there an upper limit for animal products? Should we be eating steak, chicken, milk and eggs for every meal as long as there are some grains and vegetables in there? To me that seems great for muscle growth, but maybe not so great for health and longevity. Let me say, I know nothing on the topic. I’m not a scientist. What is a good balance?
There is a big problem with trying to identify single factors and their effects on complex outcomes like health, mortality, etc.
If you are maintaining a healthy body fat level, are eating the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables, and are avoiding unhealthy behaviors like smoking, excessive alcohol intake, etc. then this discussion is moot.
That seems right to me. Why are the “vegan doctors” not taking the above factors into consideration? I don’t really expect you to speak for them, but I would like to get your opinion on this. It almost seems like malpractice to recommend such a diet for “health”. Is this the fault of epidemiological studies?
I don’t think it is malpractice to recommend any particular diet that has a reasonable amount of evidence to support it and that the risks outweigh the benefits for the patient whom the advise is dispensed to. That said, it’s hard to eliminate biases when it comes to anything- especially food. Also, studying nutrition is pretty intense when it comes to making sense of a corpus pertaining to a complex outcome like mortality.
I agree Jordan, this stuff is so complex. I’m thinking of doing an experiment of 1 on myself, plant vs. animal protein. I will reach out to you guys for help when I’m ready. I know the the animal foods are best, especially for muscle growth, but would like to see how much of a difference they make to my training/health with some tracked measurement.
Besides blood work, are there an other helpful markers/tests that I should get done first? How would you recommend doing a simple study like this? How many months/years? Would it be best to switch back and forth a couple times? I’m sure there are other factors that I’m leaving out like sleep, life stress, training variables…