I was wondering if Dr Greger (or anyone else) has any thoughts about the need to supplement - choline - for people eating
exclusively a plant based diet (vegans also)?
I eat
an exclusively plant based diet, but I am pretty sure I may have munched on an animal by product somewhere along the way.
Not exact matches
Switching to a
diet based exclusively on animals or
plants triggers rapid changes to the microbes that rule your gut.
Hunter - gatherers in a northern climate may have an almost
exclusively animal -
based diet, while hunter - gatherers near the equator might rely heavily on
plant -
based resources.
The
diet of the vegan group was
exclusively limited to
plant -
based foods, and their intake of legumes, tofu and soy flour was higher than the control group's, but no other significant differences were observed.
Unfortunately, our bodies aren't super-efficient at this conversion, meaning that those following
exclusively plant -
based diets may be falling short when it comes to EPA and DHA.
In practice, very few people are satisfied with the flavors and tastes of a
diet based exclusively on
plant foods, even when these foods are loaded up with artificial flavors, which is why it is so difficult for most people to remain on a vegan
diet.
This does not mean one can not choose to eat
exclusively plant -
based, just that if you do choose to do this for moral or sustainability reasons you need to consider how you will get a complete nutrient profile in your
diet.
However, you have to plan carefully if you eat an
exclusively plant -
based diet and still want to build muscle.
Dr. Ornish and colleagues were able to demonstrate that a nearly
exclusively plant -
based diet allowed for an apparent reversal in early stage cancer growth, so the ideal animal - to -
plant protein ratio may be quite low.
But taking the evolutionary perspective, if we spent all those millennia consuming an almost
exclusively plant -
based diet, how come we never figured out how to manufacture vitamin B12?
It serves to show that evolutionary human
diets were largely but never
exclusively plant -
based.
If you are eating a
plant based diet the protein is very efficiently used and almost impossible to overdo, with the exception of a few outlier individual foods, but then you'd have to only eat them
exclusively and a ton of them.
Even an
exclusively plant -
based diet averages about 10 %, especially if it contains decent amounts of greens, legumes, and nuts / seeds.
If you are thinking of switching your family to an
exclusively plant -
based diet, you may be wondering if you should