this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I've done both vegan and keto for over a year at some point during my life and what I will say is that I naturally cover my nutrition bases through preferences and desires, while vegan though I had to hunt down (forgive the pun) b12 and complete proteins combinations a little more diligently to cover my nutrition needs.
Or put differently, I think it's easier to mess up a vegan diet than a keto one.
Vegans should honestly just take a B12 pill. B12 is naturally produced by bacteria, but most good natural sources amount to using an animal gut as a fermenter. Pills just cut out the middleman and use an industrial fermenter rather than one that moos.
You could eat dirt or drink unclean water instead, but the pills are cheap, easy and natural.
Protein combining is an old myth. You don't need to eat a complete protein at each meal. It's fine if they average out to be complete over the course of a day or two, which is quite easy. If you have a sandwich for lunch and lentil soup over cauliflower rice for dinner you've eaten a complete protein.
What does complete protein mean? It's the first time I hear about it.
Protein is made up of amino acids.
9 of them are "essential" because your body can't make them from other amino acids.
Protein is complete when it has enough of all of the essential amino acids. It's incomplete when it's missing at least one of them.
Rice, for example, doesn't quite have enough lysine in it. If you live on only rice, you'll eventually run into a lysine deficiency. Chickpeas, though, have plenty of lysine but not enough methionine.
Rice and chickpeas individually are incomplete. A bowl of chickpeas and rice is complete, though.
The problem with this, like I said, is that if you have cucumber sushi for lunch and falafel dipped in hummus for dinner it'll average out to be complete. Almost no one has to actually care about this, it's really just an interesting factoid.
I remember now that you say it, that the body cannot create all proteins we need. Makes sense to call it "complete" when your diet includes all the amino acids that you need.
Thanks for explaining.
People often worry more about vegan diets than other diets. But somehow people's concerns aren't proportional to the risk of messing up your nutrition needs.
It's not about health risks; it's more about their personal feelings. Most people don't like that animals are killed for food, but giving up tasty meat and cheese is tough. Instead of supporting vegans, they question them. This might be because admitting they eat meat just for its taste feels wrong. So, they deflect by questioning veganism. It'd be great if there were more understanding and supportive and less defensiveness about food choices.
I'd be nice to occasionally hear "Good for you! I'm happy that you make choices that are in line with your values!" But alas, most responses tend to be "But aren't you barely allowed to eat anything now!?"
So much time and effort online and on TV is expended arguing against eating plant based food. It's hard not to see through this.
It's so hard to go to a doctor once a year to get checked and just take b12 /s
and yes, everyone -not just vegans- should see the doctor once a year.