Just am example had
Op pro gainer , snickers bar, a laffy taffy thing , and some cheeseit- definitely spelled wrong in morning
Wendys baconator and cheese frys and a can of brisk for lunch
A laffy taffy on the ride home from work.
Some ceatine, and some carb crap I accidentally ordered before the gym
Hand full of strawberries a clementine and a scoop and a half of iso 100
and now I’m looking for some something cause I’m starving. Didn’t really get too much actual food today.
probably a yogurt, some porkroll 3eggs and some toast
While we are having an intelligent discussion on this, what are people’s thoughts on bodybuilding/powerlifting/strongman on a vegetarian/vegan diet?
(Assuming one meets his protein goals 0.8-1g/lb bodyweight via nuts, seeds, legumes, grains, supplements and reaches their desired caloric intake.) Maybe this should be a new thread entirely to pose a question of such debate.
DISCLAIMER: I’ve never went a day without consuming meat. Buuut…I have been educated by some of my friends on the mass meat food production industry and it is making me take a look at my current food choices (albeit biased, in attempt to promote veganism). I have not yet done enough research on my own behalf to have an educated discussion, but this topic is of interest to me.
My preliminary research points towards vegetarian/vegan living may be healthier and more globally sustainable for the general population. However, I still feel that bodybuilders/powerlifters/strongmen/athletes would require significant protein supplementation and/or be Lacto-ovo vegetarian (drink milk and eat eggs) to maintain an ample amount of recovery to their training stress.
Again, excuse my ignorance, I was posing it as a question to those with more knowledge than myself…this is merely the VERY beginning of my research into this subject (with no nutritional background).
Assuming that @Vincepac1500 is OK with a slight redirect of his thread…
You should feel free to do your own research and draw your own conclusion(s). Don’t just swallow what I’m about to tell you whole. But I have given this lots of thought and discussion over the years, and I’m happy to share my take. This really needs to be separated into two parts: the “health” angle (I’m talking personal health, not community) and the “environmental” one.
First, the health side of things: a few things to unpack here, but the basic gist is that most of the “research” showing that meat is bad for you is some combination of flawed, presented poorly, or outright wrong. I’ll run through a few examples.
Vegetarians love to trot out The China Study and call it “the largest epidemiological study ever” and point out how it showed that people who ate the lowest amount of meat had the lowest rate of chronic diseases. This has so much wrong with it that it’s too long to fit in one post; basically, the author has used overly simplistic statistical analyses (muddling correlation and causation) and in some places uses sleight-of-hand to make findings appear more significant than they are. I suggest that you Google something like “China Study takedown” where you can find several smart people that have deconstructed the entire thing.
Vegetarians also love to trot out mouse studies that show things like “high fat diet associated with (heart disease / liver toxicity / insert other ailment here).” My issue here is that these are often done where a control group of mice is fed regular chow while the experimental “high fat” group is fed a pile of chow with canola oil dumped all over it. This is hardly translatable to a human being - maybe I would get the same results if I fed one group of people Cheerios and another group of people Cheerios with canola oil? See what I mean - how am I supposed to translate that into humans, who are eating vegetables, fruit, maybe meat, apparently in Vince’s case McDonald’s (just yanking your chain pal)…
Another twist on the mouse study is the human study with a similarly deceiving title. I blew apart a study elsewhere on these forums last year that made grandiose claims about a “high fat” diet and its negative effect on respiratory function. The study enrolled 20 patients and fed them a meal of…wait for it…Edy’s Grand Vanilla ice cream. It showed a slight reduction immediately after the meal in respiratory function, and the authors went on to conclude that high fat meals have a deleterious effect on respiratory function. No control group (maybe that happens after eating anything?), no follow up measurements to see if the transient effects are sustained…
Absolute last point: most of the large epidemiologic human studies make no distinction between the types of “meat” eaten. Vince’s hamburger from Mickey D’s is the same as my homemade grass-fed burger on a lettuce wrap with avocado slices: one serving of “meat.” The guy who scarfs down a couple hot dogs for lunch every day, too, and the guy who eats a bucket of KFC fried chicken…this stuff all counts together as “meat” in those analyses. Getting back to the correlation / causation thing, some people who eat large amounts of “meat” are also washing it down with a Big Gulp and large fries. There are lots of confounding factors that must be taken into account and untangled. But, since most people doing research in this area have polarized my-mind-is-already-made-up opinions, they perform the analyses (I’m a biostatistician) so they can find what they’re looking for, even if that means torturing the data a little bit so it confesses what you want to hear.
OK, that’s enough ranting on that angle, but what I’m trying to say boils down to “most of the purported evidence suggesting that meat has deleterious health effects is shaky at best and often not translatable to the way actual humans live and eat.”
Second, the community side of things: I know much less about this, and as difficult as it is to study the first part, it is much more difficult (IMO) to study this properly. I will only say that for every hit piece I’ve read saying that raising meat for food is a net detriment to society, I’ve also read pieces suggesting that (properly) raising animals on pasture significantly increases the sustainability of farming that land over the long haul. The only additional thing to throw in here is that a lot of the vegan-propaganda that talks about deplorable practices in the mass-meat-food industry presents it as though that represents the entire industry. Nonsense. I bought my last few months’ supply of beef (30+ pounds) from a local farmer that I visited a couple miles up the road from Pittsburgh. Grass-fed cows grazing on pasture. You can find it, and if you find the right local guy, you won’t pay too much more (admittedly, depending on how tight your budget is, this can be difficult).
Okay. That was long winded. I will note that, although I am comfortable with my decision, I find the “global impact” arguments somewhat more compelling than the personal-health arguments.
With all of that said: if, after doing your research, you choose to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle, I am sure you can find examples of people who have successfully built quality physiques without meat. IMO it is harder, since you’re removing one of the highest quality protein sources from your menu, but it can be done.
@ActivitiesGuy: Fantastic answer. Even from my preliminary research into the subject (The China Study and The China Study rebuttals - admittedly, not reading it from cover to cover but enough to understand the subject matter) I have derived similar thoughts on the topic.
This seems to be a common theme with most studies that I have seen referenced in pro-vegan articles.
I agree with this. I guess the issue is more the factory/industrial farming, and while it doesn’t represent the entire industry, it sure represents a large portion of it. Given the amount of meat we (humans in general) eat, the thought is that these grass-fed grazing cows/pigs/etc could not supply the demand, thus the creation of factory farming. This is where the “net detriment to society” argument rears its ugly head.
The questions may not be should we eat meat or should we avoid meat, but, do we need to eat AS MUCH meat as we are eating? If you’re a physically average person (so obviously not a T-Nation reader, as we are all above average humans), and not an athlete, your meat consumption could (should?) make up much less of your diet than it currently does (I’m sure I could refer to a statistic here regarding average North American meat consumption, but I won’t).
Yes, not meaning to completely side track the original post but the original subject triggered these thoughts. Thanks for posting your view, that was an excellent breakdown.
Eating a snickers now and then doesn’t automatically make your diet bad, but I can see how too much of certain things like omega-6 fat could be bad. But still, I was never arguing that diet doesn’t matter but rather that “unclean” foods can be part of an overall healthy diet. You will rarely see me eating chocolate or candy and if you do it certainly won’t be a whole snickers bar, but that alone wouldn’t be cause for concern anyway. I don’t claim to be an expert, this seems more like common sense stuff to me, but experts like Mike Israetel and Eric Helms (who both have PhDs) are saying the exact same thing as me. As I said earlier, Israetel even says to increase fat intake rather than carbs when bulking to prevent loss of insulin sensitivity. Clean diets can cause diabetes too.
Maybe there’s a good reason why nobody I follow is concerned about omega-6.
From WebMD:
“Jan. 26, 2009 – The American Heart Association (AHA) has come to the defense of omega-6 fatty acids, the fats found in many grains and most vegetable oils that some have linked to heart disease.
In a scientific advisory released today, an AHA panel noted that there is little credible evidence that omega-6 fatty acids promote inflammation and increase cardiovascular risk.
The experts concluded that reducing omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) from their current levels would be more likely to increase the typical American’s risk for heart disease than decrease it.
“Our goal was simply to let Americans know that foods containing omega-6 fatty acids can be part of a healthy diet, and can even help improve your cardiovascular risk profile,” researcher and panel chairman William S. Harris, PhD, notes in a news release.”
… there is no proof that omega-6 from vegetable sources promotes inflammation and plenty of evidence that eating grains and vegetable oils protects the heart
…
Their analysis of more than two dozen studies reveals that:
People in observational studies who ate the most omega-6 fatty acids typically had lower rates of heart disease than people who ate the least.
Patients with heart disease tended to have lower levels of omega-6 in their blood than people without the disease.
People in controlled trials who ate diets high in omega-6 were less likely to develop heart disease than those who ate diets that were low in omega-6."
If that’s an average day for you, I would be concerned about developing some sort of vitamin or mineral deficiencies over the long run. It’s not something that happens out of the blue, it will take a while to develop. I would say try to eat more fruits and vegetables and maybe take a multivitamin. Here in Canada they say to eat 5-10 servings of fruit and vegetables, something in that range sounds right. You have fries (potato counts too), strawberry and clementine so that’s about 3, you could drink juice rather than brisk and have a banana or something like that and you would meet the minimum requirements. As Eric Helms said, you should try to include a broad spectrum of foods so at least a few times a week it would be good to eat a good portion of some vegetables you don’t normally get, like maybe broccoli, spinach, cabbage, carrots, something of that sort.
Here’s another tip for you: protein powder + maltodextrin = weight gainer for a much lower price.
Yea that was just for the day so its nor always terrible just most days ha ha and I work as a flavor chemist actually have like 250lbs of maltodextri right at work. I really want to make my own pre work out just not that good yet.
One big problem is that your body can’t absorb vegetable protein as efficiently as animal protein so you will have to eat more to get the same effect, plus things that are high in vegetable protein (beans and nuts mostly) are much higher in calories per unit of protein than lean meats. Also, a high fibre diet means you will spend a lot of time on the toilet. Realistically, it would be much easier if you eat dairy and eggs.
From a purely anecdotal perspective, all I know is that when I eat more cleanly I feel and perform much better in the gym. To me, there are a lot of other factors that go into performance beyond simply your macro, vitamin, and mineral needs.
I pass a Chick-fil-A every morning on my way to work. Their chicken biscuit sandwiches are delicious, but they’re pretty small:
That’s more than half of the maximum amount of salt the FDA recommends you consume per day and there are basically no vitamins. Even if you ignore the above, I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel awesome after eating one of these. Plus, I’m not full after one. I usually would order 2 and there’s no way I’m having an optimal training session afterward. Maybe that’s just me, but I doubt it.
I do think that this is a very reasonable perspective…I guess where I fall on this (YMMV) is that as long as I am not directly increasing that demand for factory-farmed meat, then I’m okay with it. I do acknowledge that one could argue even eating perfectly raised pastured and grass-fed animals indirectly increases the demand for factory farmed meat, but that’s a level past where I’m willing to stretch it.
…and I also think this is reasonable. Most people probably could stand to eat less meat than they do. A quarter-pound burger at lunch and a piece of tilapia or salmon for dinner would be plenty. Incidentally, even as a semi “Paleo” dieter and a sorta-hard-training strength dude, I eat less meat today than I used to, putting my money where my mouth is, here’s what I’ve been doing lately:
Breakfast: large smoothie with roughly half a cup of blueberries, half a cup of strawberries, large handful of spinach, 1 scoop whey protein, 5 grams creatine, 1 small scoop gelatin, and 1-2 cups whole milk
Lunch: salad or sandwich from the hospital cafeteria, coffee
Dinner: usually ~8 ounces of meat in whatever format plus vegetables (last night my wife & I made a pair of salmon filets with roasted asparagus and baked sweet potatoes)
Snack: 1 bowl frozen blueberries drizzled with a dollop of cream/milk and a small scoop of protein powder (mushed together it all tastes like a chunky blueberry ice cream)
I’m not training to be Eddie Hall or Dave Tate or even Vincepac, so I’ll certainly acknowledge that folks with more physical labor in their lives and/or harder training (my lifting is fairly low volume) might have to dirty things up a little to get more calories in.
I have been giving that a lot of thought recently.
As a result I have switched to a nearly vegetarian diet. For me it is a morally based decision. I just can’t support mass animal husbandry (I hope that is right, relying on google translator here) anymore and have run out of excuses for myself as to why it is okay to consume as much meat as I do.
That means I still am eating meat but only organic farmed meat.
Since that is very expensive where I live and I am poor by the standards of my society, that means I can not afford meat very often.
As to the protein aspect: I think it is very difficult to reach the demands of strength athletes without supplements. If we go by 1 gramm per pound of bodyweight, than that puts me at about 250 gram of protein. That is hard to reach for me without protein shakes, especially if I want to restrict my calories becasuse I want to lose weight. It certainly is possible but it probably needs a better structured lifestyle.
Sorry for typos, I am writing this on my phone. Sorry for mistakes as well, English is not my native language and it is pretty late plus I had some beers, haha.
That sounds psychological, it has nothing to do with the actual content of the food but rather some perceived “cleanness”.
Those chicken sandwiches are a pretty bad example, to get 51g protein (and I bet 1/3 or more is from the bun and the breading) you need to consume 1320 calories and 60g of fat. For someone who is trying to lose or at least not gain weight, that would be a very bad choice but at the same time you could eat one (or three) on occasion and it wouldn’t have any adverse effects on your health.
As far as salt/sodium, it seems that there is a debate on whether it really does cause high blood pressure. I’m not arguing for and insanely high salt diet, but most people can get away with more than what the FDA or whoever says and have no problems. A lot of athletes intentionally consume more sodium to stay hydrated (Gatorade?), the more you sweat the more sodium you lose. The argument on sodium and high blood pressure is similar to cholesterol. Your body digests cholesterol when you eat it, cholesterol is one of the main precursors to hormone production and you absolutely need some at least. But high cholesterol indicates that your body is producing too much, which might not actually be related to how much you consume. These things are debatable, doctors and scientists disagree.
