I don’t know how many Canadians we have but this is our new food guide:
I think it’s weird for the government to recommend or tell people how to eat to begin with but I agree with the general concept (drinking more water, cooking from home, eating more fruits and vegetables) but to say to get your protein from most, if not all, plant based sources is a move I don’t entirely understand.
I didn’t even know this was a thing until a vegan told me with a sense of almost accomplishment because she said it’s about time the government stopped “hiding” this information after making false claims that meat and dairy are healthy. I decided to bring the discussion here after that because nothing good would have come from talking to her haha
The plant thing is probably a result of it being more sustainable from a environmental point of view.
However, it can be argued that depending on your geographical location some meats may be preferable to certain plants when it comes to your geographical location.
I’ve also heared rumors about certain major brands (Barilla for instance) starting to lobby for and supporting the “anti-meat” movement as they are investing more in developing products that are vegetarian/vegan.
It was a shame to see yet another government agency discourage people from sodium.
Whole plant proteins are much more inflammatory than meat protein. A primary evolutionary purpose of many proteins in plants is to make them irritable to the gut of animals, to either dissuade their consumption or block digestion and absorption of seeds so that they can be defecated out and germinate.
And Canada may even be working on real research in giving their recommendations. The problem is that there is a huge agenda in nutritional research to show that plant proteins are as good as, or better than animal proteins and so studies are designed to produce a desired outcome. They almost exclusively use people’s recall of what they have eaten over a limited period of time and do not differentiate between inferior animal protein sources and better ones. They also always focus on the cholesterol lowering effects of plant proteins while general lowering of cholesterol does not improve overall health outcomes. Some of the studies also mention the harms of meat that is poorly prepared.
The plant protein agenda is driven by the fact that plant protein production requires significantly less natural resources than animal protein-primarily from beef, but beef beats plant protein hands down (pork and chicken in North America at least may be associated with high levels of inflammatory linoleic acid because we feed pigs and chickens a lot of grains. Cows may eat grains too, but their process of digestion and their intestinal bacteria have so much longer to work on them that very little linoleic acid ends up in beef fat even corn fed.
Let me just add that studies that use “dietary recall” over a short period of time could “prove” that chicken soup raises your chances of getting the flu virus.
If people who have a current high level of inflammation have their body “telling” them to eat beef, or producing cravings for beef, then the beef intake would get wrongly associated with the inflammation. It could as easily be the case that people who are otherwise healthy can afford to eat more inflammatory plant proteins without feeling negative effects.
Regarding soaking etc. it raises the point that humans spent hundreds of years developing techniques to make legumes and grains not kill them. Soybeans and corn for example in their natural state are eventually lethally toxic. Just pointing out that eating “as mother nature intended” is not valid reasoning but I commonly read it in post from vegans who I know.
So treating various seeds like beans, whole grains and nuts does a good job of detoxifying them from lectins, but still leaves allergenic protein chains. Bread that has a long fermentation period also is largely detoxified though beans, nuts and whole grains still are the most “allergenic” foods, raising histamine and cortisol and requiring more insulin secretion over a long period of time than foods like white rice and potatoes which may spike insulin levels early, but do not require insulin many hours later. High gluten wheat and legumes can require twice the insulin as pure glucose but over 4-5 times the time frame. Allergenic or sensitive response to legumes and whole grains is very individual, but I think people should be aware of its potential to help them notice if they do have a response like headaches or sinusitis after eating them.
By “whole” plant proteins, I mean two things. First, full plant polypeptides. Polypeptides tend to be allergenic, but individual amino acids, and di- and tri-peptides are not, so hydrolyzed protein from plants should theoretically be non-allergenic. The same for milk by the way. Second, I mean that if you are taking in the whole array of polypeptides from a given plant. There may be plant polypeptides that are not allergenic, but if you consume the whole array of plant polypeptides in legumes and grains it is likely that some of them will be allergenic, or you will have a sensitivity too.
@mertdawg first off thank you for for sharing all that. What resources do you use to get your information from? Like the other guy said I’m not trying to challenge you just want to learn more, especially about cholesterol.
If we get rid of all animal sources of protein, what will be left to fertilize the land in 60 years when all the topsoils are gone? Surely plant only diets are very unsustainible long term without ruminants for fertilisation long term?
To be fair, I don’t think anyone is pushing this as part of their agenda. Ruminants are an important part of the ecological system, what is deemed unsustainable is when they are bred, en masse, solely for the purpose of slaughter to be consumed as meat.
Because of our use of cattle for food, there is more biomass of cattle on Earth than any other animal including humans. “Cows” are the most numerous animals on Earth. If we didn’t herd them, their numbers would be expected to dwindle to 2-4% of current levels within 10 years. i’m not even sure if our cattle would be able to survive and reproduce proprerly off ranch.
The evidence behind wheat causing problems in real live situations (not just theoretical) is strongest. There seems to be a continuum ranging from white rice, plantain, sweet potato on one end through white potato, sorghum, tapioca, buckwheat, “wild rice” nuts, corn, oats, legumes and at the far right, wheat, and particularly high gluten wheat flour several steps to the right.
no disrespect here but it seems like you are one of the smartest guys here regarding nutrition, diet, “healthy” eating etc. I study a lot of your posts here on the forum from years ago until now and I´ve learned a lot! Too much to use all the information properly!
I´m really interested what foods you and your family/kids are eating right now on a regular basis? What kind of proteins, carbs and fats and why? How much do you eat etc.?
I hope you can help me out and please keep going with sahring so much informative and valuable stuff!
I’ll have to decide how much detail I want to put out there and I will preface by saying that what I might like my kids to eat is not always the practice.
There are a few things that we have basically settled on over the years.
There is no soda. There is very rarely fruit juice. I try to use rice and potatoes as starches. We do not use high linoleic oils (corn, soy) or canola or high linoleic sunflower oil. We use plenty of butter, olive oil, and I got my wife to use high oleic safflower when she want to use a neutral oil. My kids eat carbs, but only about 30-40% of total calories since I am fine with more fat calories.
Keep in mind that my wife is a cardiologist, and also grew up in a communist European country, and my son has type 1 diabetes so it is a complex problem. The two most important things were to eliminate drinks with sugar, and high linoleic oils. Third is probably getting everyone 4000 IU vitamin D3. I don’t think that a reasonable person can make a case against those 3 things.
First of all, in theory, “hydrolyzed” whey should not be allergenic. I suppose that it depends on how hydrolyzed it is. If plant protein powders are hydrolyzed and purified, they can match hydrolyzed animal proteins if it is fortified with vegan leucine. The three keys to making an effective vegan protein powder at 1) hydrolyzing down to di- and tri-peptides so that there are not large polypeptides that can cause a sensitivity, 2) eliminating all other plant macromolecules like lectins, and 3) fortifying with at least 12.5% leucine. I haven’t looked at what products are out there.
But if the label on products like Mag-10 and Plazma are correct, they only contain di and tri-peptides and should not contain any large allergenic polypeptides.
first and foremost thank you very much for responding to my post and my questions, I appreciate that very much!
I know, nutrition nowadays is a from of “religion” for some people and everybody hast their own opinion about certian foods, diets etc. but obviously you know what you are talking about and for my understanding your and your familys diet is pretty “healthy”.
Over the last couple of years I try to eat “healthy” and I try to introduce my family (I don´t have kids) to eat also a more balanced and healthy diet too. My problem is, that I can´t explain things in plain language and when I talk to my father and try to explain him certian things, he says “…shut up, thats the internet and we eat wheat since we are born and I´m not dead yet, so it can´t be that bad”… etc. etc. etc.
Like I said, I think you are really smart regarding diet and nutrition and therefore I hope and I please ask you for it if you can explain a few things to me from YOUR personal standpoint and your opinion in plain english that every human being understand it. That would be awesome!
-why you are not using high linoleic oils like corn, soy, sunflower oil?
-why is olive oil and butter better then these other oils?
-why you avoid grains which contain gluten?
-why you don´t eat legumes and beans or nuts?
-I read you are also avoiding whole grains, why?
-what about dairy?
-what are your thoughts on soy?
-why do you eat not that much fruit like everyboy else recommends?
I hope you can help me out and I´m very very interested what are your personal opinon on all the different foods is. Then I hope I can talk in plain english with my father and he is willing to try a healthyer diet that is eating right now.
Thank you very much for your valuable time and your help