Vesanto Melina

People ask you if you're getting enough protein. It just comes up all the time. Can we get all essential amino acids from plant protein? So this is another question we'll look at. So when people suddenly leap into eating lots and lots of beans, what happens? They can end up being worried they're going to lose all their friends from passing gas. You can even have these beans, seeds and nuts in desserts and so have protein there, like in of course the chia pudding with soy milk. And how does dietary choice affect climate change? And food systems account for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And thanks so much for letting me be part of this. So this is all about protein, a really big interest for lots of people. The pictures you see here are from some of our books are nutrition books, but they have lots of recipes too. And we've kind of specialized in how to make food really, really tasty. And I like making things simple and my co-author Brenda Davis likes making things gourmet and elegant. So between us, we come up with some pretty good ideas and kind of include both directions. And so this will be covering a number of different topics. So one of the things that comes up for people a lot and you can send in a chat note if this has happened to you, people ask you if you're getting enough protein, it just comes up all the time. So we've got such a big cultural bias that people think if you're not getting meat or animal products, even shifting away from meat, eating cheese and eggs and so on, thinking that these are the only real protein sources. But we certainly find that even these great big well-muscled animals are they're vegetarians too. They're doing developing all these big muscles with plant foods. I mean, they might get a bug once in a while in the mix, but so the topics that we're covering today are How have protein foods been placed in past food guides? As you know, there's a new food guide in the US. And so I got really interested in the history of how protein foods have been perceived over decades. and where we're at now. How is protein quality assessed? Because that's something. And I'm actually 84 and I've been a dietitian since 1965. I was teaching university then. And so I've seen this evolution of our concepts about protein over many, many, many years. Can we get all essential amino acids from plant protein? So this is another question we'll look at. Which plant foods provide protein? Are plant-based diets suitable for every stage of life? And that position paper that I did with the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics addresses that. The new position paper just talks to adults. So another one is about legumes, beans, peas, lentils. But what about all the gas? If you start eating a big bowl of, say, kidney beans, it sometimes changes people's gut microbiota. So we'll talk about that. About top athletes and also seniors who want to make sure they've got good muscles. And how does dietary choice affect climate change? So here we go with the food guides. So this was from the 1940s. You can see it's the basic seven. And it was based, of course, 1940s on wartime conservation efforts. and the challenges that people were facing at that time. And people were encouraged to help win the war by growing gardens with green and yellow vegetables, vitamin C rich vegetables, and starchy vegetables and fruits. So you can see that practically half the food guide is vegetables and fruits. The group three is starchy ones like potatoes and bananas, and there's a number of the more starchy yams, that kind of thing. Group four and five down at the bottom, there's white and pink area. These are the animal products and you can see they're only about a quarter of the circle, just a little bit over a quarter of the circle. And then there's group 7, which is hilarious, to make fats go farther. And people were on this food guide encouraged to save the drippings from their meat. keep it in their ice box. Of course, they didn't have refrigerators very much. I remember that actually, ice being delivered to people's houses. So you were encouraged. And so this group includes butter and fortified margarine. Of course, we were looking at those fats in a very positive way then. and that group is the same size as group 6, which is the grains. I've put the links for all these because it is really interesting seeing the history. Then, in the 1950s, the basic 4, So we were at 7, now we're at 4. And you can see here we've got the top upper half of the page is animal products. Milk, they suggested that everyone should have milk. And I actually see this now as being kind of racist choice because 70% of the world's population has some degree of lactase insufficiency or lactose intolerance. And yet we were saying everybody had to have it. I mean, indigenous people never had cows that they were milking. Many Asian countries didn't use milk traditionally. And people reacted to it, got stomach upsets and allergies. So anyway, but it was on the food guide. Everybody was supposed to drink two to four cups daily. And then the meat group, two or more servings, the vegetables and fruits were squished into one little quarter practically of this page. And they did include that you should have citrus and green and then the bread group. So you'll see this how it evolves over time. Then in 1992 to 2005, they developed this food guide pyramid. Look at how the bread group has expanded like anything. And the fruits and vegetables are above that in importance. And then the milk, yogurt, cheese group was two to three servings. So we're still not talking about alternatives yet. And in the meat group, we do mention beans, eggs and nuts. It says dry beans. It doesn't sound very appealing. But anyway, so you were supposed to get two to three servings of those a day. And then at the top, oils were on there and sugars. And from all these food groups, The number of servings adds up to a minimum of 15 servings a day and a maximum of 26 servings a day. So it's pretty amazing, this food guide. Well, the pyramid, this next one, they realized that there were way too many foods on it, and people were starting to want to emphasize fitness. On this page, the meat, and they do include beans, sort of equal importance, 10% of the space on the pyramid. Dairy, 23%. And so there were criticisms about this food guide that it was very much based on the meat and dairy industry lobbies, the previous one as well, actually. And we've got 2% of the little yellow line you see there is about oils. So they're definitely on the food guide. And then fruit and vegetables was 38% of the space. and grains 27%. And then candy and alcohol were up to your choice, but they're up at the little white tip there. You could use some for that. Then my plate looks like we're practically back to the basic four, but different arrangement. So 10% of the plate was intended to be fruits, 40% vegetables, so that's reasonable, 20% protein. And when they did pictures, half were legumes and 30% grains. And then they had milk separate, so dairy. It doesn't say alternatives at this point. Some of the criticisms were they didn't include water, they didn't really emphasize healthy proteins, and they didn't include fitness. Now here's the new pyramid that just came in this year, and you can see it's a pretty different pattern. It definitely emphasizes the animal-based proteins, full fat dairy, fats like butter, And it's got, of course, the critics are saying that it was very heavily influenced by industry, but also by concepts that are kind of paleo thinking. There's few grains, but the ones that are there are whole grains, which is a good thing. Some good things, it limits the added sugars and highly processed foods. And there's lots of fruits and vegetables. And it does contradict some dietary guidelines having all that meat since meat is a probable carcinogen. And also the fats that would be present in those foods at the upper left are known to be problematic from a health perspective. So this is also Canada's food guide that came in in 2019. And it was inspired, it was kind of a new concept at the time in a way, inspired by science and research rather than by industry. And people in the government had told me before about the strong influence in the food industries like particularly dairy in Canada and meat in the US exert on people working in the food guide area. This one suggests eat mainly plant foods, choose whole and minimally processed foods, You don't have salami on there or Fritos or potato chips or things like that. And it suggests that you should limit highly processed foods like sugary drinks, fast foods, deli meats. And the protein foods are all in one group. So you've got all the beans and seeds and that kind of thing, some tofu cubes, and you also have meat. And you've got dairy in that group. So it's part of the protein foods group. And then the drink that's suggested is make water your drink of choice or unsweetened beverages. So it's the one that's current in Canada. I was speaking to Dietitians of Canada at the time. They were just starting to think about this food guide and I was, we just had our Becoming Vegan book out and they actually used that book a bit. It had it in the office while they were formulating that food guide and our vegan plate, which is in that book. And it's also on my website shown here, nutrispeak.com. You can see there's the fruits and vegetables taking up half the plate, the grains, maybe a quarter of the plate, legumes or beans, peas, lentils, just under a quarter of the plate and nuts and seeds. And so we also had recognized at that point that the calcium rich foods, because we had a dairy group because people were thinking about calcium, and we realized that calcium rich foods are in every food group. They can be in fortified milks, whether it's soy milk or oat milk or same as in dairy milk. And they can also be in the greens like kale, the low oxalate greens, bok choy, all that kind of thing. And they can be in the fruits like figs and oranges or fortified orange juice. And then traditionally, when people make chapitis, they include calcium rich ingredients. So you can get calcium from all these different places. And then the other essentials that we included, this is for people using an entirely or mainly plant based diet. Make sure to get your B12, your D and your iodine. So a number of countries are actually leading the way in actively promoting plant protein foods. And they're doing this to meet climate targets and they're doing it because of the consumer demand, wanting to be healthier and more sustainable, not wanting the budgets for healthcare to be so huge. So these countries are funding research, they're updating dietary guidelines in a healthier direction and supporting industrial scale production of the alternatives, making those really good products. So that's the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Denmark, Singapore, the UK. And the national guidance, here's wordings that they use. For example, Brazil says eat foods mainly of plant origin. Canada says healthy eating patterns include mostly plant-based foods. China cut meat consumption by 50%. Denmark says eat plant rich, varied and not too much. Estonia eat plant-based, biologically diverse, they want some variety, local and seasonal. Germany eat mostly plant-based foods. Netherlands eat less meat, more plant-based. Qatar emphasize a plant based diet. Taiwan plant based diets are needed to reach the 2050 net zero target and the UK eat more plant based foods. So a lot of countries are going this way. Next, I wanted to talk a little bit about protein quality. And I mentioned that this concept has been around for many decades and has been evolving. So what we used to see as high quality proteins are actually now linked with higher rates of mortality and chronic disease, all the cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers. And what were once considered lower quality protein foods are now linked with favorable health outcomes and better for the environment. So protein quality. Here's what we used to think, and I remember this, that you used to think about how rats managed, I'm not sure if this is a rat or a mouse, but weanling rats, and they were given one food to eat. And the protein efficiency ratio was based on the ability of a single protein food to support the growth of a baby rat who typically double their weight in four weeks. So they'd have all these little just weaned rats and feed them one food, plus maybe some sugar and oil. And rats are fur-bearing animals, unlike humans. And that can actually impact your requirement for particular amino acids because you're having to grow what's in hair and fur. And so they assess the quality of protein needed for these little quickly growing rats. They double their weight in four weeks, not a goal of us as humans, even as babies. It generally underestimates the value of plant protein foods. So if they gave them like a cracker or some beans or something, the results were not as quick in having them gain weight. So protein efficiency ratio was adopted in 1981 as the way to assess protein quality, and it's actually still officially recognized. So that's kind of out of date, that one. Then there's been another method, and you can see when you look at this next section that Nutrition is a really evolving science. It's not like one of the really old sciences that has a big, long history. It's evolving all the time. And this protein assessment, like what's the best protein for humans, has been a tricky one to figure out. We haven't got it all solved yet. So one method was the protein digestibility corrected amino acid score. This was based on what protein went in someone's mouth and what left in the feces. And it was based actually on some studies of two-year-old children who were recovering from malnutrition. I mean, it's really hard to get humans, put them in a little cage and feed them one thing and see what happens. But of course, the children were fed much more than that, but they were recovering from malnutrition. And what happens is that the gut microbiota use up some of the protein and the amount that you get out is not an accurate measure of how much we absorb and get for our body's use. And then they made adjustments using weanling rat studies. So this was the best they could try next and is still actually used in many places. Then there's the digestible indispensable amino acid score, DIAAS. And what they did here was take pigs, which are a little more similar to humans than humans. They're more like us in terms of their metabolism. And they inserted a little like a colonoscopy kind of surgery so that they could check the intestinal contents and They were fed raw grains and uncooked beans. Humans cook these, which would make the protein more digestible. But anyway, these scores were based on what happened with the pigs, what went in and what came out through that tube into their intestine. And then there's one final method, true ileal digestibility. And they have a tube inserted at the end of the small intestine. And here we've had actually a few studies on humans, sometimes people who already had colonoscopies. And what we found from this is that when you've got cooked plant foods, which of course we are going to cook our beans and grains typically, and What we found is that the absorption from animal products and from these cooked protein rich plant foods, it was very similar. the protein absorption. We used to think, and I remember this well, that the plant foods had much poorer digestibility, so you couldn't count them as well as protein sources. But we're fine when you prepare them the way humans want, you're going to get good absorption. So we're still wanting to get this all figured out, but it does get very encouraging results that protein foods, plant protein foods are well digested and can be good protein sources. Now, people wondered if you could get all the essential amino acids. And it turns out that yes, we can get every one of the essential amino acids from plant foods. In fact, they're all made by plants and all of these animals that people are eating or having the eggs from or whatever, they're eating plant foods, those animals, and that's where they're getting their amino acids. In fact, so we can get essential amino acids either directly by eating plants or by eating animals that ate plants, one or the other. And so we get every one of the amino acids. In fact, the only food that is short of amino acids that is absolutely missing an amino acid is, let's see, I'll tell you in a minute. The gelatin product. Yeah. Is what?

Steve

Is it gelatin?

Vesanto Melina

Gelatin. Good for you. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. I knew it started with G. I was just thinking glycerin. Yeah. Right. Okay. So in the early 1970s, We had this idea, so it's lucky I've been around for a long time and teaching university and writing books and stuff like this, just seeing all this evolve. And in the early 1970s, what we learned from Francis Moore Lape, first of all, diet for a small planet, that people should eat grains and beans at the same meal if they wanted to get all the essential immune acids. And so for a while there, we were carefully figuring out, okay, you should eat, you know, a cup of brown rice with half a cup of lentils and figuring out the amounts and all that kind of thing. We realized 10 years later that this wasn't necessary, that your body can pool amino acids over the course of the day and, you know, if you had toasted, breakfast and peanut butter at night, you'll get the essential amino acids. So we find that you do peel things, pool amino acids. And what you need is to get a variety of foods of plant origin over the course of the day. And you need to eat enough calories. If you don't have enough calories, you'll make some of your protein into calorie burning directions. I find also when I'm working with people that regularly including legumes, that's beans, peas, lentils, really helps to ensure the needs. But you can do it, like I've had clients that had an allergy or couldn't eat legumes for some reason or other, and we could still make it work. It was just a variety of foods. So that is we don't have to do that complementation. But the idea is still stuck around and it's got a little bit of a good idea. Yeah, you should eat a variety of foods, but you don't have to carefully combine. So which foods do provide protein? Which plant foods? Well, we need about 10 to 15% of our calories from protein. And which of these do you think provides protein and about how much? Just think about that a bit. The veggie meats have been carefully constructed to have about the same amount as the animal products that they're substituting for. I actually found beyond burgers too, they have a significant amount of iron in them. But these can be made different ways. Some of them are made from whole foods, which is preferred by a lot of people and some of them are more processed. They're just all sorts of different ones. So you can look at the package and see how much protein you get. The soybeans, tofu, tempeh, all these soy foods are real heavy hitters. used in China, for example, with tofu for 500 years very, very well. And of course, we've got wonderful things to do with it now. And the other legumes, the beans, peas, lentils, have 20 to 30% of their calories from protein. They're just wonderful protein providers. Then the non-starchy vegetables, they have about 10 to 40%. And I worked at a chef school living light in California for a couple of years, teaching classes every once in a while. And those people were on raw food diets. And so they didn't have any of those things at the top. I mean, they had some seeds, actually. they didn't have cooked foods. And so I had to work really hard and are becoming raw book. I figured out menus that were meeting the recommended dietary allowances, the RDAs, and they would have lots and lots of vegetables, but they were eating really big salads, like really big, and at lunch and supper. and it could work. Grains actually feed about half the world's protein requirements, almost half. I remember trekking in Nepal and the Sherpas and the people carrying our packs and that, they were carrying our packs. They were living on millet and rice and some legumes. So that was their protein intake traditionally. The starchy vegetables can also contribute. I've been surprised to see some of the protein powders actually made from peanut protein, or sorry, potato protein. Nuts have a bit less lower percentages than seeds. With seeds, of course, kale or hemp is the heavy hitter among the seeds. Nuts are can be protein providers too and provide some very good other nutrients. The one group that isn't very productive in the protein area is fruits. See, it's under the 10 to 15% mainly, but of course they've got other wonderful features that keep us in good health. So they're very valuable, but just not for protein. This is a statement from the position paper for which I was lead author and it's the position that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and for athletes. And I've had clients, for example, who are from a culture where people traditionally, like from India, would use dairy and their mother-in-law was really concerned if they wanted to go vegan during pregnancy that they couldn't. meet the requirements, but it does work. Now, one of the changes that I've seen, including in my own head over past decades, are a real emphasis on this appropriately planned, because I've been vegan for, let's see, 33 years. And I was moved in that direction for animal issues. I'd seen what happened to pigs and chickens and so on, really seen it and was quite horrified. And so I thought it was good if people went plant-based. And so I started teaching that at courses for adults and in universities and to dieticians and so on. And I thought vegan was really the way to go. Now I'm really seeing the importance of appropriately planned because some vegans are not really doing it very well. They're going for very good reasons, shifting to more plant-based, but they're not getting, it's usually not protein that they're missing, but they might be missing B12 or vitamin D, very importantly, calcium, being low in calcium. I mean, all diets need to be appropriately planned. We're finding different issues with the poorly planned, of which there are masses, non-vegetarian diets. But the vegan diets really do need to be well planned so that we get all these specific vitamins, B12 and D, and the minerals, calcium, iodine, just make sure that we get all these. And so it really makes a big difference to do that. If we look at kids and find how they're doing, there was one, I've put the references here. I mean, there are actually quite a few references. You can look on PubMed, but here's one that was looking at, it was a meta-analysis, so it looked at a lot of studies and they found that the vegan children, and I'm using V for vegan, and down at the bottom, LOV is lacto-ova-vegetarian and NV is non-vegetarian, finding that the vegan children were slightly shorter and lighter. Now, that might not be a terrible thing, especially for lighter, because Kids are starting to get overweight and obese really early now when they're on non-vegetarian patterns or kind of junk food based patterns, which some kids really are. But they found that the lacto-ovo vegetarians and non-vegetarians were pretty similar. I mean, the lacto-ovo can be eating lots of cheese and dairy products and so on and eggs. the vegans were slightly shorter and lighter. The bone density was a little lower for, surprisingly, the lacto-ovo vegetarians and also for the vegan children. And the vegan positive step was that the vegan children had more favorable lipid profiles than the non-vegetarians. With the lacto-ovo vegetarians, it was kind of a mixed bag because lacto-ovo vegetarian patterns could be, all kinds of different diets. So we're really planning to educate people. We want people to get it right and succeed in this what could be an excellent dietary choice. Make sure they have B12, D, iodine. So the take home message is that we got to ensure sufficient calories. You know, all these little kids that would rather like my grandsons would rather run around than sit at the table and eat And so we got to get enough food in them, ensure reliable sources of these particular nutrients that we're mentioning, and not be overly restrictive, like some of the macrobiotic patterns were early on. We have to provide fortified foods. So here's a place where we actually want processed foods. We want fortified like soy milk. Soy milk has a good protein intake and it's got calcium and vitamin D, not much vitamin D, a little bit, you still should have a supplement. And it has sometimes B12 and they need the supplements that are needed. Vitamin D is an important one and B12. And so vegan and lacto-ovo diets are safe and adequate when they're appropriately planned. I just wanted to veer off into iron for a second because people are often thinking that little, you know, early, early eaters would need some meat to get iron. their mother's supply isn't sufficient after about four to six months. And so they start the iron rich foods by six months of age, sometimes a bit earlier. And you want 11 milligrams of iron. And so how to get that? Well, sometimes people think they need iron red meat. This is sometimes recommended by people that haven't looked into it in a lot of depth, but it's not the ideal answer. It's associated, of course, later on in life with various cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. And it wouldn't be possible to get this this 11 milligrams of iron recommended, they'd have to eat a lot of lean roast beef, for example. A lot of it, like 28 ounces. And the foods that will supply it are fortified infant cereal. Amazingly, that's just a brilliant one. And kids like it and you just need about, well, it's like a third of a cup of fortified infant cereal and you'll get that iron. The other options, just the amounts a child would have to eat. So 11 milligrams is a lot. Like even a man only needs eight. Post-menopausal women need 8. Menopausal women need 18. So it's a lot of iron for that little guy who's building all his blood cells. So back to protein, that was just veering into iron, but also mentioning about meat for these little tiny people. We need a certain amount of protein. The recommended intakes are featured in terms of grams per kilogram body weight per day. So we're veering into a whole new area of thinking. How much protein do we need? So the red circled area here for adults, the official recommendation is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of healthy body weight per day. And so it usually ends up at about, say, 46 grams for a woman who weighs 57 kilograms and 56 grams for a man who weighs 70 kilograms. For littler kids, they need a higher amount per kilogram body weight, but it doesn't end up with that huge amount. So I don't find that kids are often being short of protein, but it could happen. Sometimes we've been thinking that when people are in whole food plant-based diets, they may need more protein. And that's based on some of these old concepts. Remember when we looked at protein digestibility and the different ways you assess protein quality, we thought that because there's fiber in plant foods, that the protein digestibility would be way less. So we suggested that adults should add 10% to these recommended dietary allowances or RDAs and toddlers add more. I'm always to have it up a bit and it's really not hard to do. But we're finding actually that that's not necessary. We do cook our beans. We make foods much more digestible. Some of the low fiber foods can be really helpful. So for little kids, tofu prepared different ways, little cubes of it, soy milk, peanut butter, meat alternatives. They're very well digested and these are fine. And children who include dairy and eggs, but kids easily can get enough protein. If we add, remember that reference weight, a woman who was 46 126 pounds, I've said it in kilograms before, but they would need 51 grams of protein even if we add the extra 10%. A man that was 70 kilograms or 154 pounds could need 62 grams. Now these are based, by the way, on healthy body weight. So for persons very overweight, they don't need a huge amount of extra protein. It should be based on the healthy body weight. And if you're way underweight, you don't base it, you know, make it really small. If we want that person to gain, so we'd make it a little higher. So the intakes, just to go back for a sec. Remember, here we're looking at 51 for the woman and 62 for the man grams per day. And here were some intakes from different countries for meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans. And you can see that they all met those targets. Now these are averages, so some people would be less. Certainly the meat eaters are getting more protein in all these countries. The vegetarians somewhat less than that and the vegans somewhat less, but they're meeting these recommended intakes. And this is a picture of a little cafe in Paris My sister lives in Paris. She was a stunt woman and has retired, but in Euro Disney, she was Annie Oakley. And anyway, she was just telling me that there are more and more people eating vegan in France. So she lives in France near Paris. And so Even we think of the wine and cheese and all that, but people there are going vegan and having these lovely gourmet French meals, but they're vegan. And so I visited all these different countries and seen how they're progressing in terms of excellent plant-based foods. You can look on happycow.net, by the way, when you go traveling and see some restaurants near where you are. If you're looking for vegan ones or vegetarian ones or ones that will suit a group of mixed dietary choices. You look at veg friendly. Whoops. So yeah, okay. So now I want to show you how to get 75 grams of protein a day. And this is just an example, but it's a pretty simple one. So say you have oatmeal in the morning, put soy milk on it, and you'll see a real difference if you're wanting your beverage to be a protein provider these days. You either get soy milk or you get there's some blends that may have hemp seeds and pea protein and so on. But They're very different from oat milk and rice milk and some of the other non-dairy milks that are low in protein. So do look at the labels. You'll see 1 gram or maybe 2 grams of protein in some of these and 8 grams, 7 grams in the soy milks. sometimes six, but it makes a big difference and it does make a difference for kids too, if that's what they're relying on. Hemp seeds are good protein providers and flax seeds add a bit more. Then for lunch, somebody could have, and this is what I have every day pretty much, is a big salad with a tahini dressing, lemon tahini kind of thing. So the seeds are in the tahini, tofu cubes, maybe at some point could be a snack, bread with hummus and then some, maybe an orange at some point for a snack. And then for supper, something including beans, like this is a sweet potato with a black bean kind of filling with corn and perhaps some avocado, some broccoli. And at one point it could be a snack, chia pudding, made with soy milk. So that gives you 75 grams of protein a day, which is more than enough for an awful lot of people. Then if we look at the protein in selected foods, and here we've got plant foods on the left and animal products on the right, you'll see that the veggie meats, the tofu, the soybeans are just right in the same kind of range in the servings that we're talking about here. And for the foods that have somewhat less, the milk, the cheese, the eggs, these plant foods, which are based on the legumes, peanut butter is a legume actually, seeds, some grains like kamut, spelt, wheat, quinoa, oatmeal. They're all kind of in the ballpark for being protein-rich foods. And so we don't need to worry too much, but it is good to have some guidelines. Legumes, which means beans, peas, lentils, peanuts. they actually have this special knack of gaining nitrogen. So they have root nodules that are just really good at getting nitrogen. There's air in the soil down there and they have nitrogen fixing bacteria. And so they end up building lots of amino acids, which of course are built into protein. And so legumes are things that are in pods. Here's a little pea pod and soybeans, all those kind of things are in pods. Even peanuts are in a pod. And so that food group is a good protein source to keep including. And what we're finding is that The plant protein is as good as animal protein for building and maintaining muscle. And we've had quite a few studies, meta analyses, different age groups, males, females, young adults, seniors. We find that if you go into a health food store, you'll see a lot of dairy based protein supplements, but we're finding that the soy is just as good as the whey as a muscle builder. And so there are quite a few studies. If you want to boost protein intake in general, here's the quick little guidelines. Include at least one protein rich food at each meal. So that could be different beans, lentils, tofu, veggie meat, seitan, which is based on wheat, seeds and nuts. I keep mine in the freezer a lot to keep the fats or sometimes in the fridge and include some lower fiber choices especially for little kids. So that's the tofu, the soy milk, peanut butter has it all blended for easy digestibility and then select the higher protein milks. So most North Americans didn't grow up eating legumes or a lot didn't, except maybe some peas. And yet worldwide, legumes are dietary staples used all over the place. So we find that in Mexico, we've got gorgeous meals with pinto beans and black beans. In India, I lived in India for four years. That's actually where I became vegetarian because they could do it so well. This works. You get really good food. They've got lentils and chickpeas. the Middle East, fava beans, chickpeas, again, chickpeas are really favorite in a lot of parts of the world, and white beans, Asia, the soybeans and red beans, and of course tofu. So how could we enjoy legumes throughout the day, like if we're moving in that direction? So at breakfast, And these are really popular with a number of people I know just have whole wheat toast and peanut butter. Don't even put margarine on it or butter or anything. Just have peanut butter on toast. You can have jam or bananas as well if you want. You could have a breakfast burrito. You could have scrambled tofu with vegetables. This is from Masala doses had lots of those and the wrap could be based on lentils or you can have soy milk or soy yogurt. And there's pea yogurts too on cereals or in puddings and smoothies. For lunch and supper, of course we could have beans. in the salads sprinkled on or soups, often I'll make like a curried lentil soup and put it in 10 different containers in the freezer and then just have to cook that once every few weeks and you just pull out a single serving or a family size serving from the freezer. You can have lentils hidden in pasta sauce for people that like little kids that don't want to eat something lentils, but they'll eat spaghetti and pasta sauce can be hidden there. There are a lot of ethnic bean and lentil dishes. By the way, I find that kids like all that, if they get to be making food with their parents. It becomes actually fun. So I had the privilege of having a mother who liked cooking and taught me to cook, but we had fun doing it. And I find that tradition really passes along well. And if somebody hasn't grown up liking to cook, it's a bit more of a challenge to get your kids to like it, but it's worth making that transition if you can figure out a way. Beans, tofu or tempeh can be in bowls and stir fries. And of course, there's all sorts of burgers and kebabs. So You can even have these beans, seeds and nuts in desserts and so have protein there, like in of course the chia pudding with soy milk. Our Kick Diabetes book is good at including that because that book was made with no added sugar and no added oils, of course, so that you have your insulin working properly for type 2 diabetes. And It's got really good food, but we have recipe testers that try every recipe and we don't let it in the book unless it gets five stars. So here we've got some double chocolate surprise cookies and that's in, that was in plant powered protein book. Yeah. And then Miyoko, who's really pioneered the cashew cheese world, has made wonderful cheesecakes. Snacks are a really important part too. And I am somebody who's very vulnerable to potato chips, but I don't keep them around. I really rely on things like hummus or peas in the pod or tofu marinated some delicious way, maybe with tamari and nutritional yeast, or here's a tray of Miyoko's type cheeses, cashew based, or you can have muffins that have some protein ingredients added. So we want to aim for like three servings a day of legumes somehow in there. And there are about 20 types of legumes that people eat. So I want to ask the audience here to send in in your little chats or communication, how many can you name? What are some beans, peas, lentils that you know of? Just think about this, different colors, different kinds. Okay, I'm going to show you in the next slide then some different ones. One of the most popular of course is the chickpeas, garbanzo beans, pinto, black, kidney, several types of kidney too. Lima, cannellini, navy, white, and there's soft white ones too, which are really good. So people who have dental problems can use those. Adzuki. red ones, mung, fava or broad, South American type, green, wax or yellow, peas, snow peas, black-eyed peas, lentils and lots of kinds of those. And the red lentils are particularly fast cooking. So Soybeans, of course, they're made into so many different forms. So there's really a lot of options here. And one of the things I found when I've had clients who thought they were allergic to something or were told that from a lab test, that they might be told they're allergic to soybeans, but they've got the whole wealth of the other options. And they might be told they were allergic to kidney beans, you know, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily allergic or intolerant to all of these different ones. Lentils could be an easy option. So next about the gas crisis. So when people suddenly leap into eating lots and lots of beans, what happens? They can they can end up being worried they're going to lose all their friends from passing gas. And I found the reason for this is because beans have a type of fiber called oligosaccharides that we don't digest. And so our gut bacteria go yikes, what's coming down the tube now? And they need to adapt. But It takes a few weeks to do that. And I talked to Bolsowicz that writes these excellent books, fiber fueled and plant powered. Anyway, he had a good insight for that, that you don't just, 'cause I was thinking, yeah, just start with half a cup. Well, if it's half a cup of kidney beans, that could be, too much for your gut microbiota right off the bat. He said, just start with a few, like, a few chickpeas in your gut microbiota. If you haven't been eating them a lot, then they go, oh, okay. And you start to build up the microbiota, the bacteria that are particularly good at digesting those. And so the tips are Start with the small legumes. The red lentils are easy digesting. They cook in 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Make sure they're well cooked. Other beans take longer and start with small amounts. And then if you're having canned beans, rinse them well because the oligosaccharides are in that canning liquid. If you're cooking beans, pre soak them and then pitch out that water that has the oligosaccharides in it. And in cooking, skim off the foam that surfaces just with one of those big spoons. And I learned this from the chef that I did that our cooking vegan book, he was a chef at the Four Seasons. He told me, you're supposed to cook beans until they're soft enough to mash on the roof of your mouth with your tongue. And that really makes a big difference. You know, some people can cook them so they keep their form, but they could be a little bit less digestible. If you cook them a little bit more, they're more digestible. And tofu and tempeh actually have had a lot of the oligosaccharides removed. They've had the fiber removed and or are fermented. It's important not to gulp air because that gives you the air goes out the other end and stop eating when you're 80% full is another tip in general for the gas crisis. And there are different ingredients that have been used internationally for the gas crisis, which are episode, kombu, hing, ginger, just using these ingredients. And an important point is that passing gas is normal. There was some hilarious research that was done where they had military, this is in the Midwest, with devices strapped on their behinds just to see how often they pass gas. And so there's been some funny research studies on this. And it's been found over time that people pass gas 12 to 25 times a day. That's a very normal thing. But you just don't want it to be overwhelming or really bad smelling. And just looking at legumes or meat and their health advantages or disadvantages. The legumes are high in fiber, which is a very good, you know, the intestines roto-rooter. They're high in protective phytochemicals. They're high in antioxidants, which are protected. They're low in fat and saturated fat. Like usually the beans are about a lot of the lentils and many of the beans are about 3% calories from fat instead of, I guess meat should be considered more a fat food than a protein food because it typically has somewhat more fat than protein, doesn't have any carbohydrates. They're cholesterol free, of course. They have non-heme iron, whereas heme iron is a pro-oxidant. They have no hormones and antibiotics. They don't produce TMAO in the gut and TMAO is linked with heart disease. They don't have Neu5G. We've been trying to figure out why meat is linked with cancers and haven't figured out actually the mechanism, but Neu5G is in cancers like breast cancer tissue or other cancer tissues. And it's in meat, but we don't know how it all works for that. And there's low chemical contaminants in legumes. So one of the things with legumes, one of the studies showed that people have lower percentages of body fat. Well, of course, most of the legumes are pretty low in fat content. Legumes are common features in all the blue zones in the past. A lot of that research was from past ways of living, but they were legume eaters and legumes were a significant indicator of longevity. So their health benefits, they actually promote a healthy gut microbiota once you got it going. They support digestive health tremendously and reduce risk of GI diseases, lower your LDL and total cholesterol and reduce risk of heart disease and stroke. They stabilize our blood glucose, reduce risk of type two diabetes, and they improve satiety, help with weight loss, and they've got lots of other nutrients. So we've got two more sections here that we're looking at sports and then we're looking at the environment. So there are vegan athletes in every sport. These ones were vegetarian since birth and a woman vegan since birth. And they're clearly been good at building muscles. The Robert Cheek is a one. And I phoned him one day and said, what did can you take a picture of your lunch? And he sent me this lunch picture with 28 grams of protein and 1900 milligrams of leucine, the amino acid good for bodybuilding. I've also got a picture here of Brenda Davis, my co-author, doing a handstand in her mid sixties. She's just a bit older than that now. And but it's still very fit person and me doing I could do a two-minute plank at 84. And so we want people to really keep the fitness going well along with the protein eating. I showed this one before. So more protein for athletes. Some of the items in our plant powered protein book are like a gorilla granola that has lots of seeds in it as well as the oats, tofu fingers that you can put on a salad, peanut edamame with noodles, you could use some of those legume noodles too, and double chocolate surprise cookies, the chocolate, the surprises, the black beans. And there are a number of athletes in every sport. So you can look online, plant powered athletes, vegan athletes, all kinds of websites that show the different people in any sport you can think of. And whether they're runners, volleyball, Lewis Hamilton and even his dog is vegan and skaters and some of them are parents as well. So of the branched chain amino acids, leucine is the one that is most of interest in stimulating protein synthesis. So when we want to have good muscles, as I do as I get older, then we need to include foods that have leucine and say, for example, for different body weights. Here's that lunch again of Robert Cheeks. And so you can see that he's got on there some tofu, some edamame, and some chickpeas, I think. but it looks like quite a pretty lunch, along with lots of nice veggies and some avocado. And so we can get leucine from, it's the same foods that we're talking about, these protein foods, legumes, soy foods, wheat gluten, seitan, seeds, nuts, and grains. And for example, here's some amounts of the, say, the soy milk, the oats, the tempeh, or sorry, tofu, some beans, quinoa, really good grain, and also slight bit of bread and peanut butter for a snack. You can see that eating this way, it doesn't leave a lot of room for junk food snacks, and you get to, I think, really enjoy the protein foods and the ones that are really nourishing. So for leucine, I see the recommendations in different research studies quite differently. I'm not quite sure what to recommend, but it varies for different people. But again, it's the soy foods, the beans, the seeds, the nuts, the grains that are tremendously helpful in this area. For seniors, we've been interested in sarcopenia and you know, trying to get back into strength and being well muscled. We do want protein at each meal. We had that earlier slide, which was 75 grams for the day, and we want some leucine. And the other really important thing is that people need to exercise as well. I found that soy protein powder or some other plant-based protein powder can be good in this regard. Sometimes people just don't have good appetites and some smoothies that have some protein powder. And I recommend getting the ones that don't have a lot of added junk, like just simple protein powder. Last little sections about sustainability and dietary choice. And these are really influencing people quite a lot. So Ipsos has said that we're seeing more and more people adopt this once minority dietary preference. I remember that myself from all the years I've been doing nutrition, thinking it was something that vegetarians We're kind of unusual people that, the hippie culture, but it's become very, very popular. And we are seeing the tragic results of climate change in Texas, in Florida, in British Columbia. My kids both had to evacuate their homes in 2024 with forest fires. Luckily, their houses didn't burn, but it's just tragic, dryness in Pakistan. So think, were you or anyone you know affected by climate change in recent years? It's really becoming more and more and more prevalent. Well, A researcher who was very interested in this was Joseph Poor, who's at Oxford, and he actually took five years off to do research and looked at food production data from thousands of farms and processors. worldwide just from the start of everything. Like how did they get fertilizer? You know, you had to drive to the store or get it or have a truck to bring it to you and right to all the finishing, the transport. And his meticulous research led to him getting averages. So these are averages that we'll be looking at for different categories of food in relation to indicators of climate impact. And so he looked at greenhouse gas emissions and a lot of that is from agriculture, land use. Even though people in the press are often writing about transportation, the agriculture is very important. Land use, water use and water pollution. So we find, you know, near where places that there's cattle being grown or chicken manure piling up, hog farms and acidifying emissions. We find that there's 6,000 pounds of manure produced per North American per year right now with all this animal agriculture. So when we look at the greenhouse gas emissions, the red lines here are animal flesh products The yellow lines are dairy and eggs and the beef is at the top, beef herd, but there's also dairy herd, the third line down. So the dairy cows, which eventually get made into hamburgers. We find that, and then way down the list is tofu and because it's British, they say the word pulses, not legumes. But the beef herd produces 31 times more greenhouse gas emissions than tofu. And CO2 emissions. Here's a chart from the UN and NASA just looking at CO2 emissions from 1960 to 2024. Then sometimes people promote grass-fed beef as being more environmentally desirable, but they find that isn't actually the case, that even under the most optimistic rangeland conditions, it's the same sort of situation. And I know people have told me from New Zealand that New Zealand is just being massively covered by this kind of animal industry production. Land use. So here we've got lamb and mutton at the top and again, way, way down the list, tofu. So the beef herd uses a lot more land, of course, because the beef is eating, all this plant food that has to be grown on land. Water pollution, so that's going in, near these pig farms and chicken farms and so on into the water. And again, now water use is very high for cheese. They seem to have to wash the cows a lot and then the milk is produced from that concentrated into cheese. Nuts are high there. So in like California almonds, high water use, very devastating for those areas. But still foods like tofu way, way down and pulses and acidifying emissions. So Again, we're just seeing the same kind of picture. So with popular diets and carbon footprints, we're seeing, of course, people on keto diets are eating lots of healthy veggies, but on average they produce 4.2 times the carbon footprint compared to an overall vegan diet. Paleo, omnivore, fish eating, pescatarian, vegetarian, and then vegan having a much improved carbon footprint. And these are the last few slides. The Lancet Commission has had some wonderful papers produced and with massive numbers of authors and say that food system remains squarely centered in relation to food security, human health, environmental sustainability, social justice and the resilience of nations. And they say that the consumption of red meat and dairy, which contributed to a massive number of deaths from healthy diets, also led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the last decade. And food systems account for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. So our plant powered protein book, we actually reached #1 on Amazon for sustainability. We have a new book, Brenda Davis and I. and a doctor that we've worked with on this one, Plant Powered Seniors. We're all seniors actually. And it will be out in early September or people can order it ahead on Amazon already. And we've got our Kick Diabetes book and also Becoming Vegan and Cooking Vegan. And this is the last slide. Thank you. And there's my co-authors, Brenda Davis and I, and Brenda's son, Corey, who is an agrologist with the government, and he helped us with the sustainability section. So that is completion. And thank you very much.

Steve

So When you become, you hit this early in your presentation, when you go plant-based, the first question everybody asks is where you get your protein from.

Vesanto Melina

You're right, every time.

Steve

Right, I mean, there are t-shirts, if you ever go to like any sort of vegan events, I remember years ago, there was a t-shirt, there was, you know, I've got 99 problems, but protein ain't one, right? So. Oh, that's a good one. Yes, there's a rap song that's based off of, which I won't say the name of, but. But it gets to the heart of this idea that one, if you go plant-based or vegan, you have to worry about protein, but also for regular people, regular people, but for omnivores, there's an obsession with protein. And I don't know, it happened probably in the last 10 or so years where, and I think it's kind of when the vegan movement was probably at its zenith, which is, you'd go and you'd order food and then they would say, Oh, do you wanna, you know, which protein do you want on there? Right? Which is basically which animal product do you want on there? They kind of changed meat into protein.

Vesanto Melina

Oh.

Steve

Has there ever been a time other than like the depression in the United States where people were protein deficient?

Vesanto Melina

I think in the depression, yeah, in the depression, They were really struggling. Yeah. But they seem to be sensible enough to be cooking, eating lentils and emphasizing that a little bit. Yeah. I haven't seen protein deficiency. I mean, I've had a lot of clients. I help clients. I do a nutritional analysis of their diets. I get them to do a three-day food record, and then I put it through the ESHA food processor nutritional analysis, and I do not find people short in protein, except one lady who only likes to eat once a day, and she's kind of deficient in a lot. Yeah, she's, you know, if people have some kind of, you know, eating disorder challenge, it could be. That's the only ones. Now with little kids, it can be a bit trickier because sometimes they just want to eat, of course they want to eat sugar if they could get it, but just, fruit and applesauce and that kind of thing. But I do not see people and that I do not see people in North America short of protein, no.

Steve

So where does this come from? Is this just sort of a scare tactic?

Vesanto Melina

No, I think it's from that early research. I mean, that stuff stuck. And of course the animal industries are spreading it. You know, they're showing like those rats did not do so well. as when you gave them some cheese or some meat. if you gave them some dry little bean and they were only getting one protein source, one.

Steve

If somebody was actually protein deficient, what would the symptoms be?

Vesanto Melina

Well, they'd probably be deficient in a few things. that's a good question. I don't know because I haven't met them yet.

Steve

Okay, and you've been doing this for a few years and you've never come across site. I know you're a rookie. I know you're just getting started in your career, but you've never seen anybody who is protein deficient. You don't, so what is the, in the literature, does it say what you...

Vesanto Melina

It's involved in so many systems, like your bones. Oh, I know one thing, because this used to be the case when I was studying university. We had pictures of kids with Kwashiorkor. They had white streaks in their hair. I got a bit of white streaks too, but they had like their hair for a section would be white. And that's because their body decided, look, I've only got this much protein. I'm going to put it towards their heart and let their hair color go. Like we're not going to worry about melanin for their hair. And so that was a real visual thing. I mean, of course kids wouldn't grow as well because you need it for every cell, for your bones, for everything. And there would be, it would be reflected throughout the body because protein's used for so many different areas. Yeah.

Steve

So you touched on sarcopenia, right? Like the loss of muscle, especially as you age. The GLP ones have an impact on muscle mass. I believe that the muscle or that 40% of the weight loss comes from muscle.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, yeah.

Steve

Are you seeing anything? I mean, I don't know if people with GLP-1s are coming to you and trying to get healthy, but how do people rebuild their muscle mass once they lose such muscle mass?

Vesanto Melina

Once they use a lot. Well, they have to do, our Plant Powered Seniors book has a section on that. And of course they have to start eating more, but they also have to start moving more, like a lot of people when they get older, they just sit kind of sadly looking out the window, like that women. And they have to start finding a way to go for a walk with a friend and then start lifting weights. Like you want to use this weight bearing exercise. and you're eating foods that have protein in. So I found that the protein powders, usually we don't want processed foods, we want whole foods, but for that purpose. the smoothie, which they're willing to drink, maybe grudgingly, but that can start increasing the protein and have the leucine in it too. And it's combined with weight bearing exercise and getting rest and having an improved outlook on life, like visiting with people, living in community. I live in cohousing, by the way, and it's a Danish concept where people It's like a modern village. And we have 34 townhouses, 31 townhouses, and people have a common house. And people cook meals together three times a week. We have meal teams and gardening teams and all this stuff. And even in ours, we have little kids as well. And I think that living in community area can really help because often sarcopenia is really linked to feelings of isolation and have lost meaningful parts of your life. So it's a kind of general lifestyle thing.

Steve

I've seen content on the internet, so take it with a grain of salt, but it says that one of the number one indicator for longevity is your thigh muscle mass.

Vesanto Melina

Oh yeah.

Steve

Have you heard that before?

Vesanto Melina

I didn't know it was my thighs.

Steve

That they were saying that had to do with the ability to walk and get around and communicate and have community with others. Were you going to say something on that?

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, no, it's interesting.

Steve

Okay.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah.

Steve

And on one of the things for seniors when they, when they have a hard time eating is they're kind of encouraged to drink Ensure.

Vesanto Melina

I actually was helping somebody with cancer through that sort of thing. And there are some plant-based mixtures that are even better. I think Ensure isn't, there may be a dollar something more expensive, but it's worth it. And there are some other, you can explore around a bit and get healthier. Now those work, they're better than nothing, that's for sure. But you can get different ones that supply protein and have all the vitamins and minerals. Yeah.

Steve

Is it nutritionally adequate or advisable to rely primarily on sprouts and green vegetables? You know, if someone would be missing anything.

Vesanto Melina

Well, I worked at Living Light, which isn't existing anymore, but before it closed at the beginning of COVID, it was in Santa Cruz, California, or Santa Rosa, rather. Where was it? Geez. It was Fort Bragg. That's where it was, California. Not the Fort Bragg on the East Coast, but yeah. So it was in this little town. And all these people came from all over the world to eat raw foods and learn how to do it and make them good. And so, I mean, it was popular. It was wonderful. And we did a couple of raw food books, Becoming Raw and the Raw Food Revolution Diet with Sherry Soria. But anyway, I was making menus, I had so much time getting the protein up to the recommended level. It was really hard. Like I'd have to make sure their fruits were raspberries, not melon, because raspberries had seeds in them. Like, you know, like it was really tricky, just inching our way up. I found that a few people could do raw when they were very, very active and get enough protein because they were having running and eating so much food that their protein would come up to the recommended. But it was tricky. So I found it better to be like 75, 80% raw, not 100%. But the seeds and nuts can be good deliverers, but I had to build the diets very meticulously to get them to go to the right level for the variety of nutrients.

Steve

So would you recommend that if someone's trying to do that, would you suggest a little bit of cooked food?

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, I do. Yeah. And yeah, to have I mean, you can do it. And I've seen people who, a vibrant person who ran the West Coast Trail, which takes people about four or five days, she'd run it in a very, very long day. And, you know, so, but she was exceptional. You know, a few people could met and she was 100% raw.

Steve

Wow. So it's very common. in the plant-based world to hear that somebody was plant-based for a while, but they didn't feel right. I encountered somebody recently who was raw for six years, and then she started eating meat and she said she felt so much better. What would you attribute that to?

Vesanto Melina

No, I've seen that and heard that and I've met people like that because we got to get it right. Like they had managed on meat based, they'd kind of learned it from childhood or whatever, and they may not have been getting, say, vitamin B12 or vitamin D. They weren't drinking cow's milk. anymore and they weren't drinking a non-dairy milk that was fortified. There's tricks to get. The other one that I'm really interested in is the omega-3s and fish because we're finding that people are shifting and we thought that you could make omega-3s from hemp, flax, walnuts, hemp seeds, chia seeds and greens. But we're finding that conversion isn't so good. And so it's good to take the microalgae forms of DHA. Now, it turns out even fish aren't getting enough. omega-3s. People are eating fish from fish farms and the fish farmers aren't feeding them enough DHA because that's where they get it from microalgae. They don't even make it. The fish don't. But the fish are getting short of omega-3s. And even in the wild ocean, there's sometimes, so people could eat, say, a fatty fish like salmon twice a week, or they could use a microalgae supplement that's cheaper and delivers where the fish got their DHA from. But these are all things, like nutrition's so lively, we keep learning. And that's different from even what I thought 15 years ago. So we're learning the tricks of how to do it exactly right now.

Steve

So you brought up vitamin D. One, can you get adequate vitamin D with sun exposure alone? And two, what does vitamin D deficiency look like? What would the symptoms be?

Vesanto Melina

Oh yeah, okay. So I was speaking actually in Honolulu and Maui in the last few weeks. And the people there, quite a number are vitamin D deficient.

Steve

Wow.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah. And that was from their local university and cancer research center. So the reasons are that it could be because of smog. It could be because many Asian people don't like to expose their skin or they'll use an umbrella or a hat. It could be that they have dark skin, so their production isn't very high. It could be because they use sunscreen, which blocks the vitamin D production. So we've got all these reasons like covering up or just driving from your garage right to your work or the shopping mall. So we're finding that many people are short of vitamin D, even in sunny places, San Diego, LA, yeah, surprising, yeah. So vitamin D's interesting. And what I've done is get my own vitamin D checked. Oh, this is maybe surprising, but I've been low in vitamin D for decades because I found out I was a low vitamin D absorber. So I've had my serum vitamin D checked, had it done a number of times, And the amount I had to take was quite high, like 9000 international units, which is high compared to the official recommendations. But we're just learning this stuff. We don't even have recently set vitamin D recommendations. And so one of the ways you can do it is get your serum vitamin D checked on any diet.

Steve

Do you try to get your serum level up to with vitamin D?

Vesanto Melina

Oh, I can't remember the numbers. The lab is whatever the lab tells you. There's American, Canadian and British.

Steve

Fair enough. Fair enough.

Vesanto Melina

So if it's about 30 of one and 70 of another.

Steve

Okay, okay.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve

So how do whole food plant-based diets compare to diets that include some animal products when you are both are accounting for exercise and sleep as well as emotional wellbeing?

Vesanto Melina

Do you mean?

Steve

So if you took two almost identical diets, one is whole food plant-based, The other is whole food plant based plus some animal products. And then they do everything else right, let's say. How do they compare?

Vesanto Melina

I think you can do quite well on a near vegetarian, near vegan diet. Yeah. And, you know, I know people who I have clients, you know, that want to do it that way. And including some fish, for example, is not a bad idea. Yeah. Like, I mean, you can go directly to the source and get the microalgae DHA. But I think the research is showing that you can be near vegetarian, pretty healthy. You can be, I think vegan is a winner when it comes to environmental issues and animal rights issues. But for health, I think near vegan works really well too.

Steve

Great. I'm going to ask Bin Wu here has a question for you. Bin Wu, can you unmute? I think she has a question. She may not be able to unmute there. So, OK.

Vesanto Melina

So what-- You can ask me tomorrow at the panel in line.

Steve

We touched on some supplements. So are there any other supplements that you would recommend that either people who are on a plant-based diet eat, as well as people who are on an omnivore diet.

Vesanto Melina

Okay, well, one interesting one is iodine. Did you get your iodine today?

Steve

I actually have an iodine supplement.

Vesanto Melina

Oh, you do? Iodine is in the soil in various amounts. And so we've had these goiter zones in the planet, but they're not related to the soil being used up, the iodine, just some areas had lots and some didn't. So many people were developing a pigeon breast and their kids were what was called, like it was a mental retardation, it was called cretins. And the people would develop goiter around their neck. Their thyroid got bigger, bigger, bigger, trying to catch all the iodine. And then 102 years ago, 1924, they iodized salt and it fixed it. even in the Appalachians, that was one of the reasons where people were developing these tragedies. And they found that with iodized salt, they just put in a bit, didn't cost hardly anything. You know, salted iodized salt is a dollar a box or $2. They fixed it. So now though, people are using, they're not using salt because they're told not to, or they're using fancy Himalayan salts or pink salts, which are not iodized. So the trick there is to use iodized salt, if you're going to use salt. And it's also in things like sea vegetables. And we've put in our Becoming Vegan comprehensive book, you know exactly how much of the different options you can use. So some of the seaweeds you could get way too much and sometimes from supplements. So there's a window, you want 150 micrograms, but you don't want 1000 micrograms because that's too much. And so Yeah, iodine's an interesting one. And that's not on any diet. It's not vegan.

Steve

Right. So there was a video done by Michael Greger where he said that the average vegan was deficient in three nutrients, B12, D, and iodine, but that the average omnivore was deficient in seven nutrients, including fiber, right?

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, that's right. And magnesium and potassium. And calcium, calcium's in all, yeah.

Steve

So what should us plant-based people be asking the omnivores about their deficiencies? So now, okay, going back to vitamin D, you mentioned, so you were talking about vitamin D, is it to the point, are we having, because that's one of the big things in the last, I don't know, number of years, vitamin D deficiency, people are obsessed with their levels, you were talking about your own level. I don't hear the term rickets anymore.

Vesanto Melina

Although I have seen some cases. Yeah.

Steve

Is that at all a concern?

Vesanto Melina

Yeah. You know what you're hearing is osteopenia, osteoporosis. Because vitamin D helps us absorb calcium, put it in the bones and keep it there. And if we don't have enough vitamin D, Your body really wants to keep the calcium levels in your blood at a certain point. If it's low, it'll just grab it from the bones. It keeps your blood, you can never have that drop because it's needed for so many different reasons. So a lot of people are finding their bone health is when they get older, it's mediocre and heading towards osteoporosis or already there.

Steve

So for the iodine, how are some of the seaweed, the dulce, how are those?

Vesanto Melina

How are they?

Steve

How are they forgetting iodine?

Vesanto Melina

Oh, they're okay. You'd eat a little bit. I forget which one you get way too much. I'd have to look in my book.

Steve

Yeah, I know it's like wakame and okay.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, yeah. The thing is they don't tell you on the package. which how much is in in these different things. Okay, here is this book, which is very good. It's a textbook in three countries. So iodine is on page 194 and you can use a half teaspoon of iodized salt or arame, half a teaspoon, dulse granules, half a teaspoon. Kelp, less than a 16th of a teaspoon. So that's the one you can really get too much of. Nori, 1 1/2 sheets. Wakame, 1 1/8 teaspoon. So that's it. And it probably varies, you know, where it was harvested in the world and that. Yeah.

Steve

So and going back to salt, A lot of people have moved to these fancier salts, the Himalayan pink salts, et cetera. Is there any real benefits to those salts in the literature?

Vesanto Melina

No, I think that was more a gourmet thing. They seem to appeal to chefs in a certain way. And I didn't actually use them very much because I wanted to get my iodine. They do, but the amount is so scrunchy. You'd be better off to eat some broccoli or something, Like they do have a number of different minerals and they used to have iodine before they got dried, but it dried off. Yeah, so they've got No, that was something people looked at that chef school or where it was in Fort Bragg. And I remember seeing the list and then I looked at the amounts and I thought, these are nothing. Like you're not going to do well on that scrunchy little amount of whatever mineral it was.

Steve

Yeah. Beyond calcium and vitamin D, what other nutrients and dietary patterns are particularly important for maintaining strong and healthy bones as we age?

Vesanto Melina

It turns out vegetables and fruits are important, surprisingly. And they have a number of protective phytochemicals. Phyto means plants and they have chemicals. And all those, we don't even have names for them all. Like they're This is one of the areas where nutrition's moving along and they've even got very complicated names where they do have names, but we're finding that they interact in certain ways with the process of bone formation. So bones are made of protein. and calcium and helped by vitamin D and magnesium, but a host of minerals. And just in the process, even potassium, so you're eating your fruits and vegetables and protective. So there's quite a complex. Bones are being remodeled all the time. So even if yours are a bit short, like I've had clients who were osteopenic and they wanted to stay there, not move into osteoporosis. like you can really halt this. We gain bone mass till we're 30, then we kind of level out till we're around seniors or postmenopausal, and then we can go whoops or go hardly drop at all. So bone metabolism is a very lively area. And it's important to keep it up the whole way across.

Steve

All right. Thank you so much, Vesanto, for your time and all the information you shared with us. If we could unmute the audience so they could share their appreciation.

Vesanto Melina

Mom, when did this stop working? You've been watching us for two years now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.