Kathy

Welcome. We're excited today because we have an international registered dietitian, internationally known and respected. Vesanto Molina is here with us today from Canada and she's going to give us the lowdown on protein and she's really thought a lot of. In fact, she's written tons of books with Brenda Davis, who we know from other interviews with us here at Chat & Chew. So welcome, Santo.

Vesanto Melina

Thank you, Kathy. It's a pleasure.

Kathy

And would you tell us a little bit about your nutrition background and what you've done because you had some great experiences over the years?

Vesanto Melina

I did. Well, my father was a researcher and a physiologist in diabetes and cancer. And my mother liked working with little kids, a preschool educator, and she got us to like cooking and preparing food, which everybody doesn't have that advantage of having their mom really like it and show you how and everything. So I got to like preparing healthy food, although my journey was different. Long, long ago I liked, you know, meat and steaks and all that kind of stuff. I thought that was tasty stuff. And so I've had a very long evolution. And I started teaching nutrition at university in 1965. So I've had a long, long history of watching the nutrition profession evolve and change and our concepts change. So it's really been very, very interesting over the years. So I've taught university, worked for the government, been a consultant for the prison system. And then more recently, I did that for about 22 years as a part of what I did. And I also have written 14 books, which are now in 10 languages. And I've spoken in 10 countries too.

Kathy

Oh my gosh, you are there. Now, you're not bragging about something I know about, and that was that you received a very important award from the Canadian dietitians called the Riley Jeffs Memorial Lecture Award.

Vesanto Melina

That's right. Yeah.

Kathy

Yeah.

Vesanto Melina

I'm getting a Lifetime Achievement Award in New Jersey in, I think it's October 2nd. And I told them that I'm planning to live to be really old. And so this will be the first of my lifetime achievement awards. But I want to live in. I'm 81. I want to live another 35, 40 years.

Kathy

I don't have a doubt about it. And you know, the other thing that I know you from is the position paper by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. And I know about that because my doctor was giving me a hard time about protein and I went to him with that document and I was telling him what it said. And he said, may I have a copy of that? So doctors, we do appreciate what you do as well. Okay, so you're going to give us the lowdown on protein. And I just want to put this little aside in. I have a little video that I found on line of you and Brenda talking about what you've done. And she mentions the first, or you did, the first, one of the first books she wrote, Becoming Vegetarian, and how in that book you started learning about protein to be sure that what you put in there was correct. So that was what, 1995?

Vesanto Melina

93.

Kathy

93. So you've been studying protein and looking at that for quite a while, and I can't wait to get all the details. So can you share your presentation so we can hear about it?

Vesanto Melina

Okay. What I'll be talking about today is about plant protein. and I used to think about it just in terms of people, but in recent years it's become really important to think about planetary health as well. So we'll talk about that too. So, this book that we've done. The most recent one called Plant Powered Protein was done by these three co-authors, all shown here at our different ages. Brenda is 64 now. She'll be officially senior citizen, 65 in January. And I'm 81. And Brenda's son, Corey, wrote this book with us. And he's an agrologist with the government. And he's been vegetarian his whole life and vegan since he was about seven. So he's in his mid-30s now. And so we've all been vegan for decades, I guess Brenda and I for 30 years, and Corey close to that. Yeah. So anyway, it's been a really interesting journey to think about protein and have these evolving concepts over time. What we want to talk about here is different concepts about protein. If you're entirely plant-based, well, like your doctor was wondering, or different people wonder, you know, do vegans get enough protein? And are plant-based diets suitable for every stage of life? I have clients from all over North America and in Europe, sometimes South America, and, you know, particularly when they're going through pregnancy, they wonder, yikes, is this going to work? You know, and do we have to, this is a concept from the 70s, do we have to carefully combine grains and beans? Diet for a small planet, that concept came up and then it was turned around a bit later. And then does dietary choice affect our health? And you'll see more on that next, in a few week or two with Brenda Davis. And dietary choice and climate change, that's with Corey, but I'll do some of that. And then can top athletes compete successfully? Because we've really got some amazing athletes that are plant-based. And how can seniors avoid sarcopenia? I'm really interested in that one, of course, at this age. So these are just different concepts that come up. And in our culture, we really have a focus. When people think protein, they think meat. comes just pops in right away. But we know that some of the biggest animals on the planet, big, strong animals are herbivores. I mean, they might get a bug in their mouth once in a while, but they're basically herbivorous. And so people have come to believe that meat is the protein source. But look at this little list of animals here that are vegetarian themselves. They'll have mother's milk when they're babies, but then they're plant eaters. Rhinoceros, cow, elephant, moose, giraffe, big animals, strong, bison, hippopotamus, horse, yak, kangaroo. So these are not exactly the same metabolism, but it should give an idea that you can certainly build muscle. And what happened over time was that our early food guides told us that we should address things like malnutrition. For example, in the depression, people were really concerned about just getting enough to eat. And the concept of chicken in every pot came up as a real goal that you want to think about and uh the messages were you know trying to get people to include enough food enough protein the food guides were that way and food guides have really evolved a lot over the years they've changed um and uh they keep evolving now the Department of Agriculture keeps evolving and I hope the US one will come to resemble the Canadian one a little bit the next go round. And we don't even have a dairy group now. We have, you know, a protein group and it includes animal products, but it really focuses a lot on the plant protein as well. So it's really time that we redefined protein quality. This has been a concept that people have thought about recently, and what we did think as high quality proteins a long time ago are actually problematic. They're linked with higher rates of death, higher rates of chronic disease, and the what we're kind of mistakenly in our mind thought of as lower quality proteins. actually have favorable health outcomes. And then when we start looking at the environmental footprint, it really is important to start thinking about plant proteins as high quality. So if we wonder how we rated protein quality, and I've been around, you know, with my long history really to see this evolve. We have some concepts that were very much based in animals. Like you can't just stick one group of people in a little cage or room and give them only cheese or something or only wheat for a few months and then see what happens. You know, so of course, what our protein concepts have been based on. And I remember, you know, all the rat studies that One is the protein efficiency ratio, and that's based on a little rat, weanling rat, four weeks old, and when it doubles, its weight is about eight weeks old. And so they see what foods work most efficiently in this very strong growth period. So rats are different though. Like most people don't want to double their weight in four weeks that I've ever met. No, they're more on the other wavelength, right? And they don't, they don't grow fur all over their body, which affects the kind of amino acids that you need. So protein efficiency ratio is good. measure of protein for rats, but not for humans. And it doesn't estimate plant protein as highly as it should be. And it was adopted by in Canada in 1981 and in the US as the method for assessing protein quality and is still in place. Now, the US shifted to the next one a few decades ago, but it still is not a very accurate measure. And we really are a bit challenged, you know, because we can't put these humans in little boxes and see what happens. So this PDCAAS, protein digestibility corrected amino acid score, is used in many countries. And it's based on what protein goes in your mouth and comes what's left at the other end in terms of amino acids, but it was based on studies of little two-year-olds that were recovering from malnutrition. So their growth needs are quite different from an adult human or a teenager or anybody who's just maintaining their protein level. So we've just been left. And this is where the US. It is right now, although they still use the protein efficiency ratio that we just saw for many FDA studies. So what happens in the gut? is that some microorganisms use up some of the amino acids or produce some different ones. So the amount isn't accurate, what comes out at the end. And then they made adjustments to this using mainly rats. I mean, people have really been trying to figure out how much protein we need. So then we got this next method, which is the digestible indispensable amino acid score, or to say it more easily, D-I-A-A-S. And so it's based on the protein absorbed, and then what's coming out at the end of the small intestine. So you can only figure that out if you do a little, put a tube in, you know, surgically, and check at the end of the small intestine, and before it goes into the large intestine where there's all this bacterial interference. So different foods are eaten. And for all of these, They just feed one protein food at a time, like the poor old pig or rat or whatever it is, is given some fat and some sugar or carbohydrates, but the only protein is one protein at a time that it'll get for a substantial period of time. And then they check what's the difference in amino acids and protein between what goes in the mouth and what comes out of the intestine. So pigs are a little bit closer to humans in their metabolism, but there's some real differences. For example, humans eat cooked legumes, beans, peas, lentils. And pigs eat Rawlins. They don't get theirs all cooked and made into, you know, a nice vegetarian legume dish. So again, we're not exactly measuring what goes on. So the very most recent one is true ileal digestibility, or TID. And this is mainly done on pigs, chickens, or rats, but they have done it on some humans. that were either willing to have a tube inserted surgically or had some medical condition where there already was that kind of tube. So they've done a little bit of research. And what it's showing here is that plant foods have an equal effect. The protein is just as valuable. Like it's really, really close about say for the soy foods, the animal products, the beans, cooked beans for humans, there's like we absorb and use about 92 to 98% of the protein, same for the animal products. So what we found with the rats is that they like cheese and meat. So that got rated really highly and they didn't do so well when it was just a whole grain or a raw legume, this kind of thing. So anyway, that's our evolution. So as you can see, this is a study of a field that's quite lively, like it's still going on, they're still trying to figure it all out, you know, exactly what we need. But we've definitely come to the conclusion that plant foods provide protein very well. And that's a concept that isn't in strongly in our culture yet, but it's true. This is one concept also that came, I can't remember why this one came so much, but we had a rumor that plants lack an amino acid. Well what turned out in fact is that every food has a different pattern of amino acids. But plants don't lack any of the essential amino acids. They have all of these, the whole list here that you see, and there's a definite amount that we need. And we don't get that exact same pattern from any food, plant or animal. But we do get all the amino acids from plant foods. In fact, amino acids are where animals get their amino acids from plant foods. So it turns out that that the only food that is lacking in amino acid is it's a gelatin, an animal product. So the plant foods are not lacking. We can get and we should be eating a mix of foods. We shouldn't just be trying to live on cheese or cooked weed or, you know, any single food. It just doesn't work. It doesn't give you all the general nutrients you need, including not giving you the protein setup that you need. So animals don't make the essential amino acids. They're all made by plants and plants have every one of the nine. So we can either eat plants or eat the animals that ate plants. And so you'll end up getting all the amino acids easily, either way. In the early 1970s, there was a book, Diet for a Small Planet, Francis Moore Lapey, that came out. And it said, and I remember this because we thought for a while you had to carefully combine grains and beans and how much should you have, you know, your little pile, 60% of beans and 40% grains or the other way around. It was like you had to use a slide drill practically to put your dinner together. And actually, I learned about vegetarian in the 70s in this time, because I went to India, where they wonderfully do vegetarian, you know, and I learned how good legumes were, and how many ways they could be prepared and how delicious they could be from that culture. But we had Francis Moore Lappe by the 1980s say, whoops, that we don't need to do that. Like, don't worry about it at all. You just need a mix of foods, and you'll get all the amino acids you need. Like you can't live on even vegan foods like pop, soda pop or potato chips or something like it won't work. But if you have a mix of plant foods, you're going to be okay. And the legumes really, really help. They're like the protein superstars. So if we have, this is our food guide and this is showing the vegetables and fruits should take up about half the page. And grains, maybe a quarter. If you're trying to lose weight or cut down on calories, you can cut way back on the grains. And then nuts and seeds are important. For some people, they expand on the nuts and seeds part. And then the legumes are the superstars. And the foods that are really important in calcium are actually in every food group here. So there um it's a simple way to look at that and our plant powered protein website and our becoming vegan.ca website all have different measures of this.

Kathy

So you're saying that number one plants have all the protein that we need, the essential ones, and it also has all the calcium if we eat a variety, is that right?

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, no, what you've got to do for the calcium is have things like calcium set tofu really helps.

Kathy

Okay.

Vesanto Melina

Or if you look on the label, calcium or tofu's made from soybeans and they cook it, they remove a lot of the fiber. And then it coagulates. And the coagulant is a calcium salt, or it could be a magnesium salt. But if you want it to be one of your big calcium sources, you look on the label and see if that's what they've used. And it can be a terrific calcium source. Also, the calcium fortified non-dairy milk. So people should be looking at the um non-dairy milk label and see if it's got calcium some that are called natural or um that's the it's just made of whatever oats or soy or something but nothing added don't have the added calcium but if it says fortified or enriched it will have the calcium so um that's really easy and then the leafy greens like kale they have huge amounts of absorbable calcium. Like it's absorbed about almost twice as well as from cow's milk or soy milk. You know, it's really, really well absorbed. And then surprisingly, oranges and figs have calcium. Also, there's calcium fortified orange juice. And then I think traditionally in many indigenous communities or Hispanic communities that used tacos, they'd put some ash into the tacos and that had calcium in it. It was high in minerals. So, and then there's calcium fortified cereals and then almonds and sesame seeds both have calcium. So I use a lemon tahini salad dressing, which is in our plant powered protein book. I use that every day. day, salads twice a day. And so that just brings in some calcium. One of the things about calcium, it's good to use it a couple of times a day, like you absorb it well, rather than taking like 1000 milligrams calcium supplement, which would be pretty big little pill. It's better to have things through the day. And I do find a number of my clients that are a bit short in calcium, it's good to take a small supplement, but not the whole thing. Then we've got other essentials. So if people look at this becomingvegan.ca and the food guide, they'll also see down below more details about how much of everything. And it's also on plant-poweredprotein.com website. There's a food guide so people can see that. And now we need about 10 to 15% of our calories from protein. And people wonder, okay, which of these foods will give us protein? Well, it turns out that all of them will. So for example, the legumes, they all are pretty high in protein, 20 to 30% for most of the beans, peas, lentils. Legumes are things that grow in pods. So peas are that way, beans are that way. And there's 20 kinds of beans. And then tofu and soy foods and tempeh, they're the real heavy hitters, but the legumes are too. But you see, when we only need about 10 to 15% of our calories from protein, these are all easily providing that much protein and more. And the seeds are pretty good. Seeds have even more than nuts. Things like sunflower seeds and hemp seeds are particularly good. And vegetables. I've taught at a raw chef school in California, and when I was learning more and more about raw foods, and that was an interesting experience because there were really healthy people, but they'd have salads that were like practically a wheelbarrow. Well, big, big, big salads, not real wheelbarrow, but okay. And then grains provide about half the world's protein, at least 40%. So, you know, I've trekked in Nepal and had our sherpas and people that were helping us, they would just eat millet and like saag, spinach, dal bhat, rice, lentils, you know, and they, they were carrying everything for us, you know, and so many, many parts of the world, the diet is just plant foods and the people are strong. Now there are some that are lower, the starchy vegetables that you see down here, you know, potatoes, I mean, people can live on those and corn, but they're kind of around the borderline. And that's the same. The one food group that's kind of low is fruits. So they're under what they give is this wonderful protection, the antioxidants and the protective phytochemicals and so on. So you can see if we go back up to the top, we need about 10 to 15% of calories from protein. If you get enough calories, you're going to get enough protein. when your diet's predominantly whole plant foods. The only way you'd be short is what we've seen is on kind of fruitarian diets. There were a few of those not so popular now, but a couple of decades ago, people were experimenting with that, or if somebody has anorexia or just isn't eating enough. So legumes are, as I mentioned, the real heavy hitters, and they have these little nodules um I don't know how many people watching are gardeners but if they've ever pulled up their roots of their legumes they can have little tiny nodules and uh they help build bacteria that there's uh bacteria that build amino acids into it they take nitrogen from the soil and build it into amino acids and so The legumes really have plenty of protein. Just structurally, they're built this way. We've got tons of nitrogen in the air, and that's part of amino acids. And we're breathing it all the time, but we can't build it into amino acids, but these bacteria can. So, but many North Americans, they didn't grow up eating legumes. Like, did you? Did you eat legumes when you were living?

Kathy

Black-eyed peas, yeah.

Vesanto Melina

Black-eyed peas, yeah, okay. And there's 20 kinds, so people often don't know about all the different ones. So, but worldwide, people have thrived on legumes and had long lives. Like in Mexico, people had pinto beans, black beans, they’ve had black-eyed peas in Hispanic cooking too. India, they've got lentils and chickpeas and different mung beans, mung dal. In the Middle East, it's been more the fava beans and chickpeas. Chickpeas are pretty widely used worldwide, and they also use white beans. In Asia, they have soy, of course, has been used and made into tofu and these veggie meats for 600 years now. And red beans they have. So. The if we want to think of Yeah, well, what am I going to do with all these beans? You know, in my house, like you, you could start to think about. through the day. Whoops, I'll go back. At breakfast, like my husband has a simple, simple breakfast, toast and peanut butter. And he will put a little jam on it sometimes, but that's a very simple breakfast, and yet it's got over 20 grams of protein with two slices of toast and the peanut butter on it. So that's an important one. Some places have beans on toast or might have a breakfast burrito. There's scrambled tofu. That's in one of our books called Cooking Vegan and also in the protein-powered book. There's masala dosas in India. It's nice crunchy wrap that is made of partly lentils and partly a grain. and filled with vegetables. And then we can also have soy milk, soy yogurt, on cereals, in smoothies. I put hemp seeds into my smoothies, kale smoothies. That's what I usually have for breakfast.

Kathy

I had oatmeal. I couldn't go anywhere without starting the day on oatmeal.

Vesanto Melina

And what do you put with it, or do you put milk or do you put seeds?

Kathy

I don't. I'm thinking maybe I need to start adding soy milk. I usually use fruit and I just love oatmeal. I could eat it all day long.

Vesanto Melina

Oh, that's great. Good for you. Yeah. Well, that's when you're like, we're with the people that are worldwide eating grains. Yeah. And then the fruit that's with it helps us absorb iron, the vitamin C helps iron absorption. And the soy milk is a really, really good one for protein compared to some of the other milks. So that just works perfectly well. Yeah. So you're right on this list here with your soy milk and cereals. Then for lunch or supper, there's so many ways to include beans in soups, in salads. I make red lentils are kind of fun because they cook quickly, like 15, 20 minutes, and they kind of disappear like if you cook them into a pasta sauce. So our grandson, who seems quite determined at this point at four, not to eat any vegetables. You know how they go through that stage. But you can hide a lot of stuff in pasta sauces. So eat pasta and pasta sauce. And so one of the things I do is make red lentils. I make a curry that I like and put it in little containers in the freezer, and it makes it really, really easy. You just pull one out and warm it for your lunch. Then in the Middle East, of course, falafels are very popular or from or lasagna can be made with so many different things, scrambled tofu or some of the veggie meats and mushrooms. And then tofu, which Sometimes people think, well, it's so boring. It's just like white, but who would eat a raw white chicken breast? Like you got to make it taste something, you know? So if you start marinating it, you get wonderful flavors because it does take up the flavors very well. And then of course there are burgers and kebabs. So because plant-based eating is getting so popular, we can look online for just about any recipe we really like. can put in the word vegan, and we'll come up with, you know, six or eight versions that you might find really fun to try. Then also, we can eat plant-based desserts that are quite nutritious, which is an important thing, like chia pudding that we've got. It says in our next book, but it's actually in our plant protein book. So that's this one. It's got really good cookies that I keep in the freezer, and so I don't eat too many of them, but they've got black beans in them. And then in our Kick Diabetes book, we've got these brownies. And so you can make different tasty dessert kind of things that are really, really delicious. And there's so many different cheeses now, some of the cashew cheeses like Miyoko's that are very tasty. That one has cashews in it, of course. So there's lots of good desserts. And then snacks are quite important, I think. I use little tofu snacks a lot. and that are marinated tofu and I put in the air fryer. I make them in cubes rather than slabs right now. But in there's hummus, many different kinds, and you can make just different variations on hummus. There are roasted chickpeas or soybeans that come in packages. Sugar snap peas, you can just eat them raw. And then I find for snacking in the evening or watching TV or having company you can just make a tray of different dips like humus and vegan cheeses um you can have the muffins that kind of thing um yeah.

Kathy

I've done that kind of thing with um the tofu cheese that you can make and make it out of tofu and put it on a plate and um my relative was eating away on it one day and somebody said you know who made that she said I know it's great cheese and she couldn't believe it wasn't.

Vesanto Melina

Wow that's a good one yeah that works good that's really yeah it can be really excellent this cheese plate was from Miyoko's um different cheeses so what we ask people to do is aim for this might sound daunting three servings of legumes a day and serving means about half a cup but doesn't mean you have to sit down and eat three big bowls of beans because there's like the peanut butter on toast or there's the soy milk on your oatmeal or there's hummus um There are different veggie burgers, some of which are quite high in protein. And then, of course, you can put tofu or tempeh in all kinds of different arrangements. And I like this bean salad that's shown there. That's one kind of go-to. It's nice for when the weather's hot and you can just keep it in the fridge. You can make it. and it's still good after three or four days. So I like those things where you only have to cook a couple times a week or prepare food. So I wondered how many legumes, and in Britain they call them pulses, or beans, peas, lentils, could you name? Can you think of? You had your one, but what else is there?

Kathy

Well, you know, it was interesting because I was looking at Japan and they have 20 kinds of soybeans. I mean, it's just enormous, the number of soybeans, but yeah, there's so many kinds of beans.

Vesanto Melina

Wow.

Kathy

I love butterbeans. Those are my favorite.

Vesanto Melina

Okay. Well, here's a list of some of them. You'll probably find, oh yeah, that one, you know, the chickpeas, pinto black, all different colors, kidney, lima, cannellini, navy, white, red, adzuki, mung, fava, or broad beans in South America, green beans, yellow beans, peas, snow peas, black-eyed peas, lentils of different colors, and then soybean, many forms, many, many types. So it's really a kind of an adventure and you can find different groups, like if people are going more plant based, they could find groups in their area that are having cooking classes or find a neighbor that wants to explore some of these different things. Because often, you don't want to buy a whole pile of ingredients and then never want to use them again. But it's more fun if you do it with a group. But here's one about the gas crisis. And People wonder about this. Yeah, yeah, three beans a day, three servings of beans a day, give me a break, you know. But we find that beans have a type of fiber called oligosaccharides that we don't digest. And our bacteria like them, but they can produce gas at first, but when we regularly eat beans, our bacteria kind of adjust to this new food and... the situation changes. So people adjust within a few weeks. So what we suggest is that you start with the smaller, like the red lentils, the little mung beans, the split peas, and small amounts, so you don't leap in suddenly and have, you know, half your plate legumes in each meal. And you also rinse the canned beans well, like if you have, you know, there's a slightly thick syrup or just the water on canned beans. And canned beans are fine, by the way. You don't have to cook from scratch because it's the minerals and protein you want and they're not damaged by canning. Now, if you're cooking beans, like cooking chickpeas, have you ever seen all that water that floats up to the top that's all bubbly, white? Yeah. So you can scoop that off just with a big spoon. And that has some of these oligosaccharides in it and you just change the situation. So you skim off that foam. And also don't use the soaking water. And a chef that I work with, when I did our Cooking Vegan book, He said we should cook beans until they're soft enough to mash on the roof of your mouth with your tongue. That that cooking vegan book was really fun to do. And I did it with this chef in the 4 seasons. So I learned a lot about I I'm nutrition and he's a chef. Yeah.

Kathy

Now the foam that you're talking about is the foam that comes after it cooks, right? Yeah.

Vesanto Melina

While it cooks. Yeah, the whole time it's cooking. Yeah. And tofu is cooked and then some of the fiber is removed. And so it doesn't have as much oligosaccharides in the first place. And the same with tempeh, which is fermented. So they’re easy ones to use as well. Now, about gas, just in general, you shouldn't gulp air because swallowed air or dentures that don't fit, eating fast, these are all ways we get a lot of air in our system without even blaming the beans. Then we're supposed to, for longevity, stop eating when we're about 80% full, which is quite a concept instead of just having to finish everything on your plate no matter what, or stuffing yourself so you can hardly move. Yeah. And then some of the international solutions about gas that are used around the world where they do eat beans a lot, just these herbs and seasonings, or ing, kombu, ginger. These are all different items that have been used and they affect the gas results. And then on average, people pass gas 15 to 25 times a day. And they actually did some research on this, even on a military base in the Midwest. They strap these little contraptions on the behinds of the people who were serving in the military. and figured out how much gas was produced, and how often. And so anyway, they do have some good data showing, yeah, gas is normal, but we don't want huge amounts or discomfort with it. So the suggestions I've said are to make it not daunting. So people are shifting to plant-based diets for many reasons. According to the World Health Organization, the meats are probable carcinogens, probably cause cancer. And the World Health Organization would not be saying that if there wasn't a lot of really good data to back it up. They have to, they can't just fling out a rumor or something that has a few studies. It's very, very well backed up. And also the American Institute of Cancer Research has the same data on their website and cured meats. which I remember bacon was the last thing I gave up in the '70s, but these are convincing carcinogens. That means the data's very, very strong. Bacon, ham, sausage. And one of the surprising things to me is that people are still having like hot dog sales for kids at schools, and hot dogs are in this cured meat category. So that would be like, the convincing carcinogens, some other ones are Roundup and cigarettes. So it's in that same category, which is really surprising. And in some of the schools, for example, in New York schools, they've stopped serving hot dogs. I mean, there are vegan hot dogs people could use, and they look just the same and they've got the same seasonings and so on. Those would be okay, but the meat ones are convincing carcinogens. Then soy foods, this is one of the things that people wondered about for a while. They have isoflavones in them. Are they linked to cancers, hormone-related cancers especially? And it turns out they actually reduce our risk. The isoflavones are sufficiently different from estrogen that they kind of get in the way of estrogen reabsorption or absorption and cause less of the hormone related cancers, especially if you give your kids some soy milk and some tofu. But also for people who have had those conditions, breast or prostate cancer, they reduce the risk of recurrence.

Kathy

We just did an interview with Dr. Delaney, and she went over all the research about why soy foods are really good for us. And so I'll put the link in the show more to that video as well, because it was amazing to me all the reasons why you wanted to eat it.

Vesanto Melina

That's right. Oh, it's such good food. Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. And by the way, most of the foods that are grown for humans, the soy foods, are organic. The inorganic ones that are GMO, genetically modified and so on, are grown for animals. So one of the big environmental problems is about soybeans, but it's not the organic ones grown for humans that are this huge problem. It's the ones that are fed as fodder to actually particularly chickens and to beef. Yeah. So we're just really, the environmental influence is coming in thick and fast in the research. So people are shifting because of animal issues, of course, and environmental. And I find that also guys are starting to get interested in plant-based. And part of this is because of the environmental impact. They're concerned about climate change. I mean, you know, people are having these huge floods, people are drowning, you know, with the type of water influence on the East Coast. And then on the West Coast, we're finding, like both of my grown kids have had to evacuate because of fires, you know, so we're finding that climate change is drastically influenced by dietary choice. We were thinking of it all being transportation, but diet has a huge impact, at least 25%. And so if we want to reduce climate change, we better shift our diets in a different direction. So one of the people who did a lot of this really convincing research starting in 2018, this is a very impactful study, was by Joseph Poor of Oxford. And I think he took about five years to write this particular paper and took one year off completely. And they looked at thousands of farms around the world and processors And they looked at every aspect. Okay, what is involved in putting fertilizer on the soybeans? What's involved in water that you have to feed to the cows or the chickens? What's involved? Just every part of the step of the way. What about the transportation to the slaughterhouse? What about the slaughter products to the butcher or to the packaging plant? And he found that impact could vary a lot per item. And I know some farmers are trying really well, really hard to lessen their impact, even if they're producers of animal products. But they still find that the mean or average environmental impact of animal products far exceeds those of plant foods. There are few plant foods that get a little bit high, like the almonds in California use up a lot of water, but mostly it's the animal products are way, way up there. So I'll show you a few slides from his research. And the indicators they looked at were land use. So I mentioned all this land used to grow fodder and to graze cows, you know, forests cut down for that kind of thing. greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution. So that dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, you know, from the Mississippi River and all the damaging items that are put onto crops and You know, they're just used to make soda pop or, you know, corn, this kind of thing. It's just crazy what we're doing really. And land acidification, they have these big manure lagoons beside like hog farms and they get cracks in them. So things leak out into the land, or they start overflowing when there's a big flood or water. And then water use, you know, some parts of the world, they're just desperate to get enough water. I mean, I've seen, you know, fights breaking out over buckets of water 'cause people just don't have enough and yet we're wasting it so much. So the land that's used for food and agriculture is huge. And the greenhouse gas emissions, the water pollution, the acidification. So these are all really important aspects. And what we find is, for example, here's about greenhouse gas emissions. And look at the top, the red lines are animal products. So we see beef up there, it goes out over to 100. And the third one down is beef from dairy herds, because of course, milk cows they get the last about six years and then when their production goes down they're made into hamburgers so again they're using a lot of fodder for that process um and then if we look way down about halfway down the slide we see a tofu and the beef herd produces 31 times more greenhouse gas emissions than tofu. So this is worldwide data. And, you know, we get our food from all over the place, but you can have some farmer that's trying to do a little bit better, but it's just a vast difference here. And then if we look at land use, and this is per kilogram of food, so again, we find lamb and mutton and beef up at the top. You see, cheese is next for land use. But you can imagine a kilogram of cheese is quite a lot of cheese. You know, it's a very compact food. But then tofu is way, way down here. The beef uses about 105 times more land than the soybeans that are grown for tofu. So the beef grazing or feeding them soy, feeding them grains, getting them into the feedlot and trying to stuff them up so they'll be big to sell the animals. And apparently the chickens too use a lot of these soybeans. And then water pollution. Again, you can see the red lines at the top, beef from dairy, beef from cows that are just the beef herd. Fish farms, prawns farm, cheeses up there. And then we find way down here, tofu. So the beef herd is 59 times our water pollution. I mean, these results are just astounding. And we do have farmers that are just trying their best and putting out information. You know, I did really well with my herd. You know, I'm not using so much, but because the gap is so vast, it's different.

Kathy

Those charts are in this book, aren't they?

Vesanto Melina

They are. All those charts are in our plant powered protein book.

Kathy

So shocking. Just so shocking.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, now here, water use, cheese uses a lot. I was interested in talking to Miyoko's about her cheese production, and they get it from high in, I think, Vietnam, where it's just from rainfall. So that's not quite using as much, you know, river water, but of course, then they have to be flown here. So the water use, the animal products are up there. Again, the tofu's like scrunchy way down at the bottom here. It's just quite, quite different. So that's why I've been very impressed. And other pulses, because this Oxford is in England, so they use the word pulses, yeah, instead of legumes, but that's what it means, yeah. So anyway, the plant foods are really coming into prominence as a way to mitigate climate change. and then acidifying emissions. Pigs are pretty high up here, but you know all the manure from these animals. It's got to go somewhere. We think it would be used for growing crops. But I mean it's all contained in these lagoons near the production units, you know, the stockyards and so on. It doesn't get out to the crops. It just gets to acidify land. And people that live near these factory farms find both the air quality, the water quality, and the land use greatly affected by the animal production. So this was another research study from 2023, O'Malley. And this studies really are coming in thick and fast. This just compares keto diets, paleo diets, omnivore or non-vegetarian, fish eater, vegetarian and vegan, and what their carbon footprint is overall. So the keto, which uh for a while was popular you know eat lots of meat and eat some vegetables you know not so much carbs and uh they've got a big carbon footprint um if we look at the different legumes and compare them to meat in their impact their health impact we find that the legumes have Great fiber really cleans out our GI tract. They're high in protective phytochemicals, high in antioxidants, and meat and fish have little or no of those. So we wonder, you know, how do we compare them health wise? And I know Brenda Davis will talk a bit more about that. And then antioxidants, we find the Plant foods are very high, whereas they're low in fat, saturated fat and cholesterol, these problematic components of foods. The non-heme iron, now when I first went to, was teaching university or way back when in nutrition, we thought iron was a, meat was a great source of iron. Really good, well absorbed. Well, now we've realized that you absorb the iron from meat, whether you need it or not. The non-heme iron, you absorb it if you need it, and your absorption's less if you don't need it. So you don't get excessive high iron absorption. And so the iron, we find people who are on plant-based diets, they're actually getting as much iron as people on meat-based diets. you know, to bring them to adequate levels. Some people on meat-based diets, of course, get way too much.

Kathy

We had a member who had such high iron, his doctor said to give blood to get rid of some of it because it was dangerously high. But now he's plant-based and there's no problem anymore.

Vesanto Melina

No problem. Interesting. Okay. And of course, there aren't hormones and antibiotics in the legumes, but there are in the animal products, the meat and fish. There's something called TMAO produced in the guts of meat eaters, but it's not produced in the guts of plant eaters. And this is linked with heart disease. And another kind of new area of research has been about why is meat so linked with cancer? Well, it's possibly because of the Neu5G, this compound has a long, long name if you spell it out, but it's present in meats and in fish, but it's not present in plant foods at all. And there aren't so many chemical contaminants. Of course, it's really good to choose organic. So one of the things about legumes, if people want to think about just starting to include some more, explore from our big long list that we had, people who ate beans and lentils and so on have lower percentages of body fat. They have protein in them, but they don't have much fat. Tofu has inching its way up towards animal products, amounts of fat. The other legumes are like 3% calories from fat. They're really low. And legumes are a common feature in all the blue zones where people live to a hundred or more. Okinawa, Sardinia, Loma Linda, California, Costa Rica, Icaria, and the statistically significant indicator of longevity is our little superstar legumes. So the health benefits, they help us keep the right kind of bacteria in our gut. They're really good at that. Bacteria go, yay, the healthy ones. And they support our digestive health overall and reduce our risk of gastrointestinal diseases. We wonder why we get only about half the rates of colon cancer and legumes are a real help. They lower our LDL and total cholesterol, reduce our risk of heart disease and stroke. They stabilize our blood glucose. And I know I'm from a family that has lots of addictions, alcohol addictions, and diabetes and I find that I went down to the Betty Ford Center once to talk to their dietitians about what kinds of diets for people with addictions. I've had lots of clients with this, and I was really interested in finding out and legumes really help us stabilize our blood glucose. Those of us who are from this genetic pattern where we've typically got lots of alcoholism or diabetes, our insulin production isn't delivered in such a way to keep our blood glucose level as much as it is for some people. But legumes are good. They'll just deliver Okay, Kathy, here's some more glucose. Here's some more. Here's some more. It's kind of a gradual, steady thing. And so it's really helpful to stabilize blood sugar. So I have to keep. That's why I have my little snacky tofu cubes all the time that are marinated and really tasty, but that helps. Or my husband will make sure, you know, I've got something like if my blood sugar drops, I get to be quite a different person, different human being, because glucose fuels our brains. Even though carbohydrates have a bad name, glucose is good for our brain. Yeah. And they also improve satiety. They help with weight loss. They just keep us feeling like we're nourished. And of course, legumes have iron and zinc and lots of B vitamins. They're very nutritious.

Kathy

You know, Dr. Barnard, he talks about that. You might want to just eat a small serving of legumes for breakfast.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah.

Kathy

And I imagine it's because of blood sugar and also all those other reasons. Yeah.

Vesanto Melina

That's right. It helps you get through to lunchtime. Really does, yeah. Whereas if you have something like white rice, you'll get this peak and then drop pretty quickly, or sugar even faster, peak and drop, or fruit doesn't last very long. So we had, I got interested in plant protein and leucine for both athletes who want to build muscle and for seniors. So there's Michael Clapper, the doctor from Moving Medicine Forward. And so I just found, I wrote to Robert Cheek, who's a plant-based athlete, muscle builder, and asked him to send me a picture of his typical lunch, dinner, and he did, this is his, yeah. So he's got little tofu cubes there, he's got some chickpeas, Looks like a bit of edamame. Oh, you know all you can have these things kind of ready and easy. Just put them onto your plate and then some veggies. So anyway, that's a meal that has 28 grams of protein for lots of us. That would be half our protein for the day. and it also has leucine, which is one of the branch chain amino acids that are good for muscle building. So this is an important one for seniors. Now, with athletes, for a while, people were really wondering, yeah, can you get enough protein for all these different sports to keep you at the top? So in all these sports, the people shown here, surfing, tennis, boxing, football, soccer, basketball, distance running, snowboarding, Ironman triathlons, then you can find people, I think there's a number of websites like plant-based athletes, or just start searching around and you'll find a ton. They're just coming up a mile a minute. Another runner, Carl Lewis, got nine gold medals in the Olympics. Volleyball, Formula One champion, race car driver, and even his dog is vegan, which you can do. Dogs are fine with plant-based food. I found that they do better when there's a soy component, but there's one brand called Virtue that is a plant-based, but you can look online. This woman is an Olympic gold medalist and also a skater and a mum. So the branched chain amino acids are really well known in people that want to build muscle. And typically they'll be buying whey protein, W-H-E-Y, at the, you know, Costco or wherever. And there have been a number of studies now that show, hey, soy works as well as whey protein. It's got the branching amino acids. And so there are official recommendations from the different sports groups. And in Robert Cheek's dinner, he had, like, for a big guy, more than half what he needs for the day right in there. And so we're finding that we can get leucine. Leucine is the one of the three branching amino acids that is particularly tied to muscle building. But we get it from the legumes, the soy foods, wheat, seeds, nuts and grains. And so there are some studies being done, quite a few studies now that show that you can get it as easily from plant protein as from animal protein. And so here's an example of a day that so there's your little oats for the morning. And half a cup dries and soy milk, then some tofu for lunch, some beans for supper. So that's what we're telling people they should have is the three servings. And then they can have bread and peanut butter, which adds a fourth of the legumes because of the peanut butter. So it's not this really ridiculous kind of eating. It's pretty normal, but it just means you don't waste a lot of your calories on junk foods. Sarcopenia is one that's of interest, and I got interested in this because I realized that for some seniors, they're not eating much, you know, they're dentally challenged. They can hardly get to the store. They don't have food around as easily. They're maybe have lost a partner and they're not liking cooking as much. Anyway, sometimes people go to the tea and toast diet. Now, if you put peanut butter on your toast, that could be okay. It's part of it anyway, that's a big chunk of it. But we are saying that for people with sarcopenia, people should have more of the plant proteins. And I find that a supplement would be helpful in some of those cases, which could be added to a smoothie. You wouldn't need to put the whole scoop into one smoothie. You could put it into a couple of smoothies, but it can really help. It also is really important to keep exercising. So I've been, I did a triathlon within the last year, but it was like a baby triathlon. It wasn't like a really big one. They've got these kind of beginner ones. So you do run or walk, you do cycle, you do swim, but it's not the really long, long distances. And I can do it in a couple hours, but anyway.

Kathy

Hours, you were in your eighties.

Vesanto Melina

Yeah, I know. Yeah, but this is what we should do. And those blue zone people like they're out there gardening and carrying their great grandchild around a bit or you know, they're doing all these things. And that's how we keep healthy and old. Our bodies are meant to be used, not to be sitting watching TV or, you know, looking out the window. It's just, it's really important. This is where we cycle around the seawall in Vancouver. So my husband and I like to do stuff like that. And you don't, I don't think you have to do really impressive, like a triathlon's fun to do if you do a little one, like a mini one. And then people always make it in their heads that you did a marathon, but you didn't. So it's kind of, impressive to do it if you want to try that. Okay, so this is getting near the end of this presentation. The position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and even have health benefits. So people wondered about this. And still there are. I had a client yesterday. I do have clients from all over the place who just want confidence that their way of eating is delivering everything they need. And this one went to her dietitian. This was in a real meat eating part of Canada. But the dietitian said, being vegetarian is like an eating disorder. Like still some people, this is yesterday. So it's, it's really, you know, people's ideas move slowly in some places, and especially if their economies try tied to, you know, production of certain animal products. Anyway, that was surprising to me. Her daughter was a famous TV personality. the one that was asking about this. She was kind of shocked, anyway. She didn't go back there anymore. And these diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle. So often I find people get interested in nutrition when they start pregnancy like, and the young woman and her husband or partner will go yikes we better start thinking about this stuff you know we're building a little human here and uh that you can definitely do a good one and one of our other books that we um we have that's very popular it's used as a textbook is Becoming Vegan Comprehensive Edition and it's a big fat book it's used as a textbook in Taiwan and the United States and Canada and by doctors and dietitians and different college university groups. But anyway, we've just been very specific about all the different nutrients you need.

Kathy

Well, and I know I loved the chapter in here.

Vesanto Melina

Oh, yeah, we've made it much more compact in this one, in the clan power protein. You're right. Yeah. And we did cover every one. Okay, if you've got a toddler and you want to make sure they get enough protein, here's some tips for athletes. And then one of the most controversial things in that position paper, which is still the last one, and I was the lead author of it. But when we wrote things about the environment, it was the position paper is very political to do, because people are looking over it with a fine tooth comb. The reviewers, you know, to see that every word, every comment is accurate, you know, but they're proving more and more to be environmentally sustainable. And that, you know, because we've had so much drastic climate change effects, people are starting to get interested. And I think this will be kind of a tipping point. So our books are, the Kick Diabetes Cookbook is one that has no added sugar, no added oil, and the recipes taste good. So we have a little team of testers, and in Canada and San Francisco, and They won't let anything in unless it gets 5 stars. So we're really careful to, you know, have recipes that taste good by people. And some of them are real gourmets and some of them like things very simple and quick. So it's a good way to start that out. And then our becoming vegan is like a textbook. And then the cooking vegan I mentioned is with this chef from the four seasons, very good recipes. And then becoming raw, we did quite a while ago when raw was a trend, but it looked at all the challenges and you know, the different mysteries about raw foods and myths and explored whether they were accurate or not. And then the newest one is our Plant Powered Protein. Our books are in 10 languages. Yeah. But the plant powered protein just came out, and it actually got top rating number one on Amazon in the sustainability category. So it's been very, very popular. So that's the last of my presentation. And these are our different websites. Nutrispeak, my main one, talks about consultations and stuff. And then the Plant-Powered Protein Becoming Vegan Kick Diabetes Cookbook. And hello to all your viewers. It's really, really fun to connect with people all over North America and further.

Kathy

Well, we'll put all of those things on our show more notes so people can go look at those. Who knows who you might hear from? I have one last question, and that was, was there anything that made you go aha or I didn't know that? When you've gone back and looked again and again and again, and especially this time to protein study, was there anything new that came across?

Vesanto Melina

Well, one of the things, you're going to have Brenda Davis on, right, in a while. Yeah, she's got all these jaw droppers in the chapter that are about the changes. So what they found was when people changed, they'd eat, instead of eating bacon, they'd have beans on toast or peanut butter on toast or something like that, that 3% of their calories changed, they'd have a drop in chronic diseases. They were, and she's got a lot of these very, very interesting jaw droppers. I was interested particularly in the things for seniors, and that's when I developed, if you see this particular, that one, Yato, those little, those are tempeh, but they could be tofu. But I have found that when I could marinate tofu, and we did this really good little marinade with toasted sesame oil, a tiny bit, low sodium tamari, ginger, garlic, and one other thing. What was it? I can't remember. There's one more thing. You and you marinate it, the little tofu cubes for a while. Done page, I think 132 or something. Yeah, tofu fingers. Oh, rice vinegar. I don't think I said that. Yeah, just a bit. Anyway, it's a simple little marinade. You keep it in your fridge, put your little tofu cubes in it and then put them in the air fryer.

Kathy

Okay.

Vesanto Melina

They're so good. They're like eating potato chips or something easy. And you just have that handy. And when you get hungry, it helps level out your blood sugar. So I found that those... several things. But we had a lot of fun with this book. Like it was an eye-opener from beginning to end.

Kathy

Well, you know, I'm just amazed. That was just a fantastic presentation. We now have a really good background in plant protein and how wonderful it is. And even a way to go get it right there off the bat with soy milk and tofu fingers. So that sounds good. Thank you so much. We really appreciate this. Keep riding. We expect it for the next 3-5 years.

Vesanto Melina

We're going to do one on plant-powered seniors. Yeah. We will. Because Brenda has to get old enough, but she won't.

Kathy

That sounds great. Thank you so much. We really.

Vesanto Melina

Thank you, Kathy.