Philosophical Vegan Forum

OK, what about a simple idiot proof 100 calorie table with protein, dietary fiber and omega 3 as the good guys, and saturated fat, methionine and omega 6 as the bad guys?

It's true that the info I had was for lean meat. However, the site I was looking at (calorieking.com) has both chicken and tuna at around 400g per 2k calories.

Per calorie white bread scored 3.5% protein, 1% dietary fiber and almost no saturated fat. Why is white bread considered unhealthful? Is it because of the 9:1 Omega 6 to 3 ratio? I doubt it as the Omega ratio is the same for regular wholemeal bread.

Jebus wrote:It's true that the info I had was for lean meat. However, the site I was looking at (calorieking.com) has both chicken and tuna at around 400g per 2k calories.

I assume skinless chicken breasts? I'm getting 367g per 2k calories for that.

Fish is hard to beat without isolated protein sources. It's both lower in fat, and the types of fat are less damaging (and include DHA and EPA).
It's much more difficult to make as strong an argument against fish on macronutrient based health grounds, which is why it's so often recommended.

We can look at the methionine content (too high -- although this is good for starving people who are getting the minimum nutrition), and heavy metals (this is source dependent, clean water and herbivorous fish have much less), as well as neurotoxins and other carcinogens, and it's still not cholesterol free, but in terms of protein per calorie it's hard to compete with.

At that point, you have to compare the other bad things you're getting with the protein (as above), and the lack of good things (antioxidants).

In terms of animal products, fish is probably the least of evils nutritionally.

What I might do is have complete protein count only up to 50 grams, and then any protein including methionine above that amount no longer counts to the total, because it's counterproductive to health beyond the minimum.
It will make grains look a lot worse, but legumes (except perhaps soy) and probably a lot of veggies look better.
And it will pretty much knock all animal products down off the charts.

I'm not sure what to call that measurement though. Maybe "healthy/good protein", and the excess counts as "Bad protein"
And do the same thing for fat, and carbohydrates.

So you might have good/bad for each category, which could put things in perspective. It's also very intuitive for people to understand -- people know there's good and bad fat, so they can probably understand good/bad protein.

And the fact that there would inevitably be bad protein in some plant products too will show that it's unbiased.

Jebus wrote:Per calorie white bread scored 3.5% protein, 1% dietary fiber and almost no saturated fat. Why is white bread considered unhealthful? Is it because of the 9:1 Omega 6 to 3 ratio? I doubt it as the Omega ratio is the same for regular wholemeal bread.

It's because it's not a whole food, and much of the fiber, vitamins, and minerals have been removed with the bran and germ which are gone.

brimstoneSalad wrote:I'm not sure what to call that measurement though. Maybe "healthy/good protein", and the excess counts as "Bad protein"

Is there such a thing as bad plant protein? Can one really get too much of it?

If I were to count protein as percentage per calorie, I would have to include the full amount. Perhaps I can include an asterisk point for each food for good or bad details that may not be evident on the nutritional info, such as the Mercury in fish.

Jebus wrote: Is there such a thing as bad plant protein? Can one really get too much of it?

I think so. Sesame seeds and Brazil nuts, for example, are high in Methionine. Eating a lot of those would be expected to cause cancer as well.
The same with a very large amount of soy, perhaps, since there's a lot of Methionine in that too.
Grain is not as high in methionine, but also not as good.

The best protein would be the low methionine protein found in legumes and veggies probably.

It's a sliding scale.

Jebus wrote:If I were to count protein as percentage per calorie, I would have to include the full amount.

I'd just count if daily requirement is fully met with 2,000 calories. If it is, you could cap that at 100%.
Then leave another row: Bad protein/harmful excess below that for the spill-over for the methionine.
Then another for "Harmless excess protein", which is the other proteins.

So most foods and dishes (of constructed properly) would list meeting 100% of the requirement.
And then some would go over -- either falling into the bad, the harmless, or a little bit of both.

Bad protein is only Methionine in excess of daily requirements (not methionine that is needed). So breaking it into three data points makes sense and preserves all of the data, if you don't want to use some kind of subtraction or means of presentation that might hide other info.

Jebus wrote:Perhaps I can include an asterisk point for each food for good or bad details that may not be evident on the nutritional info, such as the Mercury in fish.

You could get an assay done for heavy metals for each food, and just list it along with nutrients. Mercury per 2,000 calories. Veggies will be very low, next to fish which should be very high. Heavy metals are highly location dependent, unfortunately, so drawing from the USDA database might not be relevant for your location.

OK thanks. I was hoping to make something completely idiot proof and am starting to doubt if it's even possible.

Jebus wrote:OK thanks. I was hoping to make something completely idiot proof and am starting to doubt if it's even possible.

If you show all of the data, it really just depends on how much weight they give to each one. Some people think cholesterol is an important nutrient that they need to consume more of; you can't underestimate (or would it be overestimate?) idiots.

To make it idiot proof, you'd have to weight them yourself and show the weighted data in a data limited score. Like A+ or C-

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Sun Aug 09, 2015 6:57 am Some people think cholesterol is an important nutrient that they need to consume more of; you can't underestimate (or would it be overestimate?) idiots

Ummm it's my understanding that only a small proportion of people have the ability to absorb cholesterol in their lower bowel. You're not suggesting that imbibing cholesterol would lead to higher levels it in plasma?

dapto wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2018 1:02 am Ummm it's my understanding that only a small proportion of people have the ability to absorb cholesterol in their lower bowel.

It's a spectrum. Those who absorb larger amounts are called hyper-responders. As far as I know, everybody absorbs some of it.

People, in general, absorb a larger percentage of it the less they eat.
Eat a little cholesterol, you'll absorb more of that, eat more and there are diminishing returns for most people. Hyper-responders keep absorbing more and more when dietary cholesterol is increased.

To put it another way:

Say you have two people you give cookies to. You give person A and B each one cookie, and they eat one cookie each. Now you give person A and B ten cookies each. Person A eats two cookies and then says that's enough for him. Person B eats all ten cookies. Person B would be the hyper-responder, and may keep stuffing himself with cookies until he dies if you give him more, where person A is self-limiting to an extent (given a hundred cookies, person A might decide to eat three).

dapto wrote: ↑Tue Feb 20, 2018 1:02 amYou're not suggesting that imbibing cholesterol would lead to higher levels it in plasma?

Of course it does, but how much higher depends on genetics.
What's more important for anybody is saturated fat consumption, which raises levels far more than dietary cholesterol does, and typically in a bad way.
There's no compelling evidence that there's such a thing as too low cholesterol causing disease (although some diseases cause low cholesterol).

The point is that some people think cholesterol is an essential dietary nutrient, and that if you don't eat it you'll get sick and die. They don't realize that our bodies produce plenty of it on their own from consumption of saturated fat (which exists as a small proportion of pretty much all plant fats, and a larger proportion in tropical oils and animal fats). The only way to not have enough for hormone synthesis is to eat virtually no fat at all, and that comes with its own problems.