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So in countries where nutritionally varied food is not widely available, people are so reliant on cereal sources that they become afflicted by deficits in many

by pierrec 11y ago

So in countries where nutritionally varied food is not widely available, people are so reliant on cereal sources that they become afflicted by deficits in many nutrients. Doesn't have any easy solution. But the paper also raises multiple times the point that vegetarian diets tend to be too reliant on cereals, such as here: "Because the bioavailability of zinc from meat is four times greater than that from cereals [113], it is clear that the displacement of animal-based foods by cereal-grain- and plant-based diets is not only responsible for impaired zinc metabolism in developing countries, but also in western populations adopting vegetarian diets [114, 115]." It's so much easier to have a vaguely balanced nutrition when you add a bit of meat. It's also perfectly possible to have it as a vegetarian, but it really requires that you know what you're doing and that you make sure you get necessary nutrients. This can be challenging if you only use "traditional" food, but it's made easier by products like Vega powder (which I've been having recently, pretty good!), which specifically try to compensate frequent shortcomings of a vegan diet, or I suppose HN favorites like Soylent and Mealsquares. I'm not sure the last two are really appropriate as vegetarian complements, though.

rancur 11y ago
I, personally, began experiencing this myself. If I'm eating healthy, I can add in cereal. If I'm not, I feel physically horrible eating cereal. So I just avoid it and try to eat healthy meals all the time. Keeps my productivity and mood high, and you would not believe how good my skin looks when I've been eating plenty of vegetables for the last week.
- magic_beans 11y ago
  Note: cereal grains are not "cereal" (I'm assuming you mean breakfast cereal)?
  - rancur 11y ago
    oh. yes. I don't read articles sorry I just comment. I'm from slashdot
    - feld 11y ago
      upvote for honesty
bane 11y ago
At the moment, believe it or not, Soylent is vegan. One thing I've noticed in lots of diet advocacy literature is that you'll find statements like "this nutrient is available in that food" without ever specifying the amount or how much you have to eat to make up for the lack of meat/gluten/whatever the diet is trying to keep you from eating. Quite often people will then build up meals in that diet thinking that they'll have all of the various nutrients they need, but it turns out it doesn't have sufficient concentrations of certain important ones. And you would have to eat multiple kilograms of the replacement food to get enough of the nutrient to be useful. The amount of nutrition and food science somebody has to know to live healthily on an alternative diet can sometimes be staggering.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  "Cadmium" is not, in fact, made with real Cadmus.
- logn 11y ago
  I found the same thing. The best blog-like sources I found are livestrong.com and whfoods.com. By far the best source of info I've found is http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list which is a database of all foods, even pre-packaged ones. And this is helpful too to know daily intake recommendations: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Tables/recommended_intakes_individuals.pdf http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Tables/recommended_inta... I had no part in this app, but have used it too, and it's based on the gov data from above: cronometer.com
Spooky23 11y ago
The crowd is generally right about things. Over the last 10,000 years or so, everyone with the resources to do so has adopted a omnivorous diet. You offset the cost of meat and fresh fruits with grains. There's a reason that you'll get a potato and asparagus with your $50 steak at a restaurant. In our society today, we've created a desert in a sea of abundance. We have the ignorant and lazy getting by on a diet of cheap bread, ramen and sugar fortified with vitamins. Then then we have the decadent white folks with first world problems complicating things with crazy vegan diets.
- stevoski 11y ago
  How do you explain the roughly 500 million vegetarians in India?
  - Luc 11y ago
    Only a small number of those are vegan. Different diet. Though why bother asking? The parent has his mind all made up.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Religious ignorance? Their dietary choice is not for its nutritional value, it's based on religious guidelines and taboo foods. Also, a lot of them live in harsh conditions and have low life expectancy.
    - civilian 11y ago
      I think stevoski meant "How do you explain [the relative health and sustained society of] the 500 million vegetarians in India [despite the negative health consequences of vegetarianism]?" So your "religious ignorance" answer is kinda a flippant one.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        I was trying to explain how that diet is sustained. As for the "relative health" I don't think there's much to begin with to explain. Where did the parent saw it? A quick search for "Indian life expectancy" puts it at 66 years, vs 78 for the US and 74 for China (results for 2012). Diet of course is not the only factor in this, but it plays a role, and the numbers don't seem very "relatively healthy" to me. Are there other numbers people can point to to qualify the "relative health" point? If we mean "relatively healthy" compared to a diet heavy in sugars, HFCS, sodium etc, with obesity like that in parts of the US (South, midwest etc), it might be better -- but that's a pretty low bar. The correct comparison to perform would be with a stable diet that includes fruits, vegetables et al PLUS meat and fish.
SwellJoe 11y ago
You're conflating a "vegetarian diet in a developed nation" with a "diet that has severely limited food options", and making it seem as though a vegetarian in a developed nation would have a hard time remaining healthy. This is misleading. It is at least as easy to be a healthy vegetarian in a developed location as it is to be a healthy omnivore in the same location. You are also conflating "vegetarian diet" with "cereal-grain heavy diet" which is also misleading when applied to the developed world. Vegetarians in much of the developed world have effectively unlimited access to non-cereal grain foods, and there are many excellent vegetarian zinc sources (nuts, seeds, and beans among them). In short: This paper cannot usefully be applied to the eating habits of people in developed nations in the way that you are applying it, because it is based primarily on the premise of a diet that is heavily cereal grain based, by necessity, which is not a description that matches the population you're attempting to apply these results to. > It's so much easier to have a vaguely balanced nutrition when you eat meat. It's also perfectly possible to have it as a vegetarian, but it really requires that you know what you're doing and that you make sure you get necessary nutrients. And, this one is just inaccurate. A balanced vegetarian diet in the developed world is no more difficult than a balanced omnivorous diet in the developed world. A fully vegan diet does introduce the necessity to think about B12, as it is not readily available in a vegan diet. There's vast swaths of solid science indicating that reducing meat consumption has positive health impacts. Only when you read it through the lens of a "paleo" diet fanatic does one interpret the data to mean the opposite.
metric10 11y ago
The quote you gave refers to cereals specifically, not vegetarian diets in general. Fruits and vegetables are very high in a wide variety of nutrients and I would argue that it's far easier to eat an all vegetarian diet vs an all meat diet. Sadly, bacon just doesn't have the nutritional profile of spinach. EDIT: Just for the heck of it, here's spinach vs bacon at similar calorie counts: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=spinach+2.3lb http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=spinach+2.3lb http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=bacon+0.1lb http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=bacon+0.1lb And I'm just using spinach as an example...A vegetarian diet should have a wide range of fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. and you should do your research on it before starting.
- pierrec 11y ago
  >The quote you gave refers to cereals specifically, not vegetarian diets in general. That's wrong, the last sentence refers to "western populations adopting vegetarian diets" in general, and cites references that suggest this. That's why I chose it. I'm not arguing that vegetarian and vegan diets are quintessentially malnutritious. I'm arguing that many people are doing it wrong.
  - ska 11y ago
    In fact I suspect that people are more likely to "do it wrong" in (some?) western populations. If you grow up in a food culture that is primarily vegetarian/vegan or at least has a subset that is, you immediately have a source of familiar recipes that will likely meet your nutritional needs. On the other hand, if all you know how to cook and all you've seen being cooked tends to rely on meat proteins for some of nutrient balance, you really need to do some research to know what to add to your diet to replace what you are taking away. This research isn't difficult, really, but it can be hard to know where to start. I suspect that if you take pretty much any traditional diet and start taking things away from it if you aren't careful you will rapidly run into deficiencies. I suppose an argument for the recent, significant, western trend to over consumption of macro nutrients has an upside in that even if your diet is fairly (but not seriously) unbalanced, if you eat enough of it you tend to mostly get the nutrients you need....
  - 11y ago
jshen 11y ago
It depends on how you define meat. I'm a vegetarian, and it doesn't seem to be hard to get enough zinc without eating beef, chicken, etc. http://bembu.com/foods-high-in-zinc http://bembu.com/foods-high-in-zinc Eat some shrimp, spinach, peanuts, etc and you should be good. I've been test a number of times and haven't had a problem with zinc.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  Eat some shrimp Sure, if you're a vegetarian who eats seafood, it's easy.
  - jshen 11y ago
    From an environmental perspective, seafood is far better than beef.

by pierrec 11y ago

rancur 11y ago

I, personally, began experiencing this myself. If I'm eating healthy, I can add in cereal. If I'm not, I feel physically horrible eating cereal. So I just avoid it and try to eat healthy meals all the time. Keeps my productivity and mood high, and you would not believe how good my skin looks when I've been eating plenty of vegetables for the last week.

magic_beans 11y ago
Note: cereal grains are not "cereal" (I'm assuming you mean breakfast cereal)?
- rancur 11y ago
  oh. yes. I don't read articles sorry I just comment. I'm from slashdot
  - feld 11y ago
    upvote for honesty

bane 11y ago

At the moment, believe it or not, Soylent is vegan. One thing I've noticed in lots of diet advocacy literature is that you'll find statements like "this nutrient is available in that food" without ever specifying the amount or how much you have to eat to make up for the lack of meat/gluten/whatever the diet is trying to keep you from eating. Quite often people will then build up meals in that diet thinking that they'll have all of the various nutrients they need, but it turns out it doesn't have sufficient concentrations of certain important ones. And you would have to eat multiple kilograms of the replacement food to get enough of the nutrient to be useful. The amount of nutrition and food science somebody has to know to live healthily on an alternative diet can sometimes be staggering.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
"Cadmium" is not, in fact, made with real Cadmus.
logn 11y ago
I found the same thing. The best blog-like sources I found are livestrong.com and whfoods.com. By far the best source of info I've found is http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list which is a database of all foods, even pre-packaged ones. And this is helpful too to know daily intake recommendations: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Tables/recommended_intakes_individuals.pdf http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/DRI/DRI_Tables/recommended_inta... I had no part in this app, but have used it too, and it's based on the gov data from above: cronometer.com

Spooky23 11y ago

The crowd is generally right about things. Over the last 10,000 years or so, everyone with the resources to do so has adopted a omnivorous diet. You offset the cost of meat and fresh fruits with grains. There's a reason that you'll get a potato and asparagus with your $50 steak at a restaurant. In our society today, we've created a desert in a sea of abundance. We have the ignorant and lazy getting by on a diet of cheap bread, ramen and sugar fortified with vitamins. Then then we have the decadent white folks with first world problems complicating things with crazy vegan diets.

stevoski 11y ago
How do you explain the roughly 500 million vegetarians in India?
- Luc 11y ago
  Only a small number of those are vegan. Different diet. Though why bother asking? The parent has his mind all made up.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Religious ignorance? Their dietary choice is not for its nutritional value, it's based on religious guidelines and taboo foods. Also, a lot of them live in harsh conditions and have low life expectancy.
  - civilian 11y ago
    I think stevoski meant "How do you explain [the relative health and sustained society of] the 500 million vegetarians in India [despite the negative health consequences of vegetarianism]?" So your "religious ignorance" answer is kinda a flippant one.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      I was trying to explain how that diet is sustained. As for the "relative health" I don't think there's much to begin with to explain. Where did the parent saw it? A quick search for "Indian life expectancy" puts it at 66 years, vs 78 for the US and 74 for China (results for 2012). Diet of course is not the only factor in this, but it plays a role, and the numbers don't seem very "relatively healthy" to me. Are there other numbers people can point to to qualify the "relative health" point? If we mean "relatively healthy" compared to a diet heavy in sugars, HFCS, sodium etc, with obesity like that in parts of the US (South, midwest etc), it might be better -- but that's a pretty low bar. The correct comparison to perform would be with a stable diet that includes fruits, vegetables et al PLUS meat and fish.

SwellJoe 11y ago

You're conflating a "vegetarian diet in a developed nation" with a "diet that has severely limited food options", and making it seem as though a vegetarian in a developed nation would have a hard time remaining healthy. This is misleading. It is at least as easy to be a healthy vegetarian in a developed location as it is to be a healthy omnivore in the same location. You are also conflating "vegetarian diet" with "cereal-grain heavy diet" which is also misleading when applied to the developed world. Vegetarians in much of the developed world have effectively unlimited access to non-cereal grain foods, and there are many excellent vegetarian zinc sources (nuts, seeds, and beans among them). In short: This paper cannot usefully be applied to the eating habits of people in developed nations in the way that you are applying it, because it is based primarily on the premise of a diet that is heavily cereal grain based, by necessity, which is not a description that matches the population you're attempting to apply these results to. > It's so much easier to have a vaguely balanced nutrition when you eat meat. It's also perfectly possible to have it as a vegetarian, but it really requires that you know what you're doing and that you make sure you get necessary nutrients. And, this one is just inaccurate. A balanced vegetarian diet in the developed world is no more difficult than a balanced omnivorous diet in the developed world. A fully vegan diet does introduce the necessity to think about B12, as it is not readily available in a vegan diet. There's vast swaths of solid science indicating that reducing meat consumption has positive health impacts. Only when you read it through the lens of a "paleo" diet fanatic does one interpret the data to mean the opposite.

metric10 11y ago

The quote you gave refers to cereals specifically, not vegetarian diets in general. Fruits and vegetables are very high in a wide variety of nutrients and I would argue that it's far easier to eat an all vegetarian diet vs an all meat diet. Sadly, bacon just doesn't have the nutritional profile of spinach. EDIT: Just for the heck of it, here's spinach vs bacon at similar calorie counts: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=spinach+2.3lb http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=spinach+2.3lb http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=bacon+0.1lb http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=bacon+0.1lb And I'm just using spinach as an example...A vegetarian diet should have a wide range of fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. and you should do your research on it before starting.

pierrec 11y ago
>The quote you gave refers to cereals specifically, not vegetarian diets in general. That's wrong, the last sentence refers to "western populations adopting vegetarian diets" in general, and cites references that suggest this. That's why I chose it. I'm not arguing that vegetarian and vegan diets are quintessentially malnutritious. I'm arguing that many people are doing it wrong.
- ska 11y ago
  In fact I suspect that people are more likely to "do it wrong" in (some?) western populations. If you grow up in a food culture that is primarily vegetarian/vegan or at least has a subset that is, you immediately have a source of familiar recipes that will likely meet your nutritional needs. On the other hand, if all you know how to cook and all you've seen being cooked tends to rely on meat proteins for some of nutrient balance, you really need to do some research to know what to add to your diet to replace what you are taking away. This research isn't difficult, really, but it can be hard to know where to start. I suspect that if you take pretty much any traditional diet and start taking things away from it if you aren't careful you will rapidly run into deficiencies. I suppose an argument for the recent, significant, western trend to over consumption of macro nutrients has an upside in that even if your diet is fairly (but not seriously) unbalanced, if you eat enough of it you tend to mostly get the nutrients you need....
- 11y ago

jshen 11y ago

It depends on how you define meat. I'm a vegetarian, and it doesn't seem to be hard to get enough zinc without eating beef, chicken, etc. http://bembu.com/foods-high-in-zinc http://bembu.com/foods-high-in-zinc Eat some shrimp, spinach, peanuts, etc and you should be good. I've been test a number of times and haven't had a problem with zinc.

sliverstorm 11y ago
Eat some shrimp Sure, if you're a vegetarian who eats seafood, it's easy.
- jshen 11y ago
  From an environmental perspective, seafood is far better than beef.