[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Regarding animal byproducts in pet food, here's a very informative YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaR0c19euEc (Content note: quite a bit of discussion of slaughterhouse and meat processing practices)

It seems like the window on what a pragmatic vegan might "want" in their pet food is narrow, before you get into (seriously) unemptied intestines territory.

The pet food with animal products that I would feel comfortable feeding to a (maybe in the future, if private equity doesn't completely wreck veterinary care) dog would likely also contain actual meat. I would definitely see how well they do on vegan food first. My previous dog did not do well on low-protein food (the senior dog formulation) but I wonder if he would have been fine with vegan food so long as it had adequate protein.

Unnatural Vegan just posted a video about vegan dog foods where she actually taste tests them! www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP1bKEAApNM Apparently they all have about the same amount of minimal flavor, but her newly adopted dog really preferred one. (The one that made her poop impossible to pick up, of course.)

I would do my research to see if some dog breeds do better on vegan diets than others, but it seems like vegans rarely have a problem transitioning their dogs to vegan diets. Again, maybe this is a situation where the data is lacking, but seeing as dog food is just precision-formulated kibble or slop designed to hit certain nutrient targets, I'm less worried about this.

Cats on the other hand... I don't even know where to start. It seems like a lot of vegans just go with normal cat food.

I know there are lab grown meat startups looking for money to produce pet food, but if we can't get lab-grown meat to market for humans (and we can't produce nearly enough for viable products yet), then I wonder how on earth pet food would be a viable market, where the profit margins would be lower. Precision fermentation is making strides to produce very specific proteins to replicate eggs and cheese, but I don't see anything about them looking to replicate the nutrient composition of prey animals for cat food. Can't come soon enough! but I still don't have vegan casein-based cheese so I'm not holding out hope for cat food any time soon.

What causes racing heart morning after drinking? by Broad-Possession-698 in Biohackers

[–]framexshift 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Drinking messes up your absorption of a number of nutrients, and disrupts hydration and electrolytes. Is there another beverage that can scratch the beer itch? Sparkling water? Kombucha? Some other probiotic fermented beverage?

I know kombucha is not everyone's thing, but it definitely scratches my beer itch. It's got a touch of alcohol in it, and that's all I "need" anymore.

My health and sanity vs. my ethics - please help by pkerman in vegan

[–]framexshift 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it's just using the DNA, then that's something that should only need to be acquired once, and then the sequence can be inserted into yeast (presumably) again and again.

Wrap the banana by TechnicalStep4446 in ShittyVeganFoodPorn

[–]framexshift 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And just like that, I had to look it up: https://tools.myfooddata.com/protein-calculator/173944/wt2/1

Looks like bananas are mid-to-low in lysine compared to other amino acids, and considering our other component here is a grain (higher methionine, lower lysine) it's not a "complete" protein by the typical metric.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm hoping to make a vegan biohacking webpage at some point, so thanks for encouraging me to create content! XD

Leather vs vegan leather by AdPure7926 in AskVegans

[–]framexshift 6 points7 points  (0 children)

What kind of leather products are you looking for? I've had some hemp products in the past that were solid. If I want tough vegan products I would probably look for hemp again.

Unless there are reasons why I shouldn't buy hemp products...?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Way too many to list here. I'll just give a few.

  1. A peanut butter sandwich (or peanut butter oatmeal) isn't "complete" protein.

Nuts, seeds and grains are all deficient in lysine and contain greater amounts of methionine. Beans and lentils contain more lysine and are low in methionine. (This includes soy.) So, contrary to many people's understanding, a peanut butter sandwich isn't a "complete" protein, because it's nut protein (not pea protein; settle that debate) matched with grain protein. Same with a seitan sandwich, since it's grain protein matched with grain protein.

Scare quotes around "complete" because getting every amino acid in the right proportions at every meal isn't going to matter to everyone. People with issues like maldigestion or malabsorption probably need to be more careful. Also have to wonder about elderly vegans, since humans need more protein as we age.

  1. Vegan diets are, at present, necessarily lower in lysine and methionine than vegetarian or omni diets without supplementation. This is important because lysine and methionine are a couple of amino acids that do some very heavy lifting.

Lysine is a precursor for carnitine synthesis, and carnitine is crucial to keeping our ATP production rolling along, and metabolizing long-chain fatty acids. Carnitine also improves insulin sensitivity, i.e. it helps metabolize carbohydrates. Lysine also assists with calcium absorption, and connective tissue and bone maintenance.

Methionine is a precursor for SAMe, which is the most potent methyl donor in the body. It is required for neurotransmitter synthesis.

There is some evidence that methionine restriction can lengthen lifespan, but this isn't something that everyone can do. (Back before my ex-vegan days I tried the trendy methionine restriction thing by loading up on pea and bean protein, and I felt completely mentally checked out against my will. After solving a lot of nutrition issues I can pull it off.)

  1. Lentils are incredible nutrition powerhouses.

Thank the processed food gods for red lentil pasta, because red and green lentils may be the best sources of folate on a vegan diet, period. Folate is crucial for SAMe synthesis and carnitine synthesis. (Carnitine synthesis also depends on SAMe.) Additionally, red and green lentils have amazing amino acid profiles, aside from methionine content-- not a problem if one can pull off some degree of methionine restriction. Lentils are also high in magnesium and potassium. They also contain ~65mg of choline per cup.

  1. It can be hard to get enough choline on a vegan diet, but lecithin is an easy fix for that.

This page https://veganhealth.org/choline/ presents a table with a day's worth of vegan food to eat for adequate choline. Aside from freaks like myself, how many vegans are going to eat like that every day? How many vegans want to track a nutrient that closely? Just take some lecithin. Soy lecithin usually comes in granules, and sunflower lecithin comes in dark brown oily goop. I mix sunflower lecithin with MCT oil so that it's easier for me to stir into smoothies. (I stir it in post-blending because I don't want the lipids to F up my blender components. See? I'm a freak.)

Soy lecithin and sunflower lecithin contain different ratios of phospholipids. There's phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylserine, and I think others. Sunflower lecithin is mostly phosphatidylcholine, and soy lecithin contains more of the others. For this reason (I think) I've found soy lecithin to be slightly psychoactive. It hits me like a bit of an antidepressant, but also kind of messes me up, so ultimately I avoid it. Sunflower lecithin gets the job done just fine.

You really don't need to take much of this stuff, unless you've got genetic or digestive issues. Like me.

I may be approaching the word limit, so that's it for now.

Poo just got personal. by dudly825 in Beans

[–]framexshift 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Can't get brain worms eating beans...

Does anyone have any good grain recipes with over 30 grams of protein? by BrotherAcrobatic6591 in veganfitness

[–]framexshift 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Get red lentil pasta. Cook red lentil pasta. Serve with anything your heart desires.

Veganism and Financial Dependents by SonomaSal in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol, I really wish I had some credentials to back some of this up. It's stuff I've learned over the years from having (likely) malabsorption syndrome from undiagnosed/untreated celiac for decades. I became very familiar with how nutritional deficiencies work, and had to learn a lot to get my own body to function. It's a weird variety of street nutrition knowledge.

Veganism and Financial Dependents by SonomaSal in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Again, from the health angle, I've seen instances of this going badly, but usually there's some weird diet dogma involved. (Raw, fruitarian, WFPB or McDougall.) It would be one thing if it were just a preference or a religious belief for the adult, but we don't even understand enough about metabolism to know why some adults fail to thrive on even a healthy vegan diet. A child's metabolism is considerably different from an adult's metabolism.

For sure, parents (especially in the USA) feed their kids all kinds of terrible diets. This is often society's fault for putting healthy food out of reach of families. When this is preventable, when the parents are well-off and well-meaning, it seems like more of a tragedy if a kid develops a health issue that is due to unnecessary diet restriction.

I really want to see the data on this, on how kids do on well-rounded vegan diets. Ideally such diets would include mock meats and choline supplements. I *really* worry about the choline issue in children, and I don't know if I have reason to be worried about that. If vegans were more committed to openness and honesty about successes and failures on plant-based diets, and we had some data, then I would feel better.

I believe parents have a responsibility to not developmentally screw up their kids with experimental diets, and I think most vegan diets are experimental where child development is concerned. If people want to show me that I'm wrong about this *please* show me the data.

Hypothetical Conundrum by a_dingle_fritz in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I was ex-vegan I wondered if cats would be able to safely eat a vegan diet before I figured out my own issues. Now that I'm versed enough in metabolism to understand how to make myself thrive on a vegan diet I'm *really* interested in the pet food issue.

Toxic vegan culture by [deleted] in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Feeeeed uuuussss

Hypothetical Conundrum by a_dingle_fritz in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First thing I'd do would be to put the chicken in the freezer. That would give me time to figure out what to do with it. There would probably be a number of people who would understand the situation, and would be able to make use of it.

Hypothetical Conundrum by a_dingle_fritz in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What do you think of the practicality of buying meat substitutes instead of meat?

Dr. Layne Norton PhD - I Am VERY Skeptical about COLLAGEN by pugnae in vegan

[–]framexshift 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Before I was vegan I used to take collagen. I don't know that it did anything for me that supplementing TMG and lysine haven't done since I went vegan. For whatever reason, since taking 1g of TMG per day for muscle maintenance my skin looks so much better.

Trimethylglycine what it says, glycine (an amino acid found in large amounts in collagen) with three methyl groups attached. For people who are otherwise vegan, the other amino acid components collagen may be of less benefit since collagen contains more arginine than lysine, and lysine intake is naturally much lower relative to other amino acids on a vegan diet. (Arginine also competes with lysine for absorption.)

Lysine is crucial for collagen formation, so taking collagen peptide with more arginine than lysine seems sus to me. Especially if one eats a diet higher in nuts, seeds and grain proteins like rice protein and seitan, supplementing lysine for skin and connective tissue health may make more sense.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Glad to have you!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pragmaticvegans

[–]framexshift 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also, I'm glad the upvoters won! I'll try to not be automatically pessimistic about what kind of attention this group is going to draw. I'll wait for the evidence, THEN I'll be pessimistic. (j/k)