So let's take a look at one of the other types of diet dogmas that are out there.
Once again, full complete book will be coming out soon.
When we start looking at diet dogmas, we start looking at the various diets that we tend
to follow.
A lot of them fall along the lines of being fads, where we tend to have a lot of marketing
that goes into play, but not a lot of science that goes into play.
Very few of the diets that we look at have scientific evidence to support their use,
where there tends to be a lot of conformational bias that goes into play, and a lot of selective
attention to very few studies that independently show some level of significance.
Within this, we have types of diets, such as the plant-based diet, where the question
is, should I be vegetarian or should I be vegan?
Well, we have to take a step back and look at, is the hype worth, or is it just a scam?
So let's talk about that.
Warning.
The following presentation contains information that might contradict what you have previously
heard or believed to be true about how the human body works, and contains material that
is not suitable for close-minded individuals.
Enjoy.
And so we start looking at the idea about a plant-based diet.
We have to start by looking at some definitions.
So a vegetarian is simply a person that's going to eat things that do not contain animal
meat.
Within this, we have different types of vegetarians.
We have lacto-vegetarians, which will consume things like milk.
We have ovovegetarians, which will consume things like eggs.
We have lacto-ovovegetarians, which will consume both milk and eggs.
But then we have very strict vegetarians, vegetarians such as vegans.
So the big difference between the vegan and the classifications of the vegetarians is,
will they consume things that come about from animal byproducts, or will they only consume
plant-based materials?
Where a vegetarian will be allowed within their dietary dogma to consume things like
honey, whereas a vegetarian, assuming it's a vegan, will not.
The premise behind most of these vegetarian-style diets is that consuming plant-based is better
and healthier for you than what we have attributed to as a Western-based diet, a fast food-based
diet.
But that's not just the case because there are a whole bunch of various types of foods
that we can consume at fast food restaurants that would be classified as being a vegetarian
or as a vegan option.
So what does the science say?
What do we know about vegetarian and about vegan diets as it relates to the ability to
control metabolic health related to weight loss?
Because most of the people are going to be following dietary dogmas either to regulate
body weight or regulate metabolic health.
And so what do we know?
Well, there is some correlations that indicate that following a vegetarian or a vegan diet
will lead to changes in neuronal health by increasing insulin sensitivity, reducing reactive
oxidative species, and reducing neuroinflammation within the central nervous system.
There is some evidence through correlations to indicate there's an increase in metabolic
flexibility, an increase in insulin sensitivity, and a change in myokine signaling within the
skeletal muscle.
There is some correlations that indicate there is a reduction in atherosclerosis and a reduction
in inflammation through controlling of C-reactive protein.
There is indications of an increase in insulin sensitivity, an increase in lipolysis, and
a decrease in lipogenesis within adipose tissue, leading to changes in adipokine signaling
and changes in macrophage activation that lead to the reduction in inflammation that
we see within the body.
Some in the way from the pancreas tend to get a normalization of insulin and glucagon
signaling.
From the liver, there tends to be an increase in insulin sensitivity, a reduction in lipogenesis,
and a reduction in the non-alcoholic fatty acid liver syndromes.
Often someone tends to move from an animal-based diet to a plant-based diet and suffers from
overfatness.
There tends to be a change in hormonal signaling coming away from the liver, very similar to
the same changes that we see in hormonal signaling coming away from the adipose tissue, as well
as from the skeletal muscle.
So it seems to be like there's a lot of benefits that come away from following a plant-based
diet.
But does that automatically mean a healthier food?
And this is where we have to look at what's the research say.
We have a whole lot of correlations that say there are good benefits that come away from
following a vegetarian diet.
However, there are equal numbers of studies that indicate that following a vegetarian
or a vegan diet may have some cost to go with the benefits that are attributed to it.
And so what are some of those costs that we have to worry about?
So what are the things that get pointed out within the research that we have to worry
about?
Well, we have to worry about things like deficiencies.
Deficiencies are going to be coming about from things that we would normally get from animals
in our diet or from supplements that would come from animal products, such as B12 and
vitamin D. A host of ions that we have to worry about that will be consumed in lower
concentrations where we may be able to get a within normal recommended amount within
the diet.
However, because of other things that are contained within plants that we're consuming
may impact the bioavailability of these ions.
We will also lose out on some omega-3 fatty acids, such as ELA and DHA, as well as essential
amino acids, as well as taurine and cretin that we get from high concentrations in animal
products or consumption by supplementations, which may be missed based on the strictness
of the vegetarian diet that we're trying to follow.
We will also have a disruption in our psychological drive for food based off of reward center
signaling that can come about.
We also have to worry about things like the antinutrients or the misconception that vegan
and vegetarian diets are coming about from non-processed foods.
We have to worry about the antinutrients such as lectin, oxalates, phyates, phytosterols,
tannins, and glucosanolates, which all impact the bioavailability of vitamins and minerals
within the diet that can impact our overall metabolism and how it's going to impact our
overall metabolism.
Well, it goes back to looking at how we go about in terms of metabolic disruptors impacting
our overall health.
And how are these things going to impact?
It's going to impact based off of metabolic disruption, where the metabolic disruption
is going to change the way in which we're going to look at our food intake, change inflammatory
signaling, change leptin and insulin signaling, change growth signaling, all leading to issues
that we typically look at coming away from metabolic syndrome and over fatness.
This is what we have to remember.
Just because we might be following a vegan or vegetarian diet does not mean that we're
not also having the possibility of consuming metabolic or endocrine disruptors within the
plant-based materials.
And with the introduction to the chapter coming out in Diet Dogmas, I'd like to go ahead and
head back to a discussion that Richie and I had in the summer of 2023 related to vegan
and the needs that vegans might have as it relates to their diet, especially for those
that happen to be highly active or fitness enthusiasts.
So we're here to kind of just talk a little bit about vegan, vegan diets as it relates
to those who are extra physically active.
We got Richie joining us again here to kind of take us through the discussion.
We're going to kind of go back and forth with some Q&A in terms of how we're going to talk
about stuff today.
So some stuff I'd like to talk to you about are fat diets and the misconceptions about
carbs and…
Okay.
And so there's…
So we've already put up some stuff on kind of general concepts about nutrition, both
on the podcast as well as on the YouTube channel.
And I have a list of other topics that we'll be going through as we move forward in the
year in terms of the various types of diets.
And so we'll kind of start the conversation and then we'll keep conversation going because
this is something as we've talked about numerous times is not, hey, let's have a very brief
conversation about a very complex topic.
Right.
Okay.
So as you know, I am vegan, completely vegan and natural amateur bodybuilder who competes.
What are your thoughts on the vegan diet as it relates to muscle building and someone
who is very highly active?
So there's two things we have to worry about with veganism in general for the general population.
One of them is nutrient malnutrition.
And that's simply because there are certain things that you cannot get from plants and
vegetables without having some sort of animal supplementation.
And those are things like your vitamin B12s, your creatine, your carnitine, to a certain
extent, taurine as well.
We can have a slight bit of malnutrition on the taurine, even though taurine is not as
essential for normal metabolic functions as B12 is or as creatine or carnitine happens
to be.
So that's one aspect of the issues that we have to worry about with veganism.
The other issue we have to worry about with veganism is incomplete protein.
And that's, I don't know, so for everybody who's listening on the podcast, we're recording
this on the 6th of August, 2023.
And there was a couple of news reports recently about the fruit-only vegan dieter that passed
away because of malnutrition.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
And so this goes into a lot of the conversations that people have about, oh, well, one of the
first things that happens for people who switch to doing a vegetable-only or vegan diet slash
lifestyle is this rapid weight loss.
And that's simply because the body's going to start to try to draw nutrients away from
wherever stores happen to be.
And so one of the things that happens with veganism is if you're not very vigilant in
your source of foods is having an amino acid deficiency because you're not getting complete
proteins.
So methionine is one of the very important amino acids because it's the first amino acid
in every protein synthesis that the cell does.
And people who don't consume large amounts of animal protein tend to have a methionine
deficiency or can have a methionine deficiency.
There's other amino acids that you can become deficient in if you're not doing the paired
plant sources within the vegetarian or within the vegan dietary.
I guess you can call it, for lack of a better term, protocol.
And so once again, this is for a separate podcast that I'm working on right now about
the dogmatic principles of diets and the fact that most diets, it's following a protocol
that you have to do.
And so those are two issues that we have to worry about for anybody in general that's
going to follow a vegan-style diet.
Now for the highly active person, the other issue that we have to worry about is the need
to have enough protein to offset any type of protein degradation and protein breakdown
that takes place within the workout.
So for me, the only way of me getting in enough protein is if I increase my calories, which
that's something I wouldn't want to do long-term due to weight gain.
So it is very hard to get the protein in from healthy sources.
Most protein that, or no, most things that I get protein from are fake protein shakes,
protein bars.
And that's not very healthy, but...
So that's where we have a kind of, we get into some of the myths and misconceptions
that's out there.
Okay.
It doesn't really matter where the protein comes from.
Okay.
Protein is seen as protein.
Amino acids are seen as amino acids.
The body can't figure out is that amino acid coming from a plant or is it coming from an
animal?
Is it coming from a shake or is it coming from a steak?
And so when we look at where we're getting the proteins, it doesn't matter where the
source happens to be.
It's about making sure that we get all of the essential amino acids and the essential
amino acid metabolites that we wouldn't be able to get otherwise.
And so that's where we have to, that's where within the whole source proteins.
And so one of the things that you see with, or one of the old recommendations was to always
kind of like pair like a rice with a legume, like rice and beans, rice and peas, because
the proteins that we see in the rice and the proteins that we see in the legumes or in
the beans or in the peas, they complement each other.
And by the, by complimenting each other within the dietary amino acids, you're ensuring yourself
to get full proteins.
Okay.
But what you're not getting within, within those compliments is you're not getting the
six to 20 grams of creatine that you're going to need if you happen to be active and trying
to build.
So could I use like creatine supplements that are out there?
You could, but the problem is that they're not vegan anymore.
So this is, I haven't seen on the market a vegan creatine source.
And that's simply because most of the creatine supplementations coming out there is coming
from animal sources in terms of the production of it.
And so if you're trying to be strict in terms of your veganism, it's very difficult to get
that same thing with the carnitine.
And so carnitine is needed for fat metabolism and transportation of the acetyl fats, the
fats that go through beta oxidation, lipid oxidation from the cell into the mitochondria.
The way in which it gets into the mitochondria is through using a carnitine pathway.
And so most of the carnitine that we get is coming from an animal source.
And so that's where it becomes very tricky for the person who wants to be strict in terms
of their vegan diet to make sure they're getting those other sources, the taurine, the carnitine,
the creatine.
Okay.
And so when you're highly metabolically active, you're going to start to utilize and overutilize
those amino acid metabolites.
Granted, you don't need them in super huge amounts, but you need them in enough amounts
that you have to replenish it.
And so that's where for the creatine, for people who are like yourself, with where you're
at within your training cycle, you don't need as much creatine as you needed during the
build phase.
Right.
Okay.
But during the build phase, you have to have additional creatine that's there.
And that's where for someone that's not following a vegan diet, we can very simply just say,
have an extra 12 ounces of white meat chicken during the day.
And so that will give more than enough creatine to offset what's there.
And when we look at like the white meat chicken or the tuna, the solid white tuna meat, those
tend to have high amounts of creatine within it, but also tends to have very low lipid
content.
And so a lot of times we start looking at, and we can talk a little bit more about the
calorie and calorie out misconception.
And once again, there's a whole other podcast out there that Michaela was kind enough to
come in and ask some questions about calorie and calorie out and the misconceptions that
we have as it relates to calorie in and calorie out, something that I've been talking about
for over a decade now that people have finally started to kind of pick up on.
And I was bored the other day and I was scrolling through the YouTube feeds and so someone,
oh, like three days ago, calorie and calorie is a fallacy.
I don't remember the actual title of it, but it's just like, yeah, I've been talking about
that for over a decade.
And so it's stuff where it's like, once we realize that it's about nutrients, not about
calories, we can start kind of worrying about the protein for the person that's vegan.
And one of the things that the other thing that you have to worry about for the vegan
is that iron issue that can come up.
Because you can offset a little bit of the beach wall issue in terms of, particularly
in terms of the red blood cell and the anemia that can come about with vegans.
So you have that vegan associated anemic conditions that can come about with the extra dark leafy
green vegetables, which tend to have a little bit higher iron content within them to offset
some of the iron content that you don't get from not eating animal products.
But the problem is that the same thing happens for someone that doesn't eat any red meat.
Because the person doesn't eat red meat is not getting very much iron in their diet either.
And so one of the things that happened with the kind of push away from red meat, and there's
a reason to push away from red meat for a couple of things, we can talk about that at
some point in time here.
One of the things that came about was we started seeing anemic conditions with people because
they weren't consuming red meat or consuming the dark greens.
And the other problem with, particularly with vegan people and the vegan diet followers,
I'm kind of mincing words here and I apologize if I'm offending anybody that follows a vegan
diet with the euthytisms that I'm using to kind of lump sum everybody here.
If you cook those vegetables, the amount of minerals and the amount of vitamins that remain
in the foods drops.
And so the problem with the dark leafy greens is that they're very kind of bitter to try
to eat.
And so you just have to kind of like toss a whole bunch of stuff on them to make them
palatable.
Or you have to cook them a little bit.
And then when you cook them, you lose some of the nutrients that you'd be able to get
from those vegetables that happen to have the vitamins and the minerals that you need
otherwise.
Now, the nice thing is that you can get with iron, you can get iron supplementation without
having to worry about kind of crossing the vegan ethical line that some vegans that I've
had conversations with do not cross, which is no animal product whatsoever.
No animal product in my clothing, no animal product here, no animal product.
And so there's some vegans that simply do it for diet, that simply follow a vegan diet.
But then there's other vegans that it's like no animal whatsoever.
And so when we look at the vegan issue as it relates to that diet, we have to figure,
OK, are you willing to take the supplement or is it something where it's because of ethical
standards you're not even going to be willing to do the supplement?
Right.
I have a following question.
So since vegans could be malnourished due to the lack of minerals we get in, what are
some of the diseases that could follow?
So people who are malnourished and have restricted diets tend to have metabolism deficiency diseases.
And so one of them happens to be like burberry, which is usually is seen with people who undergo
drastic starvation diets and will only be eaten like will get like portions of rice
and water to eat.
And one of the things that you'll see with those people is you'll see them with like
bloated stomachs and they look like they're like they're well fed, but their bloated stomach
has to deal with liver issues and backup of fluids and edema and a whole bunch of other
things where even though it looks like they're well fed, they're not well fed at all.
And so you get you get deficiencies with that.
Like I was talking about with the once again, recording August 6th of 2023.
And I believe was about a week ago, there was this kind of influencer that was doing
nothing but fruits and water.
And she became she became excessively malnourished.
And one of the things you can get you can't get neurological issues from the malnourishment,
particularly if you're not getting any of the Omega sixes or Omega Omega threes that
you normally would get from eating things beyond plants and vegetables.
You can get most of the Omega sixes and some of the Omega threes from plants and vegetables.
DHA is one of the essential fatty acids that is not very well stocked within most of the
plants that we consume.
And so since we don't get a large portion of DHA from the plants that we eat, we could
become DHA deficient, which can become problematic because it is one of the Omega threes that
we need in our diet for normal hormone and normal membrane functionality and building.
Yeah, there's a lot of drawbacks with a vegan diet.
So there are drawbacks, but there's also there also is evidence to support utilizing it as
part of a I guess the best way to call it would be a periodized dietary protocol where
you're not going to once again.
So the problem with and let's get on with the problem with any of the fad diets, it
becomes excessively restrictive in terms of what you eat or don't eat.
Right.
And it can become to a certain point, antisocial in terms of in terms of the diet.
And so what is happening is, and this goes into something that we had talked about a
couple of months ago as I was telling you about the latest book that I'm starting to
put together, it becomes where diets become dogma.
And just like with most religion and most philosophical principles, you kind of hang
out with everybody who kind of agrees with you because you can go ahead and you can eat
all the stuff and you can drink all this stuff and you can have all the all the social interactions
without having to worry about is that this?
Is this a taboo thing?
Is this a no, no thing on on my diet?
I've gone to a number of social events with with people who follow a vegan diet.
And they have and they basically barely eat anything at these social events because it's
like, OK, it's vegetarian, but they cooked it with there's like cheese on it.
Right.
So even the most of my like social circle, even my family, they're not vegan.
And so I have to cook everything by myself, bring my meal prep everywhere I go.
Even if.
My friends and I go out to eat to a restaurant.
I can't always like have them go to a vegan restaurant with me.
So I'm the only vegan the restaurant aren't so.
And that's that's also where we get some of the social stigma.
And so so with with vegans, there are some health benefits that can come about.
But this at the same time is is what what the people don't want to do is that they don't
want to feel like they're being preached to by going to.
And so they hear all these bad things.
Oh, the food is this and the food is that.
And it's not very tasty.
And it's not very because it doesn't have this and doesn't have that.
But that realizes that you can get some high quality meals utilizing vegetables only.
So my cousin's husband is a chef and we've talked a number of times about cooking stuff.
And he talks a lot about cooking with vegetables and doing a lot of stuff with vegetables and
being able to to you don't have to use a lot of meat in order and a lot of quote unquote
unhealthy and once again, healthy food, unhealthy food is a matter of is a subjective viewpoint.
You don't have you don't you can cook stuff and make stuff taste good without having to
have all of the heavy animal protein and animal stuff in the diet.
So like you're talking about, like, yeah, I go out with my friends and it's very hard
to find stuff.
And so each other's meals.
And so we were able to do that without becoming so onerous on ourselves in terms of, well,
I can't have that and I can't have this.
And that's where a lot of the fad diets start to start to fail is that it becomes so onerous
on the person trying to follow the fad that it almost becomes cultish.
And so there's a lot of stuff that for someone that follows a lower carbohydrate diet, you
can do a vegan diet.
I have a former grad grad school colleague of mine that was vegetarian that did low carbohydrate.
And you think, oh, well, how are they doing that?
Because low carbohydrate, everybody thinks low carbohydrate is eating butter and bacon
and steaks.
And it's like, no, you can eat lower fat, you can eat vegetarian and have low carb.
It's just, it's, it's what are they, it's what is the type of foods that you're eating?
So that's where you go to the glycemic index within the, within the vegetables and the
fruits you're eating and you consume the lower glycemic index foods.
You consume a lot larger, the fatty nuts, the avocados, those, what you're not eating
is you're not eating the watermelons and the, and the cantaloupes and the, you know, you
know, all of those, all of those high sugar apples and oranges and those things.
You're eating your peppers and you're eating your tomatoes and you're eating your leafy
vegetables.
You're eating your nuts and your peas and your, all of the, all of the high protein
sourced foods.
But then what you're doing is you combine that with the lower starched, lower glycemic
index fruits and vegetables and grains to make up.
So you make, once again, it goes back to making sure you're not going to malnourish yourself.
Because when I start to malnourish myself, my body's going to try to find whatever nutrients
are available within the body itself.
And so what's going to start doing is start to pillage the body tissues.
And that's where everybody says, oh, I'm going to switch to doing the vegan diet and switch
to doing the vegetarian diet because everybody that I know has done it has lost weight.
Well, they've lost weight because they're trying to find the nutrients from somewhere.
And it goes back to stuff that I've written on for, since 2010 and that's in a couple
of the videos on the YouTube and it's in the, behind the paywall on the podcast is when
you're looking at weight loss, what weight loss is the weight loss you want.
And so just because I'm losing weight doesn't necessarily mean that I'm becoming healthier.
It simply means that I'm weighing less.
Right.
So we want fat loss.
We want, so that's where fat mass is more dangerous to health than fat free mass.
Fat free mass is your organs, your bones, your skeletal muscle.
Whereas fat mass is basically all of the visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue.
We don't want to get super low in subcutaneous adipose tissue, particularly for females,
because of the influence that subcutaneous adipose, subcutaneous fat has on estrogen
metabolism.
Right.
But at the same time, we also want to make sure we have some visceral fat because we
want to be able to, because most of the visceral fat is found in fat pads.
And the fat pads are important because one of the functions of, of lupus, one of the
functions of fats for the body is to act as a cushioning agent, to act as a shock absorber.
So if you'd like to hear more, I recommend go ahead and listening to that episode of
the podcast, as well as the videos on YouTube.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks for tuning in.
Please remember that we will be presenting more of this in a book form as the book is
put together on diad dogmas.
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