The Healthy Plate probably offers a more useful guide than the Food Pyramid, but really if you follow the serving sizes on your food products and pull from a variety of food groups, you’re likely to do okay so long as you aren’t on a terribly restrictive diet like veganism or carnivore.
Those are also, likely, achievable but unless you’re living in a place that has been experimenting with these diets for centuries and narrowed in on a well-rounded, healthy, and energizing diet, you’d probably do good to do some research to ensure that you’re getting everything you need - especially, if you start to feel down, weak, or off-kilter.
No, but you might need to carry luggage, a bag, a dog, a child, furniture, or some other heavyish item. You might need to put a big bag of rice on a high shelf. You might need to be able to pull yourself up after breaking a hip.
It’s much easier to put on muscle and keep it into old age than it is to put it on, new, in old age. And from there, the more that you lose what you have, the more at risk you are for illness and accidents.
Working out is just the same as having a 401k. In the long run, it should prove to have been worth it.
Other than for vegans with very restricted selections it is a non-problem.
You may just want to lower your risk of having to live more years disabled both physically and cognitively having to pay caregivers to wipe your butt of poop and your chin of drool. Or not. Whatever floats your boat.
If the complete diet also includes legumes and/or nuts, whose amino acid profiles complement it, it is perfectly fine protein. Hummus and pita. Peanut butter on whole wheat toast. It counts.
And if that information had been originally provided, I wouldn’t have pointed it out upthread; you can get complete protein from vegetarian sources, but you need to eat the proper variety. Animal sources have the advantage of being complete.
A person might have read the discussion and thought “hey, I eat bread and sweet potatoes. I don’t need to worry about extra protein” and miss a very important feature about the type of protein they are eating. That was my simple point.
What are you on about? I added a relevant point about the amino acids in different types of protein. Is there some reason you feel compelled to downplay it?
Many people, in an effort to get in shape and build muscle, will recognize that a traditional diet isn’t very good. So they realize they need to remove unhealthy foods.
But in doing so, they may not be sure what foods they should eat to get them to their goals. To use an old stereotype, a person might think they need to live on rice cakes while doing endless cardio.
In reality, there are foods that fuel muscle growth. There are also nutrient dense foods that provide maximum benefit while minimizing extra calories.
So, while it is indeed true that eating a wide variety of foods is the simple solution, there is value in drilling down the specific foods that give tremendous benefits. There is also value in explaining why those nutrients are good.
Yes, the typical American diet gets lots of protein. But sometimes people think they shouldn’t eat like a typical American, and so they may decide to eliminate foods that they should still consider eating, and may miss out on the nutrients they need (for example, eggs are very good for you)
If you are trying to build muscle and strength, the biggest variable in your success (other than actually exercising) is nutrition. The difference between workouts when you are properly fed versus when you are not is night and day. People can languish for years with no results because they don’t fix their diet. People can completely transform their body composition when they combine proper exercise and nutrition.
What you eat matters; you can’t outwork a bad diet. You may not need to be shooting for absolute precision, but just winging it with a vague notion of eating a “varied diet” isn’t the best path towards physical fitness.
Something I think I noticed. I started my diet about 4 months ago., It seemed like my sex drive plunged along with my calories. 2 weeks ago, I discovered my protein was low, so I added cottage cheese yogurt, and eggs to my current diet. I added some calories but my sex drive came back within a week. it is too short of a time to say for sure but I think it was the added protein.
You were making the point about how that is an “advantage to eating animal sources of protein over plant based” - and I am “going on about” that it is not an advantage compared to most who are eating sizable amounts of plant protein. It is a non- issue.
No one here argues otherwise. No one is promoting poor quality food. I am specifically arguing the position that it is as simple as @puzzlegal puts it:
Maybe also emphasizing fairly sizable varied plant protein intake. And stop eating if not hungry. And to the point of this thread: exercise.
On the one hand, that can be helpful, especially if you are starting with a really bad diet. But on the other, it can lead to people worrying about their diet, and you usually don’t have to think that hard about it.
Do you have the impression that such is something that most who are eating “plant forward” diets fail to do? That there is some hack or trick to pulling such off, so better to have more meat and not risk it?
To be clear I do see such. Teens in particular who call themselves vegetarians and are eating few to no vegetables and lots of processed crap. But generally even they recognize that they are eating crap.
Regular folk don’t need to understand the nutrition science to model any of a variety of established healthy dietary patterns. And agreed absolutely with @puzzlegal - they “usually don’t have to think that hard about it.” They not only don’t need to reinvent the wheel, if they try building it from first principles that they don’t really understand they will likely invent a wheel that wobbles badly.
I actually think that human bodies have a decent understanding of what they need, and if you listen to your appetite (and avoid foods designed to trick your appetite, like candy and fast food) you’ll do okay nutritionally. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of really standard cheap dishes, like rice& beans and peanut butter sandwiches just happen to be complete proteins. And those weren’t designed by doctors or scientists, they are traditional foods that people gravitate towards because they leave you feeling satisfied.
I said i don’t care for vegetables, and it’s mostly true. And even so, I sometimes crave greens or carrots or some other vegetable. When i do, i try to satisfy that craving.
Here is an article about babies picking their own foods. Since the 1930s studies are not without flaws (not a lot of unhealthy choices; how did mothers let their kids live in labs?), I wonder what our paediatrician thinks about Clara Davies.
Excerpt:
…Doing for themselves specifically meant permitting newly weaned infants to choose how much or how little to eat of 33 available foodstuffs. As she emphasized to her Quebec audience, no adult was allowed even to hint to the children what might be a proper choice or portion amount. “The nurses’ orders were to sit quietly by, spoon in hand, and make no motion,” she said…
Davis convinced unmarried teenage mothers and widows who could no longer support their families to place their infants in what amounted to an eating-experiment orphanage set up in Chicago. An eventual total of 15 children participated; the 2 boys who were studied the longest were followed over a 4 1/2-year period: that is to say, the amount of every single thing eaten or spilled at every single meal over the first 4 1/2 years of their eating life was assiduously recorded. To this was added records of changes in height and weight, the nature of bowel movements, and regular bone radiographs and blood tests…
For what it’s worth, I certainly know about incomplete proteins in plant-based foods. I would think that anyone eating a mainly plant-based diet does. In addition to the foods I mentioned I also toss some seeds and nuts into all kinds of things and I drink milk and eat eggs occasionally.
I remember recipes from “Diet for a Small Planet.” So glad someone figured out that eating a variety of foods every day is sufficient. No need to carefully balance amino acids in every single dish. Makes for a pretty awful lentil loaf.