Thread by @TheCoachFriso

Plant-based eating, yay or nay?

My bachelor thesis gives you the real answers.

//THREAD//

Context: this is the thesis I wrote for my bachelor study. I study at THE #1 Dutch university focused on health, life sciences and agriculture.

I wanted to know what the nutritional value of plant-based diets are compared to our current diet.

Here we go👇

The past 10 years the push towards plant-based diets has accelerated quickly.

This is in response to the increased meat consumption, which mostly comes from the poultry industry.

Red meat consumption has stagnated.

Some examples of this push towards plant-based diets are listed below.

2017: start of the Green Protein Alliance

2020: WEF initiates Food Valley (calls itself a 'transition catalyst') in Holland
foodvalley.nl

April 2022: 60 million euros spent by Dutch government on research into cellular agriculture

March 2022: 10 step plan submitted to Dutch government by Food Transition Coalition to make plant-based diets the new normal

June 2022: Dutch nitrogen reduction policy --> livestock must decrease

July 2022: signing of the Bean Deal - stimulate farmers to grow more plant-protein

Behind all this is of course the UN "Sustainable Development" target of Agenda 2030.

This is then how they want us to eat (EAT-Lancet dietary guidelines).

Lots of vegetables and fruits, whole grains, unsaturated plant oils and 3 times as much plant protein as animal protein.

A plant-animal protein ratio of 50:50 is desired by 2025 and 60:40 by 2030.

There are 3 main arguments for this "progressive food paradigm".

1. Environment
2. Health
3. Ethics

My thesis covers the nutrition/health part of the equation.

To compare the nutritional value of different consumption levels of meat and plant-based meat alternatives, I created 4 scenarios and compared them to our current baseline diet.

Basically my question was: what do you get when you replace what's on the left by what's on the right and can you still take in all your nutrients in adequate amounts?

The plant-based promoters say yes, but I wanted to know if it is true.

I compared the scenarios on protein, fat, iron, selenium, zinc, sodium, phosphorus, vitamin B1, vitamin B3, vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and vitamin D.

Here is the macronutrient comparison.

Here is the micronutrient comparison.

You can clearly see removing meat leads to (further) nutritional deficiencies. No bueno.

Substituting meat with plant-based meat alternatives does make these deficiencies less, but they're still worse than the baseline diet in all scenarios.

With this information, you can say eating plant-based alternatives is healthier than just removing meat but worse than not changing anything.

But wait... that is if you assume equal absorption and utilisation of the nutrients in your body.

In reality, that's not the case.

We forget the antinutrients that inhibit the absorption of calcium, zinc, magnesium, copper and iron.

If you eat 10 milligrams but your body can only use 7, then you might still experience symptoms of deficiency even though on paper you're matching the adequate intake levels.

The graph also doesn't show the different bioavailability of heme iron and non-heme iron.

If you match the baseline diet in terms of iron, but all of it is in the non-heme form, chances are high you'll be using it less efficiently than if it were in the heme form.

Also ignored is the secondary deficiency potential.

What do you get when you eat a diet that's high in oxalates, low in animal protein and deficient in vitamin D?

You get poor calcium absorption and worse vitamin B12 absorption as a result.

Remember, it isn't what you eat, it's what you actually use.

Furthermore, plants have incomplete amino acid profiles so you need to eat more of them (both in calories and volume) and combine different sources (soy with peas for example) to match the amino acid profiles of animal foods.

If you replace the top half of foods with the bottom half, you inevitably need to eat more to match your adequate intake levels.

Note that all but one of the nutrient dense foods are animal foods.

Human physiology is also not taken into account.
Humans are not made for eating high volume of plants. Gorillas have the space and digestive tract for it, humans don't.

Sorry vegans, but biology doesn't lie.

Then, lastly, there's the harmful potential of soy products.

When processed/prepared improperly, as often the case in plant-based meat alternatives (soy protein isolate for example), they can lower sperm counts and testosterone levels and disrupt the menstrual cycle in women.

In my thesis I didn't touch upon the herbidices/pesticides/toxic metal residue found on many plant and plant-based meat alternative products, but that's definitely something you should keep in mind next time you think about swapping steak for a soy-burger.

Taking all those factors (which the graphs don't show) into account, I come to the following conclusion.

From a nutrition perspective, plant-based eating is a net less.

More research is needed into what extent the nutrients from the alternatives are absorbed and utilised.

Thank you so much for reading. I put a lot of time in my thesis and would greatly appreciate if you could spread the message by RTing the first tweet in this thread!

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By popular request, here is the full thesis:

drive.google.com/file/d/1tBE-FI…