Answers to common questions

The protein in plant-based food provides the same 9 essential amino acids as the protein in animal-based food. All plants use the same amino acids to build their proteins. They aren’t “missing” any of them; they simply have varying amounts of them. The protein in many animal-based foods came from plants. Powerful animals like horses, bulls, and gorillas get all or most of their protein from plants.

Plant foods contain all 9 essential amino acids in various amounts. Your body doesn’t need to get every one of those amino acids in large amounts at every meal. You can get these essential amino acids over time and use them as needed to repair or build muscle. Your body maintains a pool of amino acids to draw from, so you don’t have to combine foods in a single meal. As long as you eat whole and minimally processed plant foods from each of the major plant food groups (veggies, beans, grains, fruits, nuts and seeds) over each day or two, you will have more than enough protein in a health-promoting plant package.

The main difference between animal protein and plant protein is that package it’s delivered in. Plant proteins are delivered with health-promoting fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and antioxidants. Animal proteins are delivered with disease-promoting saturated fats, heme iron, endotoxins, environmental toxins, and no fiber whatsoever.

Good health is impossible without ample fiber from real food.

Worse, animal-based foods contain far too much of certain amino acids like methionine which has been shown to promote cancer cell growth, insulin resistance and obesity in diet high in animal protein. In fact, rats fed a diet with 80% less methionine than a control group of rats, lived 40% longer!

Bone is living, growing tissue. Your bones are a storehouse for minerals that your body needs and they supply minerals as needed and replace them. Bone strength is determined by physical activity and diet. Physical activity “stresses” bones, and bones respond by getting stronger. A healthy body will rebuild as much bone as needed. Sadly, most people damage the inside of their body with poor diet, lack of exercise, chronic stress, and poor sleep. This damage causes bones to lose their ability to rebuild properly and they weaken, leading to fractures as we age. This isn’t normal aging; these poor lifestyle choices cause aging to happen far more quickly than normal.

A diet high in salt also impairs calcium handling in the body, and weakens bones. A diet of highly processed foods is extremely high in salt. What happens is much of your calcium is lost in your urine and feces. So you may be taking supplements and getting plenty of dairy, but your overall diet is causing a lot of the calcium to be lost.

If you change over to a balanced whole foods diet, you’ll not only get all the calcium you need from beans and lentils, nuts and seeds, dark leafy greens, tofu, tempeh, soybeans, and other vegetables, your body will be able to use it properly to build strong bones.

Vitamin B12 is made by bacteria found in water and soil. Because we purify our water and wash our produce, we get almost none of the B12 that plant-eating animals get naturally from water and soil. Even though more than 90% of people in the U.S. eat animal-based foods, as many as 40% may be deficient in vitamin B12. So there’s more to the story than “you need meat for your B12”. Damage to the intestinal lining (“leaky gut”) is a likely cause of some of this B12 deficiency, because the damage prevents nutrients from being absorbed properly.

Studies have shown that levels of B12 in the blood are linked to the amount of B12 consumed from not only animal-based food, but also from fortified plant-based foods and supplements. They found that among people who did NOT take B12 supplements, levels of B12 in the blood were increased twice as much with fortified cereals than with meat, fish and poultry! This ensures us that if we are 100% plant-based we’ll get the B12 we need from either fortified plant foods or a supplement.

Dr. Peter D’Adamo’s 1996 book promoting diets specific to your blood type continues to influence people 25 years later. Although the idea was interesting and worth studying, there’s been no evidence backing it up. In 1996, Dr. D’Adamo claimed to be in the 8th year of a 10-year study on reproductive cancers and blood type diets, yet 25 years later no study results have been published. In his 2005 arthritis book he claimed to be conducting a 12-week study of blood type diet on rheumatoid arthritis, and here it is 16 years later and no study results have been published.

Researchers sifted through over a thousand papers and found that “none of the studies showed an association between…blood type diets and health-related outcomes.” They conclude that “there is currently no evidence that an adherence to blood type diets will provide health benefits, despite the substantial presence and perseverance of blood type diets within the health industry.”