Episode #18: How to Fix Common Deficiencies on a Vegan Diet
Summary
In this episode, Coach Kyle and Dr. K discuss how to optimize health on a vegan diet. They explore the benefits of a vegan diet, such as reducing inflammation and avoiding hormones and other harmful substances found in industrial meat. They emphasize the importance of voting with your dollar for healthier food options and discuss the potential longevity benefits of a plant-forward diet. The hosts then provide strategies for optimizing the vegan diet, including ensuring adequate protein intake through sources like pea protein and spirulina. They also discuss the importance of supplementing with creatine, B complex, B12, and DHA and EPA. Finally, they highlight the importance of strength training and clean sourcing of food for optimal health on a vegan diet.
Takeaways
- A vegan diet can offer benefits such as reduced inflammation and avoidance of harmful substances found in industrial meat.
- Voting with your dollar for healthier food options, including organic produce and vegetables, can contribute to longevity and overall health.
- Optimizing a vegan diet involves ensuring adequate protein intake through sources like pea protein and spirulina.
- Supplementing creatine, B complex, B12, and DHA and EPA can help address potential deficiencies on a vegan diet.
- Incorporating strength training and choosing clean sources of food are important for optimizing health on a vegan diet.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Overview
01:54 Negative Health Effects of Modern Meat Consumption
04:29 What is a “Plant Forward” Diet
06:01 Vegan Diet Deficiencies
06:51 Protein and Amino Acids
12:29 Creatine
14:43 B-Complex + B12 + B9
16:21 DHA + EPA [Omegas]
17:02 Importance of Strength Training
17:47 Clean Sources of Vegan Protein
19:07 Closing Comments and Conclusion
Sponsors
This episode is sponsored by Toxic Roots. The optimal resource for online health coaching for optimizing performance and removing toxins. Click on the link below to get started on finding your toxic roots.
Website: https://www.toxicrootswellness.com/
Instagram: @toxicrootswellness
X: @toxicroots
Sources
People
Peak Performance
- Website: https://peakperformancepodcast.online/
- On Instagram: @thepeakperformancepod
- On X: @PeakPerformPod
Dr. K
- On Instagram @theosteodoc
Coach Kyle
- On Instagram @toxinfreekyle
TRANSCRIPT
Kyle Hulbert (00:21)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Peak Performance Podcast. I’m Coach Kyle.
Ben Kosubevsky (00:24)
And I’m Dr. K. Welcome to our show as today we discuss how to optimize your health on a vegan diet. And no, we’re not just going to bash vegan diets the whole time. We’re actually going talk about one, what are the benefits of them and whether the anti -aging longevity purposes of vegan diet. We’re going to talk about how to effectively live on a vegan diet. We’re not telling you not to do it. We’re just going help you prepare yourself for it so that you optimize your health while on it. Let’s get into it.
Kyle Hulbert (00:52)
Dr. K, you’re so kind. You’re so kind. Isn’t your wife vegan -esque?
Ben Kosubevsky (00:59)
She is like, she’s pescatarian but also doesn’t eat dairy but does eat chicken eggs sometimes. It’s a complicated diet.
Kyle Hulbert (01:10)
Interesting. Okay. Well, yeah, this is a complicated subject because there’s like, it’s almost political. Like it’s, there’s this battle going on between these carnivore people and these vegan people. And it’s just like each side of the table. Yeah.
Ben Kosubevsky (01:22)
It’s because big meat wants you to eat meat, whereas big plant wants you to eat big plants.
Kyle Hulbert (01:30)
Yeah, exactly. And so it is a hot button topic, but I do think it’s worth discussing because you know what, there’s benefits to both sides and there’s downsides to both sides. And I think both can be done effectively if you approach it with the right strategies and wellness and health in mind. That being said, do you want to start us off with some, some benefits of a vegan diet?
Ben Kosubevsky (01:52)
Yeah, so meat is actually pretty inflammatory. Red meat, that’s just how it is. That’s why your doctors tell you don’t eat too much red meat. So when you cut out meat completely, you do reduce a significant amount of your inflammation. And the other benefit is, unfortunately nowadays, a lot of the meat that we buy at a grocery store, which is where most people get their meat, it’s pumped full of hormones to make the cows and pork and all that stuff grow bigger and faster and plumper and heavier.
But the downside is you are what you eat. So after the cow eats all that stuff and you eat the cow, now you’re full of those same hormones, which can throw off your own body’s hormone regulation.
Kyle Hulbert (02:30)
Yeah. So, you know, to that point, this is a huge, huge benefit of the vegan diet is avoiding industrial meat. It is not good for us that when you go to the grocery store and buy a steak or ground beef, a lot of times this is full of inflammatory omegas. It’s full of hormones, like Dr. K said, it’s full of the inflammatory compounds and fat structures that the feed of the cattle has been consumed.
It does have a lot of issues. Now there are much cleaner sources of beef, but if you’re a vegan, you get to avoid all of that inflammatory stuff. And basically you just write that out of your diet. So that is a major benefit.
Ben Kosubevsky (03:10)
Yeah, because the average person, they cannot afford to buy a whole cow. Not that they can afford, they may not even have somewhere to put it, a whole cow from the butcher, even a half cow, or to have fancy steaks flown in from like Japan or Wyoming or whatever. It’s just not reasonable for most people.
Kyle Hulbert (03:26)
Yep. This is, you know, as a side point, you know, I know we’re talking about vegans here, but this is another thing why we need to vote with our dollar for good, healthy food options. And this goes for vegan diets too. You know, one of the things to avoid is non -organic produce and vegetables. If we can avoid these pesticides and these bad farming practices, these mineral, minerally depleted foods,
You can actually increase your longevity and your health quite a bit. So we want to vote with our dollar towards healthier food options. So other benefits, there’s a lot of literature out there debating back and forth longevity benefits. I do think from the literature I’ve read that there is a longevity benefit to a plant forward diet. I think vegan is probably taking it to the extreme. However, there are anti -inflammatory.
components of it and it does seem to lend itself to longevity. You can look at the seven day Adventist, one of the blue zones out in California as a good example.
Ben Kosubevsky (04:29)
So you keep saying plant forward, so let’s touch on that briefly. So plant forward means heavy plant, little bit of meat. And so I say this all the time, we’re not that far evolved from 100 years ago, 500 years ago, even like 2000 years ago, we’re really not that far evolved. So back in the day, let’s say most people were farmers, that’s just what you did. And so you’d have your crops and you’d have your animals. And while you’re raising your cow or your pig to get big enough to slaughter, you’re eating vegetables.
most of the year and didn’t have refrigeration back then. So whatever was good today would last a couple of days and that’s it. And then you’d slaughter your cow, you’d eat the meat for a few days, and then you’d go back to vegetables for weeks and then slaughter another cow and eat some meat and so on and so on and so on. And so our bodies aren’t used to the massive amounts of meat that we keep putting into them every single day. You’re not supposed to eat meat every single day.
Kyle Hulbert (05:23)
Yeah. And, there are strategies. So, and we’ll probably do an episode on carnivore and there are strategies to mitigate a lot of these inflammatory components. cause I myself do eat meat every day. I have certain protein goals for myself that I’m just not going to get without eating meat. but there are certain strategies that I employ to make sure this meat is anti -inflammatory as I can make it. and I do believe protein is a huge benefit for our healths also.
So we talked about, you know, some of the benefits. So let’s get into optimization of the vegan diet. How does one live this vegan lifestyle and effectively contribute to their health and not take away from their health.
Ben Kosubevsky (06:01)
Yeah, so there’s a few major categories that are deficient in the vegan diet. So let me know if I’m missing anything, Kyle, but they’re iron, they’re B vitamins, they are proteins, and then there’s, I think there’s one more.
Kyle Hulbert (06:17)
Yeah, I have calcium. Yeah. So, and we can touch on each of these sequentially, but I think first we should focus on protein. And I’ll give kind of a synopsis and we’ll probably do a whole episode on protein and why it’s important, but I’ll give you a quick rundown. A lot of our obesity issues in America have less to do with being over fat and more to do with being under muscled. Muscle is a giant metabolic regulator.
Ben Kosubevsky (06:19)
calcium.
Kyle Hulbert (06:46)
It’s a sink for glucose and has amazing benefits. Along with that, you need to basically eat adequate protein to maintain or build muscle mass. These proteins are broken down into amino acids, which are also used for all kinds of functions in the body. So having a sufficient protein intake is a key point of the vegan diet that needs to be focused on because if you’re not actively focusing on it, you’ll miss that protein target.
Ben Kosubevsky (07:14)
So where do we get, you know, let’s say I want to go straight vegan. What do I do for protein?
Kyle Hulbert (07:22)
So this is actually pretty interesting because, and we’ll put a chart below in the show notes so you guys can look at this. It’ll compare like way versus like a perfect amino acid score, ideal. But a lot of vegan protein sources are often not full of the essential amino acids. So they’re not complete protein sources. So how and where you get it, the two that we recommend, which are complete protein sources and have a…
pretty good bioavailability of protein are pea protein and spirulina. So these two sources are probably your go -to. I think it’s a little difficult to eat a lot of grams of spirulina because I’m not scooping and scooping grams of spirulina into my shake or whatever. But I think pea protein is probably the go -to. I think most vegan bodybuilders use that.
Ben Kosubevsky (08:12)
And to touch there for not bodybuilders, but the average person is eating tofu. And we did not say tofu. Tofu has a lot of protein, but it’s not a varied source of protein. And just to give a brief overcap, protein is a, it’s kind of like a umbrella term for amino acids. Amino acids are the true building blocks that make up proteins that make up our bodies. You need all of them for your body to rebuild itself.
If you, let’s say you ate, you know, the proper amount of protein, but it was only one type of amino acid, you would die because your body wouldn’t be able to rebuild.
Kyle Hulbert (08:48)
Yep. So, so that’s very important. So there’s certain types of amino acids. We have what they call essential amino acids and non -essential amino acids. The non -essential ones are non -essential because the body can make them itself The essential ones are essential because the body needs to get these through the diet. And tofu does not have the full essential amino acid profile in it, where pea protein is a complete protein. It has all nine essential amino acids in it. That’s very important.
Ben Kosubevsky (09:16)
And to put that really simply, it means that, let’s say you need 100 grams of protein per day. Eating 100 grams of tofu is not okay.
Kyle Hulbert (09:25)
Yep, you’re not going to get the correct amino acids that you need from that. So having a complete protein source is very important. And I think we’ve mentioned it on here before. If you’re athletic or want to gain muscle, my general target I give people is a gram of protein per pound of body weight. For the general population, somewhere between 0 .6 and 0 .8, I prefer 0 .8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And the RDA, I think,
just to avoid deficiency is around 0 .3 or 0 .4 grams of protein per pound of body weight. So if you’re a 200 pound male, that generally means you need to get somewhere between 150 and 200 grams of protein per day. And this needs to be complete amino acid protein. So that’s the main consideration. So pea protein, spirulina, those are probably your go -tos to supplement there. Along with this,
Another great option is essential amino acids themselves. So you can buy essential amino acids. It’s a blend of all nine essential amino acids and they will supplement your protein intake and essentially it will help cover those gaps. Now, I don’t think it’s a great idea to try to get all of your protein or even most of your protein from essential amino acids. You’re gonna run out of money because they’re not cheap.
Ben Kosubevsky (10:44)
So the way you do that, so this comes from the chart we’re gonna put in, I have to give them a shout out because I got the chart from them from Body Health, their line called Perfect Amino. The way that they explain to me that you should do it is, I mean there’s people like Kyle that would do this every single day, but for the average person, figure out your average protein intake for a week. Every day, calculate up your protein intake. And let’s say you’re supposed to consume 150 and you’re only doing 90.
you have to supplement that extra 60 with the essential amino acids.
Kyle Hulbert (11:18)
Yep, that’s how you bridge the gap. I would prefer that people bridge the gap with eating more complete protein sources, but there becomes a point where it’s very difficult and essential amino acids can really help. Some brands out there, because we mentioned body health, they have perfect amino. If you want muscle gain, Fortigen by Jaquish Biomedical has formulated essential amino acids in a ratio that optimizes muscle growth. Another one is Kion Aminos. They have a great essential amino acid blend.
Those are kind of my three go -tos that I recommend to people. Benefits usually start around five grams per day. The literature has amazing benefits around 12 grams a day of essential amino acids.
So that’s probably how I would supplement the protein. Going on from there, kind of a byproduct of eating enough protein on a normal diet is usually when you’re eating red meat, you get creatine along with that in the flesh of the meat. On a vegan diet, you’re not getting nearly as much creatine in your diet, which leads me to recommend that as the number two supplement for optimizing the vegan diet.
Ben Kosubevsky (12:25)
What is creatine and why do we need or care about it?
Kyle Hulbert (12:29)
So creatine, I’m gonna break this down essentially as simply as I can. It helps shuttle water to your muscles and your brain and it has a host of effects for longevity, heart health, brain health, muscular health, power, strength. It started in the bodybuilder world, because they’re like, yeah, I get better pumps. But now there have been thousands and thousands of studies on it and it is beneficial for almost every system in the body.
What’s interesting is they’ve done studies with vegans and non -vegans on creatine and what they did is they supplemented creatine in one group, the vegan group and they supplemented it in both groups. And they had them take a test before the supplementation and a test after the supplementation. And the vegans who supplemented with the creatine, their scores improved after supplementing with the creatine, but the people with the normal diet, their scores did not improve.
So it just goes to show you that most likely if you’re eating a vegan diet, you’re low in creatine and you probably need to supplement with that. It is probably the world’s easiest supplement to get. There are a billion brands. Make sure you get a clean one that has a COA on it. You can get it in bulk. Usually five grams a day will do for most people. If you’re an athletic, large human, probably 10 grams would be good.
It is very affordable. You just mix it in water and drink it tasteless. Pretty easy.
Ben Kosubevsky (14:01)
Okay, so how do we supplement it?
Kyle Hulbert (14:04)
How do we supplement it? You mean like how to take it or what?
Ben Kosubevsky (14:08)
Well, yeah, like, you know, how there are vegans out there do it.
Kyle Hulbert (14:12)
Yeah, I mean, it’s honestly, it’s like every day you take it daily. take five grams. So you don’t need to load it like a bodybuilder, 20 grams for seven days or anything like that. Five grams a day is kind of a standard dose to maximize the benefits, you might want to go up to seven or 10 grams a day. but five is sufficient for most people. If you’re large, I would go to 10. Yep. So that’s
Ben Kosubevsky (14:32)
So that’s creatine what’s next.
Kyle Hulbert (14:35)
What’s next is, well, I mean, you can pick. Do you want to hit B complex? You want to hit iron or calcium or where you want to go next?
Ben Kosubevsky (14:43)
Let’s do B complex and well, it’s also B complex and B12. So the.
Kyle Hulbert (14:48)
B- complex and B 12 Yep. So we had an episode that should have come out before this on vitamins and minerals. And basically here, I wouldn’t probably go willy -nilly supplementing these. If you’re on the vegan diet and have been for a while, chances are you don’t need to do a lab test. Lab tests are always better to quantify your exact levels so you know how hard to supplement them.
If you are not deficient and you just want to maintain optimal levels on a vegan diet, a multivitamin that has these in them will most likely be sufficient. If you are deficient, you will most likely need to take individual supplements with higher dosages for your B vitamins and your calcium. In terms of iron, blood test. Please test. Don’t just start taking iron.
Ben Kosubevsky (15:28)
Yeah.
And I just want to point out those people with an MTHFR deficiency, you know who you are, or if you don’t know who you are, please get tested for it. You cannot take straight B12. You need to take methylated B12. And so if you’re vegan and your only source is either supplementation or vegetables, and you can’t methylate B12 on your own, you’re going to run out very rapidly.
Kyle Hulbert (15:56)
Yep, that also applies to B9, so folic acid. You don’t want to consume folic acid if you have a MTFHR mutation. So you want to make sure it’s folate, the natural form. 5 -methyltetrahydrofolate, I believe, is the supplement version of it. So that’s the minerals. And then moving on, I think, is another.
The last really big one for vegans to make sure they have adequate intake is DHA and EPA. A lot of times you hear fish oil. It’s kind of a generic term for that. These are very healthy omega fats, essential omega fatty acids, and there are amazing sources of these derived from algae, so they are vegan in their root.
And so I think supplementing with these for most people will improve vegans brain health and overall inflammation levels while on a vegan diet.
Ben Kosubevsky (16:54)
Okay. Does that cover it? Is that everything? Are vegans going to be healthy now?
Kyle Hulbert (16:57)
That’ll get you pretty, pretty far down the road. You know, even with all these strategies though, you have this, kind of thing looming out here that the vegan diet is just not optimized for muscle retention and muscle gain. And so with that in mind, you know, even if you are supplementing with all these things, you do want to have a strength training regimen that you adhere to on a vegan diet.
It’s not a great idea to do a vegan diet and just do long distance running. Cause you are going to, you’re going to burn through some muscle. and muscle is vital for our health, especially as we get older muscle releases, all kinds of, like little substances that go throughout the body and help heal and support your organs. It’s protective in falls. it’s protective metabolically. It’s very important. So having a strength training regimen, is a, is a very important key.
And then I think we touched on it a little bit, but clean sourcing of your food and your protein for that matter. So they did a study on protein powders and they found heavy metals in most of them and high levels of pesticides in most of them. The worst offenders were the vegan proteins, which sounds kind of counterproductive because it’s supposed to be healthy. But.
Those are the worst offenders generally because they’re using crops that have high amounts of pesticides and other things to maximize the yield. So be very careful, find a COA, find a brand that does really good clean sources of vegan protein. I believe Organifi has a really good one that’s glyphosate residue free and also vegan, but do your research on that.
Ben Kosubevsky (18:35)
What’s funny is Orgain I think it’s because of the chocolate in it. the chocolate flavor has a bunch of heavy metals. The vanilla flavor is clear, so it’s probably from the chocolate.
Kyle Hulbert (18:43)
Yeah, well that’s another study. I mean, the one that came out that just like Consumer Reports just like dissed all these chocolate brands with lead in them.
Ben Kosubevsky (18:51)
Consumer Reports has decided on having a massive run on all the toxicities. Like in 2023 Consumer Reports said, we’re finding all the heavy metals in all the foods. Let’s go.
Kyle Hulbert (19:00)
They just had enough, essentially. So that’s kind of optimizing the vegan diet. It can be done and I think it can be done well and I think it can be done with longevity effects. Do I think it’s most optimal? No, I think people would benefit from getting some variety and there are different benefits to non -vegan foods. But if this is a choice that you’ve made in your lifestyle, I do believe that there is a way.
Ben Kosubevsky (19:07)
So.
Kyle Hulbert (19:28)
And I think we’ve laid out a pretty effective strategy to mitigate a lot of the downsides.
Ben Kosubevsky (19:32)
So I think we need to close this one off with a very Kyle story.
Kyle Hulbert (19:38)
Mmm. Oh, yeah. So, you know, we mentioned Dr. K’s wife. She’s a vegan, not vegan, pescatarian kind of something more or less. But anyway, him and him and his wife invited me out to a restaurant. It was this new vegan restaurant in town. I was like, oh, OK. And so I sat down. I’m looking at the menu and I’m just like, I don’t know how to get my protein here. I can’t figure it out. Everything’s so heavy in carbs.
And so what I do is I just, I pull up my phone, look at the nearby restaurants, look at that, Texas de Brazil is right next to us. And I door dash a pound of bacon wrapped chicken right to the table outside we were sitting at the vegan restaurant.
Ben Kosubevsky (20:21)
Yeah, he definitely got some looks from the waiters on that one.
Kyle Hulbert (20:25)
Yeah. But hey, you know what? I got to get my protein intake. So they didn’t have pea protein or spirulina for that matter. Come on guys. Good times. Well, thank you so much guys for listening. And again, if you have questions or we can help you, I’d love to help you out with my coaching company, Toxic Roots. Feel free to hit me on that Instagram or our Peak Performance Podcast Instagram, or you can find my personal Instagram at ToxinFreeKyle.
Ben Kosubevsky (20:33)
We won’t be back there, don’t worry.
And I’m Dr. K or the osteodoc on Instagram. Thank you everybody for joining us and we will see you next time.
Kyle Hulbert (21:00)
Signing off.