The off-grid survivalist dude in invidious video ID “YOXkcz8j3Gc” says milk & potatoes are “nutritionally complete”, which if I understand correctly means that pairing covers the 9 essential amino acids. That’s cool… but not vegan.
A pescetarian in my family was hospitalized for malnutrition. Not sure what he did wrong or what he was short on, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who would be overly negligent. IMO, as a non-vegan outsider looking in, a vegan diet is easy to screw up & requires some research to stay safe. You can’t just live on rabbit food. So I wonder if the title-linked article has the answers. In short, it claims these pairings are nutritionally complete:
- rice & beans
- tofu & veg (questionable¹?)
- chickpeas & wheat
- peanut butter & whole wheat toast²
- pinto beans³ & corn
- whole wheat pasta & peas
- lentils & rice ←I’m bummed it’s not lentils & couscous, which I often use in lentil salad
- oatmeal & pumpkin seeds
Note that all links referenced in this post are Cloudflare-free and openly accessible to all. Also no big cookie popups or similar garbage.
footnotes (with questions!):
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I find tofu & vegetables suspicious. There are countless vegetables, so this is quite vague. How can we expect any given veg to have whatever tofu is missing? This makes me somewhat skeptical of the whole article.
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Why toast? Why not bread?
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Or skip the pinto beans and just make sure your corn is infected with a purple fungus containing lysine, assuming #lysine is the reason pinto beans are paired with corn.
I think it’s worth noting that many of the “incomplete” proteins actually have all the amino acids, just one of them is relatively low. If you are varying your protein sources at all and eating more than the recommended quantity of protein from WHO studies, it would actually be hard to be protein deficient. Take pea protein for example. It’s slightly short on methionine/cysteine, but not by much. If you just get some extra pea protein, you’re good. You wouldn’t need any other protein sources, but you’ll pick those up with other foods incidentally anyway.
In the medical sense, the only time people are diagnosed with protein calorie deficiency is in the setting of starvation or chronic disease. If you are eating enough, you exercise, and you are under 60 years old, completeness of proteins isn’t important in my opinion.
Does more protein help exercise recovery? Yeah maybe, but you won’t be sick or feel bad without it.
Basically every single whole food has all 9 essential aminos, the incomplete protein thing is a half truth. It is true some foods have an imbalanced amino profile but it’s a complete fabrication that no plant foods are good enough. Many pulses, nuts, seeds, and vegetables will get you the recommended amount of aminos if you exclusively ate that singular food. For some examples pinto beans, peanuts, sunflower seeds, spinach. Even many grains like buckwheat and quinoa will get you there, just not wheat, the most commonly eaten one.
But I also find the term “nutritionally complete” to be a misnomer for something that simply has all the required aminos in the right quantities. Your body needs more than amino actions to function, there are many more known essential nutrients as well as nutrients that aren’t essential but healthful, so it’s best to eat a variety of things, and potatoes with dairy definitely does not satisfy the bill. Looping back to spinach though, it’s an example of a food that might be as close to nutritionally complete as possible, perhaps Popeye was on to something.
Tofu does has a fairly complete amino acid profile, which is why it combines well with many vegetable proteins. It’s only a little short on methionine.
Seeds, nuts, spinach, sweet potato, corn, asparagus, broccoli, chard… And more are all pretty decent sources of methionine.
You may find this article my friend wrote interesting -https://green.michaelaltfield.net/2014/10/20/complete-protein-ratios/
I think many people like to toast the bread but you don’t have to.
I don’t think any two foods alone will give you a good nutrition. Eat different foods (cook fresh when you can), look for protein here and there and you’re probably good. Except vitamin B12, take supplements for that!
Indeed I would expect diversity to matter. I’m a novice here but it seems this whole concept of “nutritional completeness” is actually incomplete in the big scheme of things and more about keeping you alive & avoiding hospitals. That’s a good thing) but I’m assuming it’s not the best end-game because the concept seems to overlook all vitamins & probably other factors as well.
While corn smut is delicious, rice & beans is my go-to for complete protein. Avocado, if you can afford it, is also good.
Remember that nutritionally complete doesn’t have to be in the same meal , you just need enough of each of the essential amino acids in your system.
derailing the discussion, you can probably sub out most of the grains in the pairings – nutritional profiles of grains are pretty much non-existant (empty carbs and not much else – and since there’s no essential carbs … )
I don’t think that’s derailing… but trying to understand it. Are you saying the research is bogus… that e.g. rice does not complete the amino acids missing from beans?
it’s the necessary quantities – rice has the amino acids but at such low levels you end up overeating to make up for the lack – substituting in vegetables or fruits that make up the missing components would make for a better pairing and offer additional nutritional benefits
rice has the amino acids but at such low levels you end up overeating to make up for the lack
You seem to be contradicting the article posted by @[email protected]:
which concludes equal parts of beans & rice by volume are significantly balanced. I assume he means dry beans and dry rice, by volume, which is usually what I use.
(update) I suppose it’s possible for you to both be right if beans are also a “grain” & thus also low in amino acids to the same extent as rice.
