Plant vs Animal Protein

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Walking is good for your heart, bones, joints, immune system, and more.

• There are good and bad sources of animal protein.

• There are good and bad sources of plant protein.

• Less processed is best in either case.

• If you go for meat, especially red meat, moderation is key.

• If you go for plants, make sure you’re getting all 20 essential amino acids, because not all plant proteins contain those. Soy does, or you can just eat varied plant proteins to cover them all.

• Meats are often more nutritionally dense, but also carry more health risks.

• For muscle-building purposes, there is no difference.

• The Mediterranean Diet (which by default includes small amounts of lean animal protein) remains good as ever.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Surprising Things That Happen To Your Body When You Walk Every Day

At 10almonds, we’re big fans of walking. Never (outside of the bedroom, at least) has an activity with so many health benefits been so pleasant! This short (3:16) video gives an overview:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

🍽 MAIN FEATURE

Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head

Some people will obviously have strong ideological opinions here—for vegetarians and vegans, it’s no question, and for meat-eaters, it’s easy to be reactive to that and double-down on the bacon. But, we’re a health and productivity newsletter, so we’ll be sticking to the science.

Which is better, healthwise?

First, it depends how you go about it. Consider these options:

• A piece of salmon

• A steak

• A hot dog

• A hot dog, but plant-based

• Textured soy protein (no additives)

• Edamame (young soy) beans

Three animal-based protein sources, three plant-based. We could render the competition simple (but very unfair) by pitting the hotdog against the edamame beans, or the plant-based hot dog against the piece of salmon. So let’s kick this off by saying:

• There are good and bad animal-based protein sources

• There are good and bad plant-based protein sources

Whatever you choose, keep that in mind while you do. Less processed is better in either case. And if you do go for red meat, less is better, period.

Picking the healthiest from each, how do the nutritional profiles look?

They look good in both cases! One factor of importance is that in either case, our bodies will reduce the proteins we consume to their constituent amino acids, and then rebuild them into the specific proteins we actually need. Our bodies will do that regardless of the source, because we are neither a salmon nor a soy bean, for example.

We need 20 specific amino acids, for our bodies to make the proteins we will use in our bodies.

Animal protein sources contain all 20 of those. Plant based sources often don’t, individually, but by eating soy for example (which does contain all 20) and/or getting multiple sources of protein from different plants, the 20 can be covered quite easily with little thought, just by having a varied diet.

Meats are #1!

• They’re number 1 for nutritional density

• They’re number 1 for health risks, too

So while plant-based diet adherents may need to consume more varied things to get all the nutrients necessary, meat-eaters won’t have that problem.

Meat-eaters will instead have a different problem, of more diet-related health risks, e.g.

• Cardiovascular disease

• Metabolic disorders

• Cancers

So again, if eating (especially processed and/or red) meat, moderation is good. The Mediterranean Diet that we so often recommend, by default contains small amounts of lean animal protein.

Which is better for building muscle?

Assuming a broadly healthy balanced diet, and getting sufficient protein from your chosen source, they’re pretty equal:

• Vegan and Omnivorous High Protein Diets Support Comparable Daily Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis Rates and Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy in Young Adults

• A mycoprotein-based high-protein vegan diet supports equivalent daily myofibrillar protein synthesis rates compared with an isonitrogenous omnivorous diet in older adults: a randomised controlled trial

(both studies showed that both dietary approaches yielded results that showed no difference in muscle synthesis between the two)

The bottom line is…

Healthwise, what’s more important than whether you get your protein from animals or plants is that you eat foods that aren’t processed, and are varied.

And if you want to do a suped-up Mediterranean Diet with less red meat, you might want to try:

A Pesco-Mediterranean Diet With Intermittent Fasting: JACC Review Topic of the Week

^This is from a review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and in few words, they recommend it very highly

🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Cocktail of modified antibodies found to provide strong effect against SARS-CoV-2

• How the brain tells the liver to start recycling after fasting

• Using electric stimulation to make wounds heal three times faster

• Mitochondria power-supply failure may cause age-related cognitive impairment

• Diagnosing, treating depression can be critical to breast cancer patient’s care and survival

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook for Beginners: Countless Easy and Delicious Recipes - by Melissa Jefferson

For some of us, avoiding inflammatory food is a particularly important consideration. For all of us, it should be anyway.

Sometimes, we know what's good against inflammation, and we know what's bad for inflammation... but we might struggle to come up with full meals of just-the-good, especially if we want to not repeat meals every day!

The subtitle is slightly misleading! It says "Countless Easy and Delicious Recipes", but this depends on your counting ability. Melissa Jefferson gives us 150 anti-inflammatory recipes, which can be combined for a 12-week meal plan. We think that's enough to at least call it "many", though.

First comes an introduction to inflammation, inflammatory diseases, and a general overview of what to eat / what to avoid. After that, the main part of the book is divided into sections:

• Breakfasts (20)

• Soups (15)

• Beans & Grains (20)

• Meat (20)

• Fish (20)

• Vegetables (20)

• Sides (15)

• Snacks (10)

• Desserts (10)

If you've a knowledge of anti-inflammation diet already, you may be wondering how "Meat" and "Desserts" works.

• The meat section is a matter of going light on the meat and generally favoring white meats, and certainly unprocessed.

• Of course, if you are vegetarian or vegan, substitutions may be in order anyway.

As for the dessert section? A key factor is that fruits and chocolate are anti-inflammatory foods! Just a matter of not having desserts full of sugar, flour, etc.

The recipes themselves are simple and to-the-point, with ingredients, method, and nutritional values. Just the way we like it.

All in all, a fine addition to absolutely anyone's kitchen library... And doubly so if you have a particular reason to focus on avoiding/reducing inflammation!

Get your copy of "Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook for Beginners" from Amazon today!

Wishing you the best of health today and every day,

The 10almonds Team