Building muscle on a "plant based" diet
While I'm not a vegetarian, those of you who are may be interested in the following little experiment and set of articles by Dr. John Berardi.
He's an omnivore who had a vegetarian ask for advice on building muscle. He decided to see if he could put on muscle on a vegetarian type diet. The details are shown in the following sets of articles. Overall, he was able to put on 7 lbs total (5lbs lean, 2 lbs fat) and came away with some good lessons on eating. I read the original article on t-nation, but his blog is on the precision nutrition web site, so there are some plugs for their system.
The first article describing how he was challenged to experiment: JB Goes Vegetarian
The article outlining his results: Wrap-up and summary of Johns experiment - photos, stats, conclusions
Two good articles he wrote during his time as a "vegetarian" with some lessons he learned:
Lessons meat-eaters and vegans can learn from each other
Meat, is it really bad for you?
Overall, I think it's a good set of articles with some valuable lessons for those looking for a healthier style of eating, vegetarian or otherwise.
Edited: Original title was: "Can vegetarians build muscle?". I thought that might be taken the wrong way and that people would avoid the thread thinking it was an anti-vegetarian post. I didn't mean it that way.
Original Post by dburns2:
Whales are big with lots of blubber since they evolved to live in very cold waters. Not all whales are meat eaters. Sperm whales & orcas, yes. Baleen whales like the humpback, not really altho they do swallow zooplankton along with phytoplankton. BTW, do you know they decended from a common ancestor with the hippos?
Humpbacks do eat plankton (both zoo- and phyto-), but they also eat crustaceans and small fish. They are definitely not herbivores... in fact, off the top of my head, there isn't a species of whale that doesn't include animals in its diet.
Original Post by ambereva:ETA: would you care to wager, Sully? I'll eat nothing but plants for a year, and you eat nothing but animal products for a year, and at the end of the year we'll compare our health and fitness levels?
No I wouldn't, cutting out entire food groups that humans spent millions of years evolving to eat is a dumb idea.
And you need to get over your idea that sample sizes of 1 prove anything.
Original Post by floggingsully:
Original Post by ambereva:ETA: would you care to wager, Sully? I'll eat nothing but plants for a year, and you eat nothing but animal products for a year, and at the end of the year we'll compare our health and fitness levels?
No I wouldn't, cutting out entire food groups that humans spent millions of years evolving to eat is a dumb idea.
And you need to get over your idea that sample sizes of 1 prove anything.
Except that it's not a sample size of one, I'm in very good company, Brendan Brazier, Rich Roll, Scott Jurek, Tony Gonzalez, Mac Danzig, Robert Cheeke, Molly Cameron, Carl Lewis...shall I go on?
comparing one person on a vegan diet with one person on a carnivorous diet, which is what you proposed, is comarping samples sizes of 1.
Original Post by ambereva:I'm in very good company, Brendan Brazier, Rich Roll, Scott Jurek, Tony Gonzalez, Mac Danzig, Robert Cheeke, Molly Cameron, Carl Lewis...shall I go on?
Do you really want to compare the accomplishments of vegan athletes with non-vegans?
By the way, Tony Gonzales eats meat.
And Carl Lewis was a doper.
floggingsully, humans can not live off a carnivorous diet, it is biologically impossible because we can't make our own vitamin C, and you can't get vitamin C from animal products, and without vitamin C we get scurvy and die, it is a fact, not a myth.
We can live off of a plant only diet because our bodies are capable of making all its own taurine and cholesterol which are things only found in animal products, but we HAVE to get vitamin C from our diets, we would die otherwise.
So you had better not take that bet, becuase you wouldn't last a year on a carnivorous diet, you would be dead. (a diet with no plants at all)
Original Post by floggingsully:
comparing one person on a vegan diet with one person on a carnivorous diet, which is what you proposed, is comarping samples sizes of 1.
Where is the laughing smilie? Dude, you were the one who said optimal health and fitness were possible on a diet devoid of plants. I'm totally ready to put my money where my mouth is, lets do it.
Now, I hate to dig and run, but I've got a plant fueled 50 mile bike ride and 7 mile run to get to today. Ciao!
Original Post by cesty8:
floggingsully, humans can not live off a carnivorous diet, it is biologically impossible because we can't make our own vitamin C, and you can't get vitamin C from animal products, and without vitamin C we get scurvy and die, it is a fact, not a myth.
Eskimos.
Original Post by ambereva:Dude, you were the one who said optimal health and fitness were possible on a diet devoid of plants. I'm totally ready to put my money where my mouth is, lets do it.
I didn't say optimal health, I don't know what optimal health is, I don't know how you measure it and I don't know where the optimal/suboptimal cutoff is.
You say you're 'totally ready' to do an experiment which will prove nothing.
Original Post by cesty8:
floggingsully, humans can not live off a carnivorous diet, it is biologically impossible because we can't make our own vitamin C, and you can't get vitamin C from animal products, and without vitamin C we get scurvy and die, it is a fact, not a myth.
Wrong. Vitamin C is available from animal sources, just not the ones found in the supermarket. Stefansson's all meat trial showed prefect health on a 1 year all meat diet......and continued good health for years without plant based foods, without deficiencies........the doom and gloom that was predicted, never happened, at all.
Personally I don't think the arguement whether we can eat all plant or eat all meat is the point....we're omnivores.....does a predominantly meat diet benefit from plant food, yes.....does a predominantly plant diet benefit from some animal sources, yes it does.
Original Post by floggingsully:
Original Post by ambereva:I'm in very good company, Brendan Brazier, Rich Roll, Scott Jurek, Tony Gonzalez, Mac Danzig, Robert Cheeke, Molly Cameron, Carl Lewis...shall I go on?
Do you really want to compare the accomplishments of vegan athletes with non-vegans?
No, we don't want to compare the accomplishments of vegan athletes with non-vegans, but we do want to compare vegan athletes with athletes who eat animal-based diets exclusively. Isn't our discussion regarding the comparison between plant-based diets (vegan) vs. animal based (carnivorous) diets? 'Non-vegans' (including omnivores), is a larger and more general population than our sample at question (which is: individuals who eat food derived exclusively from animals). Thus, comparing accomplishments of vegan athletes and non-vegan athletes:
Original Post by floggingsully:... will prove nothing
So how about I attempt to do just that: compare vegan athletes with athletes who eat food derived from animal sources exclusively - except, I'm stuck. I can't think of a single athlete who doesn't eat plants.
Does anyone want to help?
Original Post by floggingsully:
Original Post by cesty8:
floggingsully, humans can not live off a carnivorous diet, it is biologically impossible because we can't make our own vitamin C, and you can't get vitamin C from animal products, and without vitamin C we get scurvy and die, it is a fact, not a myth.
Eskimos.
I lived in Alaska and know that eskimos do NOT eat a meat only diet.
Believe it or not, even in the arctic there are plants that can be eaten.
Blueberries, low and high bush cranberries, bearberries, crowberries, spruce buds, fireweed greens and flowers, loganberries, and there are lots more I am sure I don't know about, are all commonly consumed by eskimos.
All those foods mentioned I found and ate myself in Fairbanks, AK region, and even when I did a road trip up north to the North Slop I was able to find bearberries, blueberries and crowberries.
No, eskimos need Vitamin C from their diet as well! You may want to look stuff up before posting, are are making yourself appear dumb by making inaccurate statements like that. I don't think you are dumb though, you just are ill-informed.
Original Post by cesty8:
Original Post by floggingsully:
Original Post by cesty8:
floggingsully, humans can not live off a carnivorous diet, it is biologically impossible because we can't make our own vitamin C, and you can't get vitamin C from animal products, and without vitamin C we get scurvy and die, it is a fact, not a myth.
Eskimos.
I lived in Alaska and know that eskimos do NOT eat a meat only diet.
Did you live in Alaska in the 1600s?
Original Post by amethystgirl:
Original Post by cesty8:
Original Post by floggingsully:
Original Post by cesty8:
floggingsully, humans can not live off a carnivorous diet, it is biologically impossible because we can't make our own vitamin C, and you can't get vitamin C from animal products, and without vitamin C we get scurvy and die, it is a fact, not a myth.
Eskimos.
I lived in Alaska and know that eskimos do NOT eat a meat only diet.
Did you live in Alaska in the 1600s?
What does that have to do with anything? What is there now was there then, I don't understand that statement.
Eskimo diets have changed over time.
From books I read I know that even back in the Ice Age Alaska natives ate berries.
They still had to consume some plant products for vitamin C. Simple fact, no one can survive with no plants in their diet. Even if it is flowers from a plant, it has vitamin C and can keep you alive. Meat has no vitamin C, can't get around that no matter how much you dis-agree, and humans, EVERY human on earth needs vitamin C in their diet, no exceptions.
From The Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian Institute:
How do people in the Arctic get enough Vitamin C and D if there is little sun and a limited amount of fresh fruits and vegetables?
While the sun (which is necessary to produce vitamin D) may not be out long in the winter, the extended periods of daylight in the arctic summer more than compensate, allowing people to get plenty of vitamin D. And although there are scarcely any fresh fruits or vegetables available year round to eat in the Arctic, people gain the necessary amount of vitamin C through the consumption of raw meats, which are naturally high in vitamin C.
Of course, nobody is suggesting that we should eat raw meat to get our vitamin C. Just that it isn't impossible.
Actually some groups of Inuit are only 2 generations (about 50 years) departed from their traditional Inuit diet. These dietary changes have caused most of the degenerative diseases now found in the standard diet.......they were better of before. Again, yes the Inuit ate some bluberries but again Vitamin C was obtained within the animal's consumed by the inuit.......I guess cesty8 didn't like my previous response and just ignored it.
I wonder what foods the Inuit eat now that have caused all the diabetes and heart disease that was never there before......that would make for some nice research.
Original Post by neanderthin:
I wonder what foods the Inuit eat now that have caused all the diabetes and heart disease that was never there before......that would make for some nice research.
In In Defense of Food, Pollan mentioned some research done with some Australians who had (I think) within one generation switched to a predominantly western diet. The study participants went back to their traditional Aboriginal diet, and were able to reverse a lot of the diseases they were experiencing from their modern diet.
It wasn't that I didn't like your response, it was that there was a fire drill and we had to go outside so I didn't see it until now, believe it or not, I don't sit on CC all day and night, I come here, check, then leave for a bit typically.
ANYWAY, I didn't know that raw meat had vitamin C in it. I learn something new everyday.
You won't see me eating raw meat though...yuk...I think I will eat an orange or mango instead, sounds much more tasty.
But they still ate berries and such, there is a thing they used to make, pemmican (?sp) where it is dried ground up powdered meat mixed with fat and dried berries and then poured out like pancakes and left to cool to form little cakes, and travellers often times ate this. I think even indians here in the lower 48 ate that as well. I can't remember though if pemmican is the name of the ground up meat or the name of the cakes...not sure.
I wonder how much diseases now are because of factory farmed meat? I mean, I am sure even the Inuit didnt eat as much meat as the typical American eats, honestly. If you had to hunt and kill all your own meat, would you eat as much, when berries and plants are more redilly available and more easily obtained?
Think about this, you are there, you are hungry, there is a seal out there about 100 yards away, quick, powerful, dangerious, and the likely hood of getting that seal is questionable at best even with the best hunting techniques, but there are some blueberries right there ripe for the picking. Which one would you eat?
I wonder how much diseases now are because of factory farmed meat?
If that is the source (although I'd guess refined carbs play a large role, and that it is the diet of the factory farmed animals, not the meat itself, that is more of a problem), remember there are ways to eat meat that don't involve factory farming.
The side effects of allergy medications keep some people from using them. Natural remedies can be a great alternative, but some are more effective than others.
