Miscellaneous Articles
Proteins, Food Groups & Nutrients on a Plant-Based Low Carb Diet
There are a few things you need to keep in mind.
Some Nutrient Info to Keep in Mind
There are a few nutrients you need to pay a little extra attention to when on a plant-based diet, which this section discusses.
You may have heard that you can’t get vitamin B12 on a vegan diet, but that’s not really true. A lot of plant-based foods — such as nutritional yeast, nut and soy milks, cereals, yogurts, and imitation meats — are fortified with essential vitamins including B12, so read your labels. There’s also a nutritional yeast spread called Marmite, which basically works in recipes like a salty honey, and it also is fortified with B12 and other vitamins.
You need to have a regular source of iodine, which is easily obtained in iodine-fortified salt. Note that seaweed can be very high in iodine, though, and too much iodine is as bad for you as too little of it, which I discuss more in the seaweed soup recipe, so don’t eat seaweed soup for every meal!
Omega-3s can be inefficient for the body to absorb when coming from plant-based sources, which is why the Creamy Green Smoothie recipe contains plenty of ground flax, hemp hearts and chia seeds. Algae-based foods can be better for omega-3 absorption which is why keeping spirulina handy in your pantry is recommended.
Zinc is found in whole grain breads (the low carb variety of course is promoted here), legumes and seeds.
Iron comes in two forms, heme (from animals) and nonheme (from plants). Getting iron from plant-based foods is less efficient (harder for the body to absorb) compared to getting iron from animal products. To increase bodily absorption of nonheme iron, adding vitamin C rich foods and avoiding calcium-rich foods to the meal helps.
Vitamin D comes primarily from sunlight and animal products, both of which can be very harmful! Vitamin D is also found in a lot of fortified vegan foods such as milks, cereals and juices, so I don’t recommend many hours of sunbathing because that’s a lot of sunscreen and trips to the dermatology test lab indeed!
Getting your blood levels checked regularly is important no matter what your dietary regime is, which will help with spotting any nutritional lacks and imbalances. Taking a vegan dietary multivitamin supplement regularly is a good way to tick off all the nutrient boxes just to make sure nothing is getting missed in the meal routines you set up.
My practical veganism approach is to pop a multivitamin supplement daily to minimize the constant counting of nutrients in everything I eat. If you don’t like swallowing big pills, I don’t either, but the Creamy Green Smoothie makes it pretty easy to swallow pretty much any pill or capsule you wish no matter what size they come in.
Protein
The myth that it’s hard to get sufficient protein on a vegan diet has hopefully by now been sufficiently debunked by the popular media. In the richer developed economies, protein deficiency is very rare, and in fact most people consume much more protein than they need. On a vegan diet, one just has to make sure to get enough amino acids from meals that the body can obtain complete protein requirements.
The recipes’ primary sources of complete proteins are soy (whether in beans, milk, TVP or tofu) and the protein powder supplement for the Creamy Green Smoothie. Seitan is mostly complete, lacking only lysine (and is low on theanine) which can be obtained from seeds and beans in the recipes, or even just the soy from other meals. Theanine is found in tea leaves, and green tea is an important ingredient in the Creamy Green Smoothie.
You don’t have to get your complete protein in the same meal, since getting them across a day’s meals will support your body’s protein needs.
Fruits
Fruits are almost by definition high in sugars and thus are high carb, and so I don’t feature them too much in this book. A good cheat meal is a fruit salad, or any collection of fruits you wish to combine. The lowest carb fruits are blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, and apples aren’t too bad.
Thus, I do include some basic recipes that include these fruits in the book. Also, keep in mind that olives, avocados and tomatoes are fruits and these foods do feature prominently in the recipes, so you’re not really missing out on this food group if making meal plans out of these recipes for weight loss.
Beans & Legumes
Beans and legumes, like fruits, are very good for you and also high in carbs. Thus, reserve most of this food group for cheat meals. The foods from this family I focus on in the following recipes are soybeans (and the TVP and tofu derived from them), chickpeas (in the form of chickpea flour) and green beans, as these are the lowest carb varieties in this important food category.
Usually one has to combine a bean and a grain to get the amino acids for making complete proteins, such as beans and rice or hummus and pita. Soybeans and tofu offer a complete protein, however, which is why these are emphasized in some of the recipes. And for cheat meals or weight maintenance goals, I include hummus on slices of low carb toast (which have all required amino acids) as in the Toasts section.
