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Comment by Passthepeas | Hacker News Reader

except a low carb diet is completely possible without the use of animal products, so that point doesn't really hold water.

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A low fat diet is completely possible without the use of sugar. What's your point?

It would taste like crap and no one would eat it.

You could use artificial sweeteners. Also, there's plenty of lean meats or plant-based diets that are low in fat and sugar while remaining reasonably palatable.

Where is the energy supposed to come from if there is neither fat nor sugar?

Protein. And there are carbonhydrates besider sugar...

Try a proper Vegan meal and you’ll be astonished how good a low fat meal would taste without sugar. The app Happy Cow can help you find a nearby Vegan restaurant.

Really? I'm trying it now and finding it tremendously challenging to eat adequate calories without either grains or lots and lots of meat.

Vegetables are so calorie-poor and expensive that they're untenable, so you better love beans and lentils, because that's the vast majority of what you'll be consuming.

Beans and lentils aren't low carb.

They're low carb by plant standards.

The answer is fat -- the majority of your calories necessarily come from either carbs or fats (protein is pretty constant for most people).

So if you cut way down on carbs, gotta go up on the fats, that's just how it works: I eat lots of cheese, full-fat strained ("greek") yogurt, tons of eggs, nuts and peanut butter, tons of olive oil on my salad and vegetables, lots of butter in my scrambled eggs, obviously avocados if you can afford them.

Since fat makes things delicious, it's really pretty easy.

If you're non-dairy or vegan then you don't get as much variety, of course.

> vegan then you don't get as much variety

I simply fail to see how it's possible to eat vegan low-carb. Everything vegan, be it legumes, vegetables, or fruits, have carbs. Legumes are 2/3 carbs, so they're out of the question. Even nuts, despite their high fat/moderate protein content, have an appreciable amount of carbs. Even peanuts, a low-carb legume, have 21 grams of carbs/100g. Which just leaves processed plant proteins and fats.

On top of that, protein gets converted into glucose via gluconeogenesis, so despite eating low-carb your body will be breaking down excess protein into sugar. So to try vegan low-carb is really an impossible fad diet.

Maybe not all in its natural form of nuts and veggies, but most veggie and nut oils are vegan and full of healthy fats. Yes, drizzle it on everything. Flavor it. It may get tiring, but its easy, vegan, and filling.

I think when most people (myself included) refer to cutting out carbs, it's really shorthand for cutting out starches and sugar, or at its most precise, anything with an appreciable glycemic index.

So the carbs in nuts and vegetables can be simply ignored, it's fine. Fruit is only in small amounts. And you shouldn't be eating so much protein that it gets converted to sugar.

But I totally agree -- I think either you do low-carb or you do vegan, not both. I had a friend who tried to do both, I couldn't understand it either.

You’re completely correct, Vegan is not low-carb. It is not the intake off carbs that make obese, imho it is the intake of sugars that cause the epidemic obesity. The average glycemic index [0] of a meal determines the effects of carbs, low GI is good and high GI is not good. A meal with large amount or percentage of carbs can be very healthy and not leading to obesity or type 2 diabetes as long as the Glycemic Index is low. And, above all, a Vegan meal can be very tasty and healthy at the same time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index#Grouping

Which is completely fine. Glucose is what your body needs, cells can use it. The other part of Sucrose is Fructose. The boby has no use for it, can only can only convert it in the liver to fat same with ethanol. There are hypotheses that cancer cells use fructose for energy.

  There are hypotheses that cancer cells use fructose for energy

Does fructose even reach the bloodstream?

  protein gets converted into glucose via gluconeogenesis

But how much gluconeogenesis even happens on a vegan diet? On a keto diet, it's necessary for organs that run on glucose, such as the heart. Non-keto diets should have plenty of sucrose/fructose/glucose already available.

As far as I understand, all excess amino acids (that is, not used for protein synthesis), are indiscriminately metabolized for energy, diet doesn't factor into it. Your body cannot readily store amino acids outside of those free floating in the bloodstream (although it can store them in the form of tissue to catabolize later). A quick search will tell you that 13 amino acids are exclusively glucogenic (as opposed to ketogenic). Given that metabolism occurs in the liver, and the liver has little use for immediate energy, little direct oxidation occurs, so probably the majority of amino acids are converted into glucose and transported elsewhere. This is the reason your urine is yellow, it's from the urea which contains dietary nitrogen waste from the constant metabolism of protein (carbohydrates/fats don't contain nitrogen).

Didn't bother with sources, so feel free to do your own research.

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