Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikenew | Hacker News Reader

FTA: plant protein is also associated with lower mortality. So... more protein is just better?

I wonder if strength is part of the explanation. We know that there's a strong association between strength and mortality, so maybe a higher protein diet just helps maintain more strength as people age. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18595904/

View on HN

Malnutrition with seniors is a gateway to many other medical issues. Current guidelines teach seniors to eat the protein and high calorie foods first (even dessert first) before hitting the vegetables. This result is consistent with the current body of knowledge.

From what I recall from seeing mortality curves vs BMI, away from the expected minimum the curve rises much faster for low BMI than high BMI.

Makes one think. In a high-self-control-valuing society, "heavy" is perhaps seen as lacking virtue, but in many societies "skinny" is perhaps seen as lacking utility.

Protein (well amino acids) is used by the body to repair tissue. Amino acids are more available in animal proteins than in plants. There are scores [1] for ranking protein availability, and the top ones are animal protein (the humble egg ranks very high).

You can get the same proteins from plant sources but you have to eat a lot more of it (which can be difficult to do -- not everyone can eat a lot even if it's fun foods) and also supplement the limiting amino acids. I believe most diets fall short of the recommended amount.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_quality#Protein_source...

A long long time ago I read a forum post that evaluated mixing various types of plant based protein powders at various ratios to achieve a high PDCAAS score. The only things I can recall are that a 70/30 mix of pea protein and rice protein gave you above a 1.0 score, and mixing hemp protein in with anything made the score worse. You can conveniently buy cheap pea protein powder and rice protein powder in 7 and 3 lb jugs.

This was specifically about protein powder, but I think you could achieve similar results in your diet by combining different plant based foods in a meal.

You can definitely get the right proportions by mixing, though you might have to eat (in this case drink) a lot more plant protein (in terms of volume) to get the comparable amount in g vis-a-vis animal protein.

One interesting remark in one of Joe Rogan's interviews with a former vegetarian, was somewhat like the following ...

He stated most animals can be eaten by humans, but most plants cannot. Because plants cannot move, plants need to have some innate defences to prevent being killed before being able to reproduce and as such many plants are poisonous. Humans apparently have evolved to be able to disregards some poisons in some plants.

Also, in this interview the former vegetarian stated that if humans were to eat pretty much all of the meat of the animal (including liver, heart) they would get most of the vitamins required to stay in good health.

Now I don't know exactly which person Joe interviewed. Might have been Paul Saladino.

I love that the fact that the interviewee was a vegetarian makes them an expert!

Maybe you misread the article. Plant protein is inversely correlated with mortality in middle-aged adults. They focused entirely on patients with a mean age of 75 years.

regarding the group they studied "Plant protein intake showed no association with any of the mortality outcomes"

They also tested plant protein (read further down):

> Plant protein intake showed no association with any of the mortality outcomes

So, for whatever reason, it was only animal protein in this study. Previous studies in younger populations have shown benefits of plant protein, though.

From what I have read it is actually the completeness of meat protein that is the problem and the interaction certain amino acids have with mTOR.

Plant based diet basically starves mTOR better from the aminos that plant protein lacks.

I basically eat a vegan diet but cheat on the weekends eating meat because I love meat.

The real problem with veganism is that it is so hard to separate biology from the "food religion" of veganism. The idea of being vegan during the week but eating a hot dog on the weekend is literally blasphemous.

That's because you're using the terms incorrectly. I wouldn't say that I'm pacifist during the week, then pick fights with the homeless on the weekends. It doesn't make sense because pacifism, like veganism, describes a philosophical viewpoint. And you can't willingly change your beliefs just on the weekends.

You want to describe your diet? Then just say you don't eat meat during the week.

"Plant protein intake showed no association with any of the mortality outcomes, but an interaction with baseline hypertension was found for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality (p<0.05)."

Is a plant protein diet associated with lower mortality in the Inuit people?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com