Isoleucine is one of the most important amino acids for athletes, along with leucine and valine. Those 3 amino acids combined make up about 70% of your body’s total proteins. Isoleucine in particular is a branched chain amino acid that helps with your energy levels, endurance, and muscle tissue recovery. If you’re an athlete, you need to be getting a decent amount of isoleucine, either from your...
Niacin, otherwise known as vitamin B3, is used to produce energy, fatty acids, cholesterol, and more. It’s also a part of the DNA repair process. Getting niacin exclusively from plants isn’t too difficult. Just a few servings of certain foods will get you more than the RDA. How Much Niacin Should You Have Per Day For adults, the recommended daily amount of niacin is 16 mg for men, and 14 mg...
Green and brown lentils seem very similar to me. But red lentils always seemed quite different. Red lentils are made by removing the hull of certain varieties of lentils, leading to the smaller size. This also results in some differences in taste and nutrition. I’m going to go over the different nutritional aspects of brown and red lentils to see if there are actually any major differences...
Summary: Chicken (breast) typically has a bit higher protein content than seitan, but it depends on the seitan recipe you use. Chicken is a complete protein, but seitan is low in lysine (otherwise great). Neither are particularly good for getting vitamins or minerals. Ever since I started playing sports, every nutrition article on training that had anything to do with protein said one thing...
Refresher/Summary: Leucine is an essential amino acid, meaning that we can only get it from food. It’s also one of the 3 branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), important for building muscle proteins. The other 2 are isoleucine and the valine. You should aim for at least 42 mg of leucine per kg of bodyweight (19 mg per lb). The best vegan sources of leucine are mainly legumes, plus vital wheat...
Thiamine is a water-soluble B vitamin, that has an effect on your brain, muscles, and cardiovascular system. A thiamine deficiency can lead to weight loss, along with memory loss, confusion, muscle weakness, and heart issues. While that’s serious, thiamine deficiencies aren’t particularly common if you have a relatively diverse diet. How Much Thiamine Do You Need? The recommended...
Most new vegans end up getting so much fiber that it takes them time to get used to it, especially since fiber can build up and stay in your system for up to 61 hours! I made this post for two purposes: To help people lacking fiber find more vegan foods that have it, and to help vegans that are having stomach issues find the foods that are causing them. To do so, I used the USDA food database to...
Seeds are one of the best vegan sources of fats, and also a great vegan source of calcium. After making a page about the ratio of omega 3 to 6 fats in nuts, it only made sense to do the same for seeds. I collected basic nutritional data for all the common seeds I could think of, and the results are just below. If there are any seeds that I forgot, just let me know and I’ll add them. Omega...
Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin, known mostly for its role in forming blood clots. It’s pretty rare to get a severe vitamin K deficiency, it typically only happens with a malabsorption disorder or being malnourished for a period of time. Vitamin K refers to a group of fat-soluble vitamins. The 2 that are found in most people are K1 and K2: Vitamin K1 is the most dominant (75-90% of total...
Ever since I went vegan, I’ve been eating a ton of beans. Pinto beans and black beans are 2 of my favorites, and both are common beans, so I did a detailed comparison of the two to see which is healthier (among other things). Like you might have guessed, they’re mostly similar, but there are a few differences. Which Bean Tastes Better? Side note: Black beans and black turtle beans are...