Understanding the Plant-Based Lifestyle

What Does it Mean to be Plant-Based?

To be plant-based is to follow exactly what homo sapien DNA wants to survive and operate at the highest level. Technically, everything comes from plants. All animals eat foods that are directly plants or an animal based food that eats another animal that lives on plants. No species would be alive if it weren’t for plants. Plants (land and sea) for the most part are vegan. Land plants require minerals and vitamins from the soil, sunlight, and CO2. There are 3 primary species of eaters on Earth:

1. Herbivores – live on plants
2. Carnivores – live on meat
3. Omnivores – live on meat and plants

The most important question to ask in nutrition, exercise and disease prevention is which of these species are closest to homo sapiens? The answer to the aforementioned question determines you should eat, exercise, and prevent disease. So, which are we? Should we even eat plants? How much, which ones, and what ratio of plants?

Research proves that we are omnivores. However, we are much closer to an herbivore than a carnivore. This is strictly based upon our human anatomy-length of intestines, biochemistry of homo sapien nutrition, physiology of exercise and stress, among others.

The question here is what does it mean to be plant based? On a deep ecological, archaeological, and anatomy level plants and humans have a mutually beneficial relationship. A typical plant diet consists of 100% plants. This deserves some qualification first. The human genome doesn’t permit all plants. There’s a high cost for eating non-permitted plants. The plants homo sapiens prefer consist of: dicot vegetables + fruits, and little to no monocots. Research shows us that 60-70% of your plant intake should be from fruits with the peels on them. 30-40% of your intake should come from vegetables. Vegetables are your primary source of protein. Protein is mostly located at the end of leaves. Both fruits and vegetables contain a lot of soluble fiber, micronutrients, and phytonutrients.

Were our ancestors plant-based?

I’m not confident that our ancestors (Natufians, pre-Natufians, primates) could strictly lead a 100% plant based diet because they didn’t know how to combine different plants to get the correct ratio of amino acids, essential fatty acids (omega 6 and omega 3), and soluble fiber. However I do believe they were primarily vegetarian and substituted wild meat to fill in the nutritional gaps. It is important to understand that the wild animal meat they ate is much different than the commercial meat found in most grocery stores today. The two are extremely different. Fortunately, since the 1970’s we’ve figured out how to combine our plant based foods to supply the energetic and essential nutrients to prevent disease and operate at an optimal level.

How does a plant-based diet differ between species?

A plant-based diet is different for all species. For example: cows, which were derived from oxen, depend on grasses. Grasses (grasses, grains, etc) are monocot plants (one-seedling plants). Physiologically, cows prevent disease and operate at a high level by eating monocots. Homosapiens and most of the other primates are dependent on fruits and vegetables of dicot origin (two-seedling plants).

A plant-based diet consists of 100% plants. This deserves some qualification first. The human genome doesn’t permit all plants. There’s a high cost for eating non-permitted plants. The plants homosapiens prefer consist of: dicot vegetables + fruits, and little to no monocots. Research shows us that 60-70% of your plant intake should be from fruits with the peels on them. 30-40% of your intake should come from vegetables. Vegetables are your primary source of protein. Protein is mostly located at the end of leaves. Both fruits and vegetables contain a lot of soluble fiber, micronutrients, and phytonutrients.

What Does it Mean to be Vegan vs Vegetarian?

Vegans only eat plant-based foods; Vegetarians eat plants and non-meat animal products. Hence, vegetarian’s can eat dairy products, but not meat or eggs.

What’s Healthier: Vegan or Vegetarian?

Both Vegan and Vegetarian diets allow a lot of latitude for error. Vegan food avoids the many pitfalls of dairy, but still can eat monocots; Vegetarian foods allow for dairy and monocots which is problematic due to the inflammatory response it elicits in our body.

How to Live a Plant-Based Lifestyle

There are several components to maintaining, or beginning, a successful plant based lifestyle. One, plan your meals until you’re comfortable buying and cooking with plant based ingredients. Two, research restaurants that cater to vegan food and organic fruits & vegetables. Three, this lifestyle is a lot easier if you remove any non-plant items from your cupboards and refrigerator. Four, educate yourself by reading, watching educational videos, and attending seminars.

There’s literally unlimited information in cookbooks, on the internet, and this article about recipes. The limit to many of these resources is the use of monocots, and incorrect ratios of macro and micro nutrients. Use the quantities and ratios in this article to make sure you’re getting the healthiest meals. It’s pretty easy to manipulate most recipes to adjust these values. For example: it’s pretty easy to add flax oil to any finished product. Never cook flax oil, for it’s extremely sensitive to UV light and heat. In addition, it is easy to substitute cauliflower or broccoli rice for regular rice. You can also use vegan egg substitutes and vegan mayonnaise. Vegan sausage and hamburgers are an amazing substitute too.

My wife and I are fortunate in that we get to travel the world for our job. We get a chance to explore new cities’ art and restaurant scenes. This takes research on both accounts. Unfortunately, it takes more work to find restaurants that are exclusively vegan or will make vegan friendly food. Our blog offers lots of information about restaurants throughout the US that we have visited. I’d also recommend doing an internet search on vegan restaurants in the city that you’re in or traveling too. Then explore each restaurant’s website and check out their menus. This is a great place to start.

We begin our work with our personal clients by clearing their refrigerators, freezers, and cupboards of any non-plant based foods. “Out of sight, Out of mind” is an extremely helpful standard when it comes to a successful plant based diet. You have to throw out, or donate, animal based or monocot products. Otherwise, you’ll be constantly tempted to eat unhealthy foods. You can reconsider adding some of these foods back in once you’ve reached your body-fat, blood lab, and fitness goals. Check out our below video of our favorite vegan essentials that you should have in your pantry at all times.

Fortunately, there are unlimited health education resources out there. Unfortunately, there are conflicting views on what healthy nutrition and exercise is. Many of these programs take advantage of uneducated consumers to push their products or information. Many of these programs will work, but have a back-end cost to getting skinny or getting fit. Just because one is “skinny” or “fit” doesn’t mean they are healthy. Many of these programs are stressful on the body when they don’t need to be. There are some very good scientists, doctors, nutritionists, authors, and trainers out there. I would recommend starting with a program that begins with extensive lab and physical testing. This is a cornerstone to our program. It’s impossible to design a nutrition or exercise program with extensive lab and physical testing. Don’t trust an author or healthcare professional that doesn’t build a program off of this information.

Plant-Based Nutrition

There are several things you need to understand such as:

1. The differences of monocot plants and dicot plants.
2. The best sources of dicots
3. The common ways that we are tricked into eating unhealthy ingredients
4. The supplements that are acceptable to eat on a plant-based diet

What is the difference between Monocots and Dicots?

The structure of the carbohydrates is the primary difference between dicots and monocots.

What are Monocots (one-seeding plants)

Monocots primarily get absorbed through the small intestine which adversely impacts your sugar and insulin levels. Monocots don’t offer the same soluble fiber or micronutrient content that dicot fruits and vegetables do. This leaves little sustenance for the trillions of starving bacteria in your large intestine.

What are Dicots (two-seeding plants)

Dicots are primarily absorbed through bacterial fermentation in the large intestine. The bacteria eats the soluble fiber and their byproduct is short chain fatty acids which are absorbed in the large intestine. Dicots contain far more micro- and phytonutrients than Monocots. There is minimal to no negative impact on insulin and glucose levels. Furthermore, short chain fatty acids provide around 30% of your energy needs and provide the necessary chemicals for your anti-cancer genes (p53 and p21) to work properly. They do have many other vital functions in the body.

Dicots fruits and vegetables should be organic and raised locally. A majority of your intake should come from fruits (60-70%) and vegetables (30-40%). You should eat fruit and vegetables that still have the peel intact. Many of the micronutrients are located in the peel. What happens to a banana, apple, or cucumber once you remove the peel? The fruit and vegetable go rancid pretty quickly. Hence, the antioxidants that protect the fruit and vegetable are in the peel. I’m not saying to not eat bananas or cantaloupe, but try to eat most fruits and veggies with the peel. Vegetables are generally lower in sugar, higher in protein, and high in vegetable oils. You don’t need to really worry about the glycemic load and index of vegetables. However, there is some reason to think about the glycemic effect of fruits on your glucose and insulin levels. The load and index is generally not that high compared to monocots. For example: a banana has a glycemic index of between 33 and 55 and a load of 5-10 depending on what stage of maturity you eat it-both are low numbers. Conversely, boiled white rice has an index of about 102 and a load of 20-both very high numbers. Both of these foods are considered to have a pretty high load and index for their respective plant species-monocot and dicot, but you can see the disparity between the two.

Below we created an infographic that helps categorize Dicots (enjoy category) and Monocots (limit category).

Veganism & Nutrition

There’s a very compelling argument as to why evolved homosapiens, and all primates, should eat dicot vegan food. Any debate about homeostasis or how any of the 10 systems work generally begins with homosapiens “achilles heel”. The human body is made up of trillions of cells that have the ability to communicate with each other. Our goal is to protect these cells from damage and to get them to function optimally.

There are two gaping issues with human cells even with perfect nutrition, exercise, no environmental stress, and no emotional stress. The first is lack of mitosis in the brain, central nervous system, and the heart. There are very few exceptions here that are outside the scope of this article. Mitosis is a process of a cell dividing and creating new cells. New cells can be created that are rogue damaged cells, or healthy new cells can be created. A mitotic cell can only divide so many times before it reaches its’ Hayflick Cell limit. This means the cell has divided a maximum amount of times. At this final stage the cell is exposed to extreme damage and may make bad copies of itself and cause a disease like cancer. The more damage/stress that is placed on the body the faster you’ll reach the Hayflick Cell limit, because the cell has to attempt to make healthy replacements. Poor exercise habits, poor nutritional habits, nutritional stress, environmental, and emotional stress will cause further damage to these cells.

Fortunately, mitotic cells can attempt to keep making copies and killing old damaged cells, but the heart, brain, and central nervous system aren’t afforded that luxury. They’re known as post mitotic or non-mitotic cells. What you’re born with is what you’ve got. If a cell is damaged and is unrepairable then it is destroyed. If the cell is not killed it can go rogue and create diseases like Alzheimers or heart disorders. However, if one’s diet is full of antioxidants and essential nutrients that make-up and protect the cell it can fend off harmful chemicals and extend it’s life. Otherwise, you end up running out of cells and end up with heart problems or a neurodegenerative disease.

The biggest problem that we have if we’re not taking care of our bodies is the body’s biggest weakness-mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA does not have the ability to repair itself in either mitotic or post mitotic cells. Alternatively, nuclear DNA does have the ability to repair itself. Degradation in life begins and ends with oxidative damage to mitochondria. Mitochondria have the cellular responsibility of making ATP-energy. Damaged mitochondria produce a lot of free radicals(damaging chemicals) that tear apart the whole cell. The vegan diet contains the highest amount of antioxidants and essential nutrients to protect the human body from this damage. Meat based products contain too much protein and fat that leads to protein carbonyl and lipofuscin accumulation in the cell. The accumulation of these products are the first stages of disease. We don’t find this problem in a vegan diet. To complicate things further a hypercaloric diet of either food group, especially meat and dairy, makes cellular function far worse. Damage to the lysosome, the garbage truck of the cell, is a side effect of this type of stress.

Vegan vs. Vegetarian: The Difference

Vegan food contains no animal ingredients. This includes all dicot and monocot plants on land and water. Vegetarian food contains animal products, but limited to dairy. They can also eat all dicot and monocot plants on land and water.

Vegan vs. Vegetarian: The Philosophical Difference

There are generally philosophical, environmental, and health reasons for following either nutrition plan.

The Environmental Cost of Eating Animal Products

Environmentally, we can see the effects of pollution on land and ocean. There is a lot of data to support this. Organic farming, on land and sea, is a very helpful step to reduce toxins that could potentially enter our food supply. On land this is a little easier to control compared to a lake or ocean.

The problem on land is the excess quantity of approved organic chemicals used on our food can cause negative side effects for the person eating the food and surrounding community that may potentially breath in the chemicals. In addition, how and where the organic food supply is being trucked/flown, to and from, can potentially create more greenhouse gases compared to conventional farming methods.

Ocean or lake farming is complicated because it’s so difficult to control all of the potential toxic sources that enter the water. This has negative consequences on the plants in the ocean that its inhabitants and humans eat. Humans have tried to deal with this situation by creating sustainable farms in our lakes and oceans. This is obviously a step in the correct direction, but fish and plants are still being polluted.

Over populated fish farms and incorrect feed are two other problems. For example, over populated fish farms cause:

• An incorrect balance of O2 and CO2
• Nitrogenous waste
• The higher potential for disease

Incorrect feed for both land and sea animals is a huge problem. For example, fish raised in fish farms are fed grains and these grains lack proper macro- and micronutrients for the fish. Fish, like humans, can process monocots, but there’s a huge metabolic negative side effect in doing so. We can see that fish that eat these grains have a much higher omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. Generally, we see between a 20:1-10:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. The ratio should actually be between 1:1-4:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 ratio. This problem is also seen in commercial cows when they are fed corn instead of grass.

Philosophically, if you’ve ever seen a PETA website, animal rights is a big problem. Many, not all, animals are raised and slaughtered inhumanely. I’m sure most of you have driven bye feedlots with thousands of cows crowded into confined areas as far as the eye can see. This is the same issue we discussed with fish. It’s very difficult to raise these animals without experiencing disease. This is why many companies like to include antibiotics in their feed. A correct way to raise these animals is by free range and pasture fed. Hence, the animals have open space to roam and feed off the grass and bugs that are in it. This is much healthier for the animals and the consumers that are eating them.

We can see a strong argument here as to why one would choose to be a vegan over a vegetarian. If one chooses either vegan or vegetarian it’s essential that you choose the healthiest plants and animals for the sake of our environment, rights of the animals, and your health.

Vitamins, Minerals and Essential Nutrients Missing in a Vegan Diet

The common vitamins missing on a vegan diet include:

• B12 and most B vitamins
• Vitamin D
• Omega-3’s
• Iodine
• Iron
• Calcium
• Zinc

A vegan diet that is well-planned out and plentiful in organic fruits and vegetables (25+ servings a day) can often fulfill these nutritional requirements, but vitamin supplements are a good option as well.

Vegan Sources of Vitamins

Dicot plants and freshly juiced wheatgrass offer a tremendous amount of vitamins and other nutrients. Natural sources directly from plants is the most beneficial way to get your vitamins. Supplements are additional means to get your vitamins if you don’t have the time or means to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.

Dicot fruits and vegetables not only offer amazing vitamins, but essential:

• Minerals
• Fats
• Proteins
• Carbohydrates
• Phytonutrients

We discussed earlier that physiologically homo sapiens must eat a majority of their macronutrients & micronutrients from dicot plants. Some of the micronutrition can come from monocots, but this is a slippery slope when it comes to macronutrients. Humans are not designed to eat the type of carbohydrates that come from monocots. The carbohydrates that come from monocots are completely different from dicots-C3 vs C4.

There are several key variables to determine when choosing f + v that have the best quality of vitamins. Taste is certainly a critical component. Most people only know what they are used to. Try to be open to trying other plants that are not common or grown in your country. Typically, the best plants are grown in tropical rain forests and usually score highest in nutritional scores. This is not to say that you shouldn’t be eating a majority of your plants from the central valley in California.

A large share of the beneficial vitamins, especially antioxidants, can be found in the peel of the fruit or vegetable. Try to choose plants where you’ll be eating the peel. Notice that when you remove the peel that f or v goes bad, turning brown in an extremely short period of time compared to the life expectancy of the f or v with the peel on. This doesn’t mean to not eat bananas or oranges, but try to keep them to a smaller percentage of your intake.

Every type of fruit or vegetable has unique levels of vitamins. There’s always an association between the nutrient ingredients and the color of the f or v. The old saying “eat the rainbow” has a lot of truth to it. It’s good to eat different colored foods because you’re getting a more complete balance of vitamins.

Next, I like to look at a scoring system like ORAC. Others include: DPPH•, ABTS•+, , and FRAP. The USDA abandoned the ORAC score in 2012 because they believed at the time that en vitro results were not enough to say they work en vivo. Therefore, they didn’t believe enough research was available en vivo. However, many of the top scientists use this scoring system and others to measure the antioxidant ability of nutrients. It is generally accepted across the scientific community that the most powerful antioxidants on earth, polyphenols, do have significant antioxidant capacity in the body, but more en vivo tests are needed to complete the research. No scoring system replaces going through the exact amount of essential and phytonutrients, but ORAC score and others can be helpful to identify which foods are packed with vitamins.

Vegan Sources of Protein

There are an unlimited amount of plants out there. Vegetables contain:

• Fats
• Proteins
• Carbohydrates

Fruits contain less protein than vegetables. To satisfy your protein requirements one needs to focus mainly on vegetables. Unfortunately, there is no one vegetable that supplies all of your amino acid needs.

Where is Protein Found in Plants?

Protein is located in the ends of leafy greens. Not that you should eat the tips of the leaves like monkeys do, but a good point to know is which parts of any plant contains the most macronutrients and micronutrients. You should focus on multiple sources of vegetables. You need to do this to make a complete protein. Hence, if you just eat one type of vegetable it’s likely you won’t absorb any protein at all. You need all essential aminos.

Plant Based Nutrition for Athletes

An average competitive athlete’s nutrition regime is relatively equivalent to our hunter gatherer ancestors. The human body has evolved, adapted and honed to be a hunter gatherer for millions of years. Our bodies work most optimally when we’re physically active for several hours per day.

It’s amazing to see how our cells and all 10 systems of the body work when chronically trained. It’s a vast difference compared to a sedentary human. Our bodies are really the most amazing machines ever made. Unfortunately, this falls apart when we’re inactive and eat the wrong foods.

An athlete can burn between 5,000 and 10,000 kcals per day. A non-athlete will burn around 2,500-3,500 kcal per day. That’s a massive difference! Calories are only one component of the equation. We have to look at micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, etc) and water too. The USDA’s RDA is not sufficient for an athlete. An easy way to get these essential nutrients is to take a vegan micronutrient supplement while you’re training. Many “electrolyte” supplements contain not only minerals as the name electrolyte implies, but also include macronutrients, vitamins, and phytonutrients. The body simply can’t store all of the energy and micronutrients that you need to be an athlete. Much of your macro and micro nutrients need to come from plants, not just supplements.

It’s slightly more complicated for vegan athletes to get the nutrients they need compared to a non-vegan athlete. It takes a little more education for a vegan but it is easily achievable. Essential fats are easily obtained through ocean or lake plants, or from flax seeds. Non-vegans would get this from land, air, or water animals. Essential amino acids are simply obtained from eating a multitude of plants. Lacking minerals and vitamins are also obtained through eating a multitude of plants.

In general, if you eat a multitude of plants that equate out to your Caloric needs you will get a sufficient amount of micro and macro nutrients that are lacking in a vegan diet.

Plant Based Diets & Weight Loss

Vegan Diets for Weight Loss

Eating a plant based diet for weight loss is an ideal method compared to vegetarian and omnivore diets. A vegan diet offers an easy and clean method of reducing unwanted non-essential fatty acids and unwanted protein. It also offers the best means of maintaining a high level of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients compared to an animal sourced diet.

Most people that we work with that want to lose weight don’t simply have fat to lose. We have found over the last 32 years that roughly 60-70% of the weight that people want to lose is fat and the other 30-40% is muscle. Water is an inherent component of both of these numbers. This means that you don’t need to eat any protein in your diet until you reach your ideal weight-especially high quality protein from animal sources. Protein is considered an essential nutrient, but you don’t need to eat it because you are carrying excessive protein that your body will use for multiple functions. However, you do need to continue to eat essential fatty acids 3 and 6. This will come from multiple tablespoons of ground flax or 1 tbsp of flax oil daily. Protein, from animal sources, is commonly added to weight loss diets because it slows the absorption of monocot carbs (aka-glycemic load and index). Hence, less stress is placed on the mechanisms that deal with insulin and glucose. This is helpful but very shortsighted. You leave very little micronutrition for the body and starve our symbiotic partners (gut bacteria) of dicot soluble fiber. You don’t have to worry about insulin and glucose imbalances if you don’t eat, at least minimize, monocot intake. To be clear, you can lose weight on a vegetarian or omnivore diet too, but there are just too many reasons why you don’t want to do that based upon the research I’ve presented in this post.

Every time you eat a monocot is an opportunity missed to eat a dicot which contains far more vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients than dicots. The monocot wheat grass is extremely dense in micronutrients, but presents primates and homo sapiens an incompatible carbohydrate. There are even some grains that have little insulin response and provide a formidable amount of soluble fiber for the anaerobic large intestine gut bacteria, yet provide little micro and phyto nutrition. If you’re overweight it’s very likely that you’ve caused cellular damage on multiple levels. You need the best sources of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients that you can get. Dicot vegetables and fruits are a clear winner when you’re trying to lose weight.

Calculating Caloric needs on a vegan diet is really important. When losing weight you have plenty of stored energy (fat and protein), but may not have enough of the anatomical mechanisms (mitochondria, mitochondrial density, aerobic lypolytic enzymes, etc) to burn the fat and protein off. A blood lab and VO2 max test would be needed to accurately say exactly how many Calories you could actually eat without going hypoglycemic. Many people would calculate their BMR and their activity levels for their ideal body-weight and subtract 500-1,000 Calories from that number. What the body really needs is just essential nutrients (not protein), water, soluble fiber, and some carbs from dicots to avoid hypoglycemia.

Vegan Diets for Babies & Toddlers

Babies and toddlers are building all 10 systems of their body and need perfect nutrition. This is the most critical time for eating correctly. Without the proper building blocks a baby and toddler may not develop optimally. The macronutrients: fat, carbohydrates, and protein are the basic large nutrients we need in our diet. The micronutrients: vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients are the smaller molecules we need in our diet.

The challenge with babies is finding the right size of food and consistency that they can swallow without choking. In this picture we cut up raspberries for our baby to pick up on her own and learn to feed herself this delicious and micronutrient dense fruit. Fortunately, these days there are many quality vegan brands of baby foods. Be sure to eat the rainbow, mix up fruits and vegetables, and make sure that your baby gets plenty of brain and central nervous system building omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. Remember that vegetables have a lot more protein than fruits. Protein is an essential building block for enzymes, skeletal muscles, and smooth muscle tissue.

When your baby is ready for real food make sure that it contains the rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Try to pick fruits and vegetables that have edible peels. The peels contain a large amount of soluble fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. It is also important to have an equal ratio of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids to help build the brain and central nervous system. Carbohydrate energy will come from fructose, soluble fiber, etc. Protein, (aka amino acids), is essential for the development of enzymes and muscle tissue. You’ll get your protein through vegetables.

A dicot vegan diet offers an optimal path for your child to get the most nutrients from food without harming the environment, preventing disease, and not eating animal products that may not be healthy.

Vegan Diets for the Elderly

The golden years are a time in life where you need to really protect your biological net worth. Hopefully, you’ve invested your younger years in taking care of your health so that you can have a high quality, disease free life. There are several things that you need to do to know in order to determine what type of vegan diet you should eat.

1. You need to assess your health. A full lab work-up is essential to help determine your organs strengths and weaknesses.
2. A VO2 max or submaximal aerobic (done at home or gym) exercise testing is valuable for determining many components of your health.
3. Pick dicot plants that address your lab weaknesses and your exercise testing weaknesses. For example, if you have cardiovascular disease you’ll want to eliminate saturated fats and focus on eating essential fats from seeds. The same would be true for memory issues. You’d want to decrease vegetables and increase fruits if you have memory problems due to protein carbonyl and lipofuscin. In addition, there should always be a focus on eating antioxidant dense foods if you have a disease or your labs show your producing too much cellular hydrogen peroxide, or lack major cellular antioxidant markers.

Vegan Diets for Kids

Nutrition for kids is unique because they are growing exponentially, they’re super active, and maxing out their brains in school. A vegan diet offers many benefits for kids. There are several things to remember when feeding your child a vegan diet.

Feed your child the rainbow of fruits and vegetables. They’re both very dense in micronutrients, but fruits contain more carbohydrates and vegetables contain more protein. Typically, a balance of 70% fruit and 30% vegetables will give you the appropriate amount of carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. This ratio can always be adjusted to increase muscle mass or energy reserves for very active children.

Growing and very active children need a lot of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids for cellular processes, brain development, and central nervous system development. Both are essential fats, but omega 3 is an essential fat that in a majority of infants, toddlers, children, adults, and elderly are 70% low in. This deficiency can be correlated with some of the most common diseases. The amount that one needs is dependent on age, size, activity levels, but is generally recommended to between 500 mg or even greater than 1,000 mg.

Vegan food moves through the body a lot faster than animal products. That’s the beauty of the human body. Nutrients are easily replaced & used and toxins/waste are easily expelled from the body. Hence, You need to feed your child more frequently.

The human body has a symbiotic relationship with the dicots fruits and vegetables. The length of the human intestine, gut bacteria, how we process food and use it are unique to humans’ relationship to fruits and vegetables. Just like cows have a symbiotic relationship with the monocot grass, or how carnivores have a symbiotic relationship with meat. Each of these animals have a unique relationship with food that optimizes their body for survival and prevention of disease.

Please contact us with any questions. Our plant based health coaches can help you with every facet of your program.