Strength By Fitness
Human health, our Dietary Choices & Planet Earth
Welcome to another fact-based coaching article from Strength by Fitness.
Plenty of people confuse the many metrics that power our health, fitness, and bodies, our environmental footprint, and the planetary damage we cause due to our lifestyles and daily choices.
And who can blame them? Homo sapiens modern-day life is a complicated web made up of a wide range of real-life data points. So I will keep it as simple as possible in this Strength By Fitness article.
The real issue with animal agriculture is neither the nutrients, nor the quality of its whole foods. Its the impossibly bad planetary impact.
Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness
The real issue with nutritionally rich whole foods that include a decent amount of animal-based high-protein food choices is not your individual health, nor is it about nutritional deficits. Assuming that you are, in fact, eating a healthy, nutritionally complete, high-protein, higher-satiety diet.
Which, of course, most people fail miserably at doing.
This is quite perplexing since a healthy, nutritionally rich food life is something which can be incredibly easy to achieve. As an omnivore, just combine some whole animal-based high-protein foods with lots of whole plant-based foods, such as fruit, berries, veggies, seeds, whole grains, and leafy greens, and you will end up with nothing but great health outcomes and a really good, effortless, higher-SPC nutritional intake.
This would be an omnivorous food habit that will positively reverberate across health, fitness, and body composition.
So, all good if that is your only consideration.
It really does not get any easier than this to be as healthy, fit, and lean as you could ever hope to be. Assuming, of course, that this nutritionally complete, high-protein, highly satiating food approach keeps you from overconsuming food. But since it is going to be very rich in all good nutrients per unit of energy, there´s no reason why this kind of food approach would make you overconsume food.
Of course, you should 100% stay reasonably active with physical activity and exercise on a weekly basis, too. No food habits on the planet can ever make up for the absence of a weekly fitness plan.
But still, the focus of this article is not the massive benefit of regular exercise; instead, let us acknowledge that the food aspect of a healthy and fit lifestyle is not hard to get 95% right. If nutrition and the health impact of your food choices remain our only concern, that is.
And while I intentionally kept the opening paragraph of our article focused on an omnivore food life, all this applies equally much to a nutritionally rich, higher-SPC, protein-rich plant-based food life.
It’s really easy to get healthy, nutritionally sound food habits 95% right, no matter diet tribe preferences.
The multi-layered problem of homo sapiens, our way od life, food habits, and mother Earth, however, is this.
They think they do, but they really do not.
Neither do most of the foods they eat provide a genuine high-protein intake, nor are they very high in satiety or nutritionally rich per unit of energy. This results in poorer health and fitness outcomes, and way too much food being consumed by hundreds of millions of people. Actually, let us call it for what it is: billions of people.
Yes, billions of people eat in a really poor way, with food habits that provide far too few nutrients and too much energy.
As such, body composition also suffers, which leads to its own set of health issues. Yes, that statement is backed up by science, something which I have written about in previous articles. For instance, we have 1 billion+ obese and very overweight people worldwide, right now, and we have billions of people who are nutritionally deficient, of whom most happen to be omnivores.
So while it should be easy to consume enough protein in a nutritionally complete way, especially so for omnivores, most of those omnivores, and many plant-based people too, fail to do that.
The blame is not all about the modern, ultra-processed fast food landscape, and neither is eating out far too often the only issue at hand, but those energy rich, lower-SPC food options with their lackluster fiber, protein and micronutrient content is a large part of the problem.
But, not even that is the the only major issue with humanities modern day food life.
So here it comes.
“For omnivores, the second best thing they can do is have a mix of animal & plant-based high-protein intake with lots of whole plant-based foods.”
Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness
Sustainability is now, and forever, a crucial part of the food equation. But most people completely disregard that.
Animal-based foods are, on the one hand, responsible for the majority of all food-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is just one of the many, and seriously problematic sustainability metrics of animal-based foods.
On top of those GHG emissions, animal foods negatively affect all other environmental areas, in such a way that it can not be compensated for, no matter what the animal ag industry or its many lenient politicians believe or claim.
Facts are nice that way, they simply are what they are.
Examples of impossibly problematic metrics are excess land use and biodiversity loss, water usage, pollution across all planetary domains, forest destruction, wide-scale use of fertilizers, and way too much human food being used as animal industry feed to produce fewer nutrients than it uses up.
Resulting in the strange fact-based reality that the animal agricultural industry globally uses up way more nutrients that could have been used for human consumption than the nutrition they provide while stripping our planet of its natural resources at a pace our planet can not compensate for.
Planetary limits are an even bigger concern.
This situation is so bad that the environmental impacts of the animal-based food system far exceed key planetary boundaries.
So, no, Strength By Fitness is not telling anyone that they can never consume animal foods, and I am not saying that it cannot be nutritionally healthy to consume animal-based high-protein foods with a nutritionally rich higher-SPC range.
Because whole animal-based foods high in protein can be a nutritionally good choice, excellent even. Especially when paired up with enough whole plant-based foods.
And yes, we have had a lot of omnivore clients in the last decade, because food preference is a very real thing, and most people are omnivores.
Our mission is not to dictate food preferences for you, or for our clients, but to help people become healthier and fitter, and when possible help them eat both healthier and more sustainable at the same time.
Not every client is going to completely cut out animal-based foods, and replace it with nutritionally rich plant-based foods no matter how good it is for the planet and no matter that it can provide exactly the same amount of nutrition, health and fitness progression.
This is perfectly fine with us, because you can drastically improve the environmental impact of their food choices by including more whole plant-based foods and making better animal-based food choices. As such, when you combine fish, eggs and chicken with whole plant-based foods and some processed high-protein plant-based choices such as edamame products ( spaghetti anyone ), vegan mince, and soy milk you have a very healthy omnivore, with a really low planetary impact.
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29 nutrients across 24 food products.
However, this is not how the majority of humanity eats. As such, the environmental aspect is as much of a real threat to people’s health as the poor nutritional content of most individuals’ food habits, add to that, that our animal-based food industry and food habits are impossibly unsustainable on a scale that harms all human life and all animal and wild plant life on our planet.
In this comparison between plant-based foods and animal-based foods, processed and whole foods alike, 29 nutrients across 24 food products were considered.
Keep in mind that this is data from one study, we have other articles, linked to above that includes many other metrics, all put together forming a very clear, and complete picture of the incomprehensible unsustainability of animal-based food choices and no apparent benefit in health, and fitness that cant be equally realized with a educated, nutritionally rich, high-protein, higher-SPC plant-based food life.
Needless to say, protein is one influential consideration in all this. Just don’t forget that a high-protein intake is not the only thing that matters.
Outcomes were analyzed for nutrition, health, environment, and cost.
The first image from the study lists a wide range of foods across a per-serving comparison of meat and milk alternatives across nutritional content, ( A ), health impact ( B ), environmental damage ( C ), and cost ( D ).
Environmental damage and our food habits.
Replacing all calories from meat or dairy in the context of this study with plant-based foods reduced the average environmental impact by up to 40% when replacing meat and up to 16% when replacing dairy.
This makes for an easy win for a nutritionally rich, high in protein and fiber, higher-satiety ( referred to as a higher-SPC range here at Strength By Fitness ), and mostly whole plant-based food approach.
Pay attention, however, I am saying nutritionally rich & high in protein, because a lot of plant-based people consume way too little protein, and not everyone pays proper enough attention to all micronutrients either.
So, while whole plant-based foods are great, try to think of your food habits as something that should be nutritionally rich, high in fiber, and protein, in combination with a lot of whole-plant-based foods.
In other words, make room for those protein supplements with your soy milk, or plant-based yogurt, or processed vegan mince, tofu, tempeh products, edamame pasta et cetera. If you are going all in on plant-based foods, instead of combining some animal-based protein, such as eggs and fish, with some plant-based protein and lots of whole plant-based foods.
Now, I can hear some of you going, “Why am I such a downer to talk about all these processed high-protein products”?
The reason is this.
It is extremely beneficial to consume around 2.0 grams of protein per kilo of body weight and day, or more than that.
Omnivores can get away with slightly less since they max out protein-related hypertrophy, and protein synthesis benefits already around 1.6g/kg/day. But we plant-based folks ( and older omnivores ) need slightly more protein due to lower absorption for both groups and lower amino acid levels in plant-based foods. For the elderly, there is also the issue of a slight increase in anabolic resistance (your body’s inertia to exercise ), which is only marginally worse than a healthy fit 30-year-old, but many small pebbles increase the importance of a higher-protein intake for the elderly and the plant-based.
Together with the immense synergy and benefits of regular strength training, and higher protein intake levels, of course.
Protein has other use cases, however, for instance, the more protein we consume, the higher our sensation of being satiated.
This is something which benefits everyone since it makes it so much easier to eat within our natural energy balance, no matter if you are obese or already very fit. This is why it is also wrong to make that flawed claim that no one gets any benefit from consuming more than 1.6 grams of protein per kg of body weight and day.
One caveat.
It will be pretty challenging for most plant-based people to get that much protein from nothing but whole plant-based foods, not to mention getting all the other nutrients we need. Everybody needs enough micronutrients and healthy fats, and everyone benefits tremendously from getting enough fiber in their food. And both fiber and micronutrients are very abundant in higher-SPC carb-rich foods.
So, for vegans and people who are 100% plant-based, consuming some protein supplements and some processed high-protein products is almost essential, and always extremely beneficial.
Comparing products and outcomes.
Among the listed meat alternatives in this study, the greatest reductions from whole plant-based foods came when the meat and dairy replacements were soybeans and peas.
This produces a reduction across the field of roughly 40%.
GHG decreased by 42 to 43%, land usage was down by 50 to 52%, and water usage shrank by 38 to 39%.
All great numbers.
Remember, we are not talking about getting fewer nutrients or less protein. At Strength By Fitness, we are always talking about healthy, high-protein, high-satiety, nutritionally complete food habits.
So these numbers represent healthier food habits, not less healthy. Nutritionally rich foods that will provide nothing but great health and fitness outcomes across your entire life.
The power of whole plant-based foods.
Unprocessed plant-based foods were the best overall performers for replacing meat and dairy. After all this study looked at sustainability, plus its not a complete list of plant-based foods, so some processed plant-based foods can both be super healthy, and environmentally friendly.
Out of a possible summary score of 100, soybeans, peas, and beans reached average scores of 93 to 97 as meat replacements.
Soybeans performed the best for nutrition and costs.
While peas took the crown of best performer for mortality and GHG emissions. This makes for a timely place to bring up one of my pillars when we coach clients.
You do not eat one food item per meal or day. So, you are not choosing between soybeans and peas. Omnivore or plant-based doesn’t matter; create each meal from a plethora of healthy, nutritionally rich, higher-SPC food items.
Each item expand the micronutrients you will consume, which makes for a healthier you. And for plant-based people, that wider foundation of several daily main protein sources increase the levels of amino acids you are getting, while also boosting your micronutrient intake.
In other words, include both soybeans, peas, beans, and processed protein such as soy based vegan mince in the same meal.
Some visuals from our cited studies
My Coach reflection.
There aren’t many surprises in this study at all, it largely reflects what is well-established. But there are a couple of metrics that seem strange to me when we look at one of the images right above, and one more image over in the cited study.
Oat milk and almond milk do incredibly well in this study, and while they are good milk alternative choices because of their incredibly low environmental impact, I really do not agree with the assessment that they are on par with soy milk for nutritional content.
Just look at the above picture, seeing almond milk and oat milk neck and shoulder with soy milk is a surprise for me.
Not to mention that over in the study, in one graph, almond milk is ranked as having a higher nutritional improvement as a replacement for cow milk, even when compared to soy milk, which I can not agree with, seeing how almond milk contains fewer nutrients relative to soy milk.
It is true that almond milk ranks higher in a couple of nutrients, calcium being one of them, but calcium is abundant in soy milk too, not to mention in plant-based foods in general. So, the better plant-based milk choice in general for most people is soy milk.
Why am I saying this?
Oat milk, in general, provides way less nutrition compared to cow, almond, and soy milk, so they are all clearly better choices than cow milk when we factor in the environmental destruction of the animal agricultural industry.
I can, however, not see how either oat or almond milk can end up neck and shoulder as far as nutritional choices go when compared to soy milk in this study ( or for that matter when compared to cow milk, they are better as a whole than cow milk, but not nutritionally speaking ).
Almond milk contains a lot less protein than soy milk, half the potassium, and only 1 third of the magnesium. Further, you will find less fiber in almond milk and fewer carbohydrates, too.
All in all, almond and oat milk rank lower than soy milk on satiety in fact-based food apps such as Hava, as well as in our own satiety range estimation.
So much so that I can not see how any study can conclude that oat or almond milk is nutritionally close to soy milk.
Another reason for this opinion of mine, and why I only recommend soy milk as your plant-based milk choice, can be summarized with this quote, which I am paraphrasing from one of the cited studies down below.
Paraphrased quote.
“Most plant-based drinks have significantly less protein than cow’s milk. And the protein, since plant-based milks are additionally modified do end up with a slight loss of some essential amino acids.
As such most plant-based milk have relatively low protein & nutritional quality relative to cow milk.”
This is why I always recommend enhanced soy milk as the only PB milk.
It has by far the most nutrients of all PB milk currently available and by far the most protein, both are at the same level as cow’s milk, but with slightly lower protein quality. And with slightly, I mean that the difference is so small that it won’t matter in real life, not for health or muscle building purposes either.
Not that you should depend on drinking milk alone, cow or plant-based, for your protein and micronutrients.
But every bit of nutritional intake matters, and oat and almond milk, respectively, just don’t provide enough nutrients or protein to compete with either soy or cow’s milk as far as nutrition and protein go.
I mean, oat milk has hardly any nutrition to speak of and seriously lacks protein when you compare it to your general soy milk products that are widely available in stores.
This doesn’t make it a bad choice, you can consider both oat milk and almond milk a very good alternative to tap water with more nutrition, and if you do view it that way, as long as you get all the high-protein and nutrition you need from your other food choices both almond and oat milk can be the perfect choice for you.
Although I will argue that soy milk, black coffee, and tap water are by far the three best beverages you could ever consume.
THE Planetary and nutritional FOOTPRINT of our foods.
Only 18% of calories come from animal agriculture.
One liter of cow milk requires roughly 600+ liters of fresh water.
Compared to less than 30 liters of fresh water per liter of soy milk.
You need almost 9 m2 of land for every Liter of cow milk that we produce worldwide.
Soy milk only requires 0.66 m2, and this disparity in the required landmass between plant-based food and animal-based food products is a major driver of the ongoing climate & biodiversity crisis.
Coupled with the difference in calories in vs out of cow & meat versus plant-based food choices, and the math of animal-based meat and dairy becomes quite impossible.
Emissions for cow milk are triple those of soymilk.
Cow milk requires roughly 3kg of emissions per liter, and for soymilk, the average comes out as less than 1kg per liter. And this story plays out the same every time we compare animal ag foods with plant-based foods.
But we are, of course, not only discussing milk alternatives here in our article. If we compare beef and peas, this is what we see.
The carbon footprint of beef is significantly higher than that of peas.
Producing one kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalents), while peas emit just one kilogram per kilogram produced.
The disparity in emissions between these two foods is so substantial that even if the beef were produced locally and the peas were shipped from another country, that beef that you love to devour would still have a much larger carbon footprint, not to mention a substantially higher natural resource drain.
Do note that I haven’t even mentioned the devastating impact of wild animals that larger agricultural resource use and land usage automatically cause.
To conclude.
I am not sure how this study can conclude that oat milk improves nutritional intake in a somewhat similar way to soy milk.
So, there is either a mistake as far as nutritional completeness goes in this study for the plant-based milk products, or they found a very good nutritionally enhanced almond milk.
But that’s the only way I can see anyone concluding that oat or almond milk is a comparable nutritional choice to soy milk. It is true that almond milk is not massively behind soy milk, but from protein to iron, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus, soy milk is the better choice.
Still, tho, my remark put aside, the sum of it all remains the same as countless other up-to-date scientific studies and assessments.
Whole plant-based food choices coupled with a high-protein intake make for a very healthy choice that combines being a nutritionally complete, high-protein, high-satiety, and planet-friendly choice.
Much more so than going all in on animal-based foods.
What about the omnivores?
This means that for omnivores, the second-best thing they can do is to have a mix of animal and plant-based high-protein intake together with lots of whole plant-based foods, while the best thing remains the same as always, going all in on a nutritionally rich, high-protein, higher-SPC, whole plant-based food approach due to the environmental impact of animal-based foods.
Omnivores are usually quite skeptical of claims like that. Even from fact-based coaches like myself, and that is ok. So, my response, as always, is data, because that´s what good science is: fact-based numbers that help explain the way the world, and our bodies actually work.
As such, if you are a skeptical omnivore.
Take this to heart when you debate increasing the amount of whole plant-based foods you consume; only 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of the world’s protein come from livestock, despite using up much more natural resources and land mass. So, how can we really, intellectually speaking, defend a majority carnivore world ( or a majority animal ag omnivore approach to foods )?
Having said that, if we disregard that aspect of our food life and only focus on health, fitness and body composition outcomes then there is virtually zero difference between a high-protein omnivore that consumes as much whole plant-based fruit, berries, veggies and leafy green as they want on a daily basis and a completely plant-based high-protein approach.
Which, of course, is nothing but a gigantic fact-based win for a health, fitness, and planetary friendly plant-based, higher-SPC food approach thats rich in fiber, protein and micronutrients.
Cited study.
1. Multicriteria analysis of meat and milk alternatives from nutritional, health, environmental, and cost perspectives.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319010121
2. Our world in data, environment and food production.
Environmental Impacts of Food Production – Our World in Data
3. Local vs import, transportation hardly matters relative to what you eat. Our World in data.
You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local – Our World in Data
4. Soy Milk & Almond Milk. Our World in data.
Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts? – Our World in Data
5. Plant-based Milks, As Nutritious As You Think?
6. Health outcomes improve for every 3% of additional plant-based protein you consume.
https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)66282-3/pdf
You can also read this article over at Medium if you are a paying Medium Member.
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