A new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that "compared with systems with animals, diets formulated for the US population in the plants-only systems had greater excess of dietary energy and resulted in a
greater number of deficiencies in essential nutrients":
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/ ... uthor-infoYou have to dig deep into the article to find out how they try and pull this one off - here it is:
"Despite attempts to meet nutrient needs from foods alone within a daily intake of less than 2 kg of food, certain requirements could not be met from available foods. In all simulated diets, vitamins D, E, and K were deficient. Choline was deficient in all scenarios except the system with animals that used domestic currently consumed and exported production. In the plants-only diets, a greater number of nutrients were deficient, including Ca, vitamins A and B12, and EPA, DHA, and arachidonic acid.
The challenges in meeting essential vitamin, mineral, and fatty acid requirements in plant-based diets are supported by previous works. It is entirely possible to meet the nutrient requirements of individual humans with carefully crafted, unsupplemented plant-based rations, but this can be a challenge to achieve in practice for an entire population. Based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007–2010), Cifelli et al. (29) found that plant-based rations were associated with greater deficiencies in Ca, protein, vitamin A, and vitamin D. In a review of the literature on environmental impacts of different diets, Payne et al. (30) also found that plant-based diets with reduced GHGs were also often high in sugar and low in essential micronutrients and concluded that plant-based diets with low GHGs may not result in improved nutritional quality or health outcomes. Although not accounted for in this study, it is also important to consider that animal-to-plant ratio is significantly correlated with bioavailability of many nutrients such as Fe, Zn, protein, and vitamin A (31)".
The major issues with these paragraphs (aside from the reference studies they cite also having major methodological problems, if you look at these papers, and limiting people's food intake always to below 2kg) is that the requirements for these nutrients - calcium, protein, vit A, E, D, K; EPA, DHA, and arachidonic acid are
all falsely inflated. Choline has never been of any prominence whatsoever n plant based diet deficiency arguments. They're based on data from
omnivore desired intake studies, not WFPB eater intakes. One look at the China Study data from Campbell, or blood results from the McDougall Ornish or Esselstyn programs, should conclude deficiencies ordinarily do
not occur.
But I had to giggle when looking at the authorship and info:
Robin R. White
Department of Animal and Poultry Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061;
Mary Beth Hall
US Dairy Forage Research Center, US Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service, Madison, WI 53706
"The authors declare no conflict of interest".
Keep it carb baby, as they say on a certain YouTube channel!
Barry
"All people are made alike - of bones and flesh and dinner. Only the dinners are different.”
Gertrude Louise Cheney