Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hiya, I have been a vegan for a full week now and have been charting all of my foods onto Cronometer. One thing I have noticed (among many other things) is that by consuming tons of legumes, soymilk, beans, and veggie burgers, I am often deficient in Methionine, albeit I am doing fantastic on my Lysine now!

But just as a curiosity, should I be worried about only consuming about 82% of my RDI in Methionine? If so, what can I eat to increase it?

Also, I have only been eating about 55 grams of fat a day, which according to Cronometer, is only 82% of what I should be eating, and I use oil. I am not trying to be HCLF or LCHF or anything like that, I am just trying to remain balanced. Any tips?

I might get ninja'd here, and I'm guessing there's a good chance that the other person in this thread will provide all that I do and more/better.

Anyways, I've been meaning to post more around here and thought I could contribute something here, so...

For fats; walnuts would probably be a very good option for that.

I'm not sure about whether you should be concerned about your current Methionine intake, as you don't want to be deficient, but I've also heard how that specific protein (amino acid?) has shown to promote cancer growth when consumed in large amounts (how large to pose any significant risk I don't know right now.)

I have heard that grains tend to have more Methionine, as well as soy beans which you're already eating. Also, sesame seeds, if I remember correctly.


Edit: I had had some questions on here about my diet sometime ago, and someone who was kind enough to help gave me this other website as a resource besides cronometer. Where on this site you can type in a nutrient that you may want to see which foods have the highest concentrations of (although I actually haven't used it for myself yet.) But, here's the link -- http://www.whfoods.com/ (I just tried using it myself, and I'm not sure if I'm doing it properly, maybe I'm just tired but I didn't get the comprehensive results I was expecting, so maybe that person could explain. I'll need to quickly check to properly spell out their forum name here.) It was from garrethdsouza, so maybe they could help explain how the website is supposed to work, as in my quick use of it when searching for "Methionine" I had found the results somewhat confusing.

ThatNerdyScienceGirl wrote:Hiya, I have been a vegan for a full week now and have been charting all of my foods onto Cronometer. One thing I have noticed (among many other things) is that by consuming tons of legumes, soymilk, beans, and veggie burgers, I am often deficient in Methionine, albeit I am doing fantastic on my Lysine now!

That's great!

ThatNerdyScienceGirl wrote:But just as a curiosity, should I be worried about only consuming about 82% of my RDI in Methionine? If so, what can I eat to increase it?

Methionine is actually the "bad protein". It is essential (you need the bare minimum), but it's the protein most linked to cancer and other negative health outcomes, due both to its metabolism by bacteria, and the dependency of many cancers upon its high concentration in the blood. There may also be human metabolic and hormonal effects; these are areas of ongoing research in increasing lifespan. So, it seems best to just barely get the minimum, and not get any extra.

Methionine restriction is probably the best evidence based adjunct cancer therapy there is.

Anyway, the amino acid requirement is actually in terms of Methionine + Cystine. I don't think Cronometer accounts for this, because their system isn't quite that advanced (lazy programmers?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein

As long as your Cystine is higher than required (so that the total of the two is in the right range), you should be OK since some will be converted into Methionine.

How's your Cystine doing?

It's not entirely clear to me what the conversion efficiency is going to be, though, and that may vary from person to person.

ThatNerdyScienceGirl wrote:Also, I have only been eating about 55 grams of fat a day, which according to Cronometer, is only 82% of what I should be eating, and I use oil. I am not trying to be HCLF or LCHF or anything like that, I am just trying to remain balanced. Any tips?

Eat more nuts and seeds. Particularly high Omega 3 like walnuts. Those provide a lot more nutrition than oil anyway.
Those should also give you a tiny methionine boost (not that you necessarily need it, if you're eating enough Cystine -- just check how the totals add up-- in terms of mg, not %).

My Cystine seems to be doing great, at 258%, or 0.9g, which is more than the 0.8g of Methionine that I consume. And I do plan on eating more nuts and seeds, especially flax seeds and the like. I do eat almonds, but apparently not enough, I also enjoy Avocados often, and veggie cream cheese substitute at times. I just need to find more vegan fat options that I like that are also high in nutritional content.

Yes apart from whfoods, you can also check in nutritiondata.self.com which is somewhat more reliable IMO.

Search for the specific nutrient (methionine) and use the toggle to select for the subtypes of plant foods. You can arrive at what are the densest sources and accordingly what you could try adding to your diet.

ThatNerdyScienceGirl wrote:My Cystine seems to be doing great, at 258%, or 0.9g, which is more than the 0.8g of Methionine that I consume.

Yeah, that should be fine.

ThatNerdyScienceGirl wrote:And I do plan on eating more nuts and seeds, especially flax seeds and the like. I do eat almonds, but apparently not enough, I also enjoy Avocados often, and veggie cream cheese substitute at times. I just need to find more vegan fat options that I like that are also high in nutritional content.

Just watch the ratio between omega 3 and omega 6 (try to keep it from 1:1 to 1:4), and avoid saturated fat (as low as you can go) and trans fat (completely). Otherwise, as long as it's unsaturated fat/not transfat, and your omega 3:6 ratio is good, there's nothing wrong with fat as a calorie source from whole plant foods (or, at least no evidence that it's a problem yet, that I know of).