Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to episode 14 of the Deficient Vegans podcast. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. You wanna say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:07

Hi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:07

Hi everybody. So today we're gonna talk about dietary fats a little bit. We've done a couple of episodes about carbohydrates and another episode about macronutrients. And then we also did one about fiber. So now we're gonna talk a little bit about dietary fat. And uh, next week I think we're gonna talk about protein in a little more detail. So right off the bat, dietary fat has nine calories. Pergram of fat, you know, protein has four. Carbohydrates have four. So fat is over twice as calorically dense as protein or carbohydrates. So that means you have to pay extra attention to fat sources when you're trying to count calories because you can get a handful of almonds or walnuts or something, and that'll be, you know, maybe 200 calories. So it's really easy to get a lot of calories from something that's fine fat. It's also pretty easy to go over your calories with oils. If you put an extra tablespoon of oil in something that's like an extra 120 calories. And people are pretty generous with oil if they're not measuring calories at all. So you gotta be careful with that. That also includes restaurants. Restaurants. Even if they just make you some vegetables or something, they'll tend to put a lot of oil on that. So you really gotta be careful with oils in general.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12

You know what's really deceiving,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13

what is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14

Freaking peanut butter man.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16

Oh, peanut butter. Yes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17

You think, oh, this is a, this is two tablespoons. No, it's not. Yeah, that's a half of a cup.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:22

Yeah. If you actually pull out a serving of peanut butter, you'll be very disappointed and quickly realize you have never made a sandwich with probably less than like three servings of peanut butter.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32

Yeah, I always weigh it 'cause it's like. The most deceptive thing in the world.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:37

Yeah. And I've still got it in my mind. The peanut butter is like protein, right? Yeah. So I'll make like a, a PB and j be like, oh yeah, I've got my high protein sandwich. It's, it's really not at all. It's not even close. No. It's got like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:48

Five grams or something. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:50

But you know, that's what I tell myself to feel better. Well,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:52

yeah. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:53

So for fats specifically, they're made up of something called fatty acids, right? So there are a lot of different fatty acids. We're only gonna talk about a couple that are kind of relevant. And in general, fatty acids are broken up into essential fatty acids and non-essential fatty acids. Alright? So for, so if

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:11

you have inclement weather, the non-essentials, they can go home.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:15

Actually they can go home all the time'cause you don't ever need them. So they can just, they're fired. Non-essential fatty acids are fired. So the essential fatty acid and, and we're talking about nutrition, what essential means is your body can't make it on its own. So you need to get it from food, right? So the essential fatty acids are Omega-3 and omega six, the omega six. Fatty acid is one called uh, linoleic acid. So it's just la You won't really go hunting that one out. We tend to get quite a bit of omega six in our diet. So on the Omega-3 side of things, which is typically where we wanna focus on, uh, because we have a lower amount of that in our diet in general, and it's a really beneficial for health and the plant world. We also mostly only get that in a form called a LA, which is alpha linoleic acid. And that's not quite as bioavailable as the forms you might get outside of plants that are called, uh, DHA and e. P-A-A-L-A will turn into those forms that your body needs, but it's at a, a lower rate and it's less bioavailable than just getting EPA and DHA directly. So one way that we can kind of get around that is to use a vegan algae oil supplement for Omega-3. Because that is directly EPA and DHA instead of being a LA.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:33

I've heard from people that take the non-vegan kind, it gives them like fish burps,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:38

right? Yeah. You don't get any fish burps with algae oil. So

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:41

we don't hurt fish and also we don't get gross aftertaste.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:46

Exactly. And omega threes in general are associated with a lower risk of heart disease. So it's good to try to get 'em in. It's better to try to get 'em in in food, but again, with plant-based sources, you have to kind of get a lot more because of the conversion rate on the a LA is so low. So you can use a supplement to help with that, but you'll also get it in your diet naturally.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:05

Where do you get omega threes from?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:07

That is also from various seeds and nuts and produce.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:11

Do you have any specific ones you would recommend people to eat?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:15

Flax seeds and soy. Both are fairly high in Omega-3 soy oil specifically, but you get soy oil when you eat something like tofu. So

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:22

another reason to eat tofu.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:24

Yeah. Maybe not so much TVP since it's de fated. De fated,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:26

yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:27

But yeah, straight tofu. And then, so for the non-essential fatty acids, those all fall under what we're gonna talk about here in a second, which are basically saturated fats and uh, trans fats. The,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:37

like tasty stuff, probably

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:39

in some cases, yeah. Also, monounsaturated fats are non-essential. So overall, uh, there are four different types of fat. So there's monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat, and trans fat. So the one we want to really try to get the most of is the polyunsaturated fats. Those are the ones that really have big health benefits for, you know, lowering cholesterol, lowering the risk of heart disease and things like that. Uh, the next best is monounsaturated fat. So that's typically, you think of that as olive oil. That's a big one for monounsaturated fat, and it's healthier than saturated fat, but not quite as healthy as a polyunsaturated fat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:18

What would be a polyunsaturated fat?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:21

All the stuff with the Omega-3 and omega six sources like we talked about. So, seeds, nuts, uh, soy, things like that. Oh, for the polyunsaturated fat, they are typically anti-inflammatory, so they will help with inflammation. Polyunsaturated fats are also necessary for your skin health. They help with skin elasticity and. In the modern diet, we get a ratio of about 16 to one. For omega six to Omega-3. It would be ideal to get that closer to one to one, which is why you typically see people supplementing Omega-3 and nobody really supplements omega six.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:54

So I think like everyone knows what mono versus poly is. Yeah. Mono's like one. Pauly is a few.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:02

Right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:03

Uh, so what's the difference between saturated and unsaturated?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:06

I'm not quite sure. It's, it's very in depth, sciencey fat acid things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:10

Okay. So I Googled it. Do you want me to tell you?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:12

Oh, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:13

Okay. So saturated fats are tightly packed with no double bonds between them. They're some exceptions, but most of'em are solid at room temperature. An example for the vegan aspect would be coconut and palm oils.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:27

Oh,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:28

okay. And since those say solid, uh, room temperature, some studies say that that's what causes hardening. Fats and arteries. So meanwhile, unsaturated fats are loosely packed and they tend to stay liquid at room temperature. And some of those things could include olive oil, peanut oil, avocados, and then most nuts and seeds.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:46

Awesome. Thanks for using your super Google powers to get us more information.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:49

You're welcome. I can type.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:52

Cool. So move on to saturated fat. So replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat in your diet has been shown to lower blood cholesterol. So a lot of the times people will think as saturated fat. As the bad fat. You know, there is some debate about this out there, but I, I think the studies are pretty clear that high levels of saturated fat in general tend to lead to worse outcomes as far as heart disease and blood cholesterol.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:17

Are we talking about the carnivore diet?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:19

Well, the carnivore diet is one diet that does tend to prefer saturated fat, so I, it would fall in the category.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:26

Hmm. I always say trust in science.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:29

I think there are also some other diets that do that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:32

Like keto.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:33

Keto, yeah. Uh, there's a lot of keto people who do tend to do saturated fat and keto diet has pretty good outcomes. But again, a lot of that is probably from eliminating junk food. Like most diets,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:43

the, they're short term positive outcomes. There aren't really any studies that show long term you would benefit from a high saturated fat diet. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:51

I'm not aware of any, so if anybody has any of those studies, feel free to share it with us and we can talk about it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:56

The things that make you go, Hmm.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:58

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're open-minded, so if we, uh, see studies in the future or come across anything that shows positive benefits of saturated fat, we, we'll come back and talk about that. We can get saturated fat from a plant-based diet if we need to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:12

Yeah. You guys keep waiting on that study information.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:15

Yeah. Although in our case, because it's kind of hard to even get that as a vegan, I guess we would just end up having to eat a lot of coconuts. I think that's the dude

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:22

I like coconut oil. Did you know you can make. Instant hard shell chocolate topping out of coconut oil.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:29

Oh, I know. I think everybody, I think everybody listening should know, but I am well educated in this magic trick. Yeah. Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:36

This is really cool. You just melt chocolate chips and a little bit of coconut oil and then you just stir that shit together and you pour it on ice cream.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:45

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:45

Instant hard shell.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:47

It works really well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:48

Yeah. So if you're trying to get some saturated fats in your diet, that'd be a good way to do it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:54

Yeah. So the American Heart Association recommends limiting your saturated fat intake to about five to 6% of your overall calorie intake. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:02

Maybe don't eat too much heart shell.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:05

Right. And I would recommend using all of that allotment of 5% of your kilo work intake on the chocolate heart shell.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:12

Oh, yeah, me too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:12

Okay. And then the last one is trans fats, which have no benefits in the diet. You should really avoid those as much as possible. You'll mostly see them in like prepackaged foods, frozen foods, things like ramen noodles historically have been pretty bad about having, uh, trans fats in them. The FDA has actually banned in the United States. Adding additional trans fats to food now,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:34

which is hard to believe because they don't seem to care about our foods at all here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:38

Yeah. Not a lot of hard rules.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:39

So it must be really bad if the FDA cares about it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:42

Well think about how the food would be if they weren't there though it would probably be worse somehow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:46

That's true. And just

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:47

so you know, some trans fats do occur naturally in food, and the natural occurrence isn't really in a high enough amount to matter at all. So it's not, uh, anything you have to worry about if you find some natural foods that have trans fats in them

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:00

is more of the.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:01

Yeah, the added

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:02

the chemically creating foods out of a lab.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:05

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:06

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:07

So something you might wonder is, does eating fat turn into fat? So it was like if you eat fat, does that make fat on your body? So the main way obviously, that you gain body weight, and that can be fat or muscle, is with a calorie surplus. But they've done some studies with like a handful of people, I think around 10 people and a metabolic ward where they matched calories and just swapped out carbohydrates for fat at different levels. And it looks like eating fat does convert a little more readily to body fat. But it's such a small degree that I think, you know, overall calories are obviously still the main driver, but if you're really trying to optimize, you know, you'd probably lean more into carbohydrates in your overall dietary plan than you would in fat, because fat can store a little easier. So

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:58

what are the benefits of eating fat? Like what does it do for your body? Is that the one thing that helps joints and stuff?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:05

Yeah. So fat helps with your joints. Fat helps. Like we said, with, uh, skin elasticity. Fat is also required for a couple of the fat soluble vitamins. I think it was, uh, vitamin A, D, E, and K. Those require fat to actually absorb into your body. So that's another big use case, um, that is good for developing your vision and neurological development.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:28

So back to eyesight. It's fat. I need not carrots. Is this why my eyesight is so shitty?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:34

Well, carrots have a vitamin fats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:38

Why am I a negative six and a half?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:41

Well, actually, uh, so fats are required for the vitamin that helps your eyes, which I think is vitamin A in carrots. All right, so that's pretty much all we have on dietary fats. Uh, if you have any questions, again, there are actually a lot of different fatty acids and a lot of of very scientific details that we didn't go into depth here on.'cause it doesn't really affect you once you know kind of what you're supposed to eat. Um, but if you want to deep dive in that. Feel free to reach out and ask questions and we can talk about 'em. A couple cool things in the news this week We, again, we talked a little bit about the Olympics last week and the Olympics are going on now. Turns out there are seven vegan athletes in the Olympics this year. I saw a couple of them on team USA and a couple of 'em are scattered throughout different sports and different countries. So that's pretty cool to see some representation there from the vegans. Love

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:27

that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:27

Yeah. Um. Also the, the Olympics is really focusing on sustainability quite a bit. We talked last week also about the cardboard beds. They are doing two times the amount of plant-based, uh, meals as they did last year. They're also doing some stuff like they have a, a headquarters they set up for the Olympics that's gonna be turned into office buildings after the Olympics is over. And then they have a lot of stuff, um, that they're using for housing staff and things like that, that is all temporary, uh, housing. So it's pretty cool they aren't, uh, trying to not leave a trace as much as they can with all that huge event going on.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:03

Very cool. And if you have not seen the movie about the sharks that inhabit this river in Paris. Oh, that's on Netflix? Yeah. It's has nothing to do with anything he just said, but it was really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:18

Yeah. That would make me not wanna swim in that river, even though it was just a movie. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:22

What was, what was it called? Basically they were having the Olympics there, I think. Right? Like

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:26

they were having a marathon.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:28

Was it just a marathon

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:30

or a triathlon? I guess it's a triathlon tri,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:30

yeah. Yeah. But they were gonna be in the river and there were all these sharks that were like having babies and shark babies were everywhere. And then they grew really fast. They're like mutant shark babies. And they killed everyone under Paris. Was that it?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:43

Yeah, the movie was called Under Paris.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:45

Solid 5.2 on IM db. Yeah, I would rate it for more lots of shark deaths.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:50

Yeah, we kinda like those campy animals killing people movies though, so

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:54

Yes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:54

Also at the Republican National Convention, we saw that Veg News posted an article about some vegan jackfruit brisket that they were, I guess, selling at the event, and I said that it was. Really high in demand and it kept selling out. So that's pretty cool to see, you know, a vegan, first of all, a vegan meal being available there at all, and a vegan meal being in such high demand that they can't even keep it in stock.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:15

Hmm. Might have to attempt to make a jackfruit brisket, though I've never had actual brisket and, uh, don't know what that is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:25

I'm gonna be honest. Most of the stuff I've tried with jackfruit I haven't been a big fan of. I,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:29

I think that's because you and I dunno how to cook it. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:33

Maybe that's it. Yeah. We stick to the Satan and tofu.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:37

Yeah. Jackfruits a weird one to me'cause it's like, doesn't have. Protein. Really? Yeah. But people use it as a protein substitute and I don't understand it. Yeah. And

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:46

it seems like it is usually in some kind of barbecue. Yeah. And the texture does lend itself to it, but I don't, I don't know. I've just never really, I much prefer Satan paste barbecue.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:55

Yeah. Or like tofu even. Yeah. Tofu

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:57

barbecue's pretty good, but Satan is like, the texture is like really, really good for barbecue.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:02

Yeah. Might have to jack around with jackfruit though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:05

Mm. Nice.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:05

Maybe I can get less shitty with,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:07

yeah. We don't have any. New recipes to talk about this week. You'll still see some posted, but there are ones we've already talked about. But, you know, we were hanging out in downtown Chicago for the weekend, not cooking our own food for once. So that was pretty nice. Uh, if you ever happen to be in downtown Chicago, a lot of good vegan restaurant options. Uh, specifically if you like donuts, voodoo Donuts has a lot of good vegan donuts.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:27

Those were really good. The Apple fritter. The vegan Apple Fritter was,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:30

yeah,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:31

top notch.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:32

That place is not all vegan, but they have a really good vegan menu for their donut.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:36

Yeah. And then Kitchen 17.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:38

Yeah, kitchen 17. Ugh. All time. Favorite out there for, they have, uh, vegan pizzas then They are fully vegan and everything there is usually really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:46

And if you don't live in Chicago, they actually ship, uh, I think across the whole country. In the US you can get like any of the pizzas frozen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:55

Yeah, and in our experience, the frozen ones are just as good as the ones we get in the store there. So

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:00

yeah, they're great and they have a bunch of different flavors, but our favorite is just regular deep dish cheese. It's always so good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:08

A couple other good ones. Elephant and Vine had some really good breakfast options. That's another fully vegan place.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:13

And they had like a burger. Like a mammoth burger. Yeah,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:16

mammoth burger. That was really good. It was basically like, kinda like a Big Mac but without the middle bun button situation. Yeah. They had like a, what they call mammoth sauce, I guess it was kinda like a big Mac sauce.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:25

Now if you're from Chicago or I've ever eaten in Chicago, we used to have herbivore, which had the Big Mac, which was like our favorite thing of all time in Chicago. But that closed, yeah, like about a year ago. Um, this gets pretty close. Yeah. The Mammoth burger at Elephant and Vine is pretty. Pretty solid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:44

Yeah. Also though, we, we had the Chicago diner. That was really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:47

Yeah, so that's a vegetarian place, but I think you can make almost everything on the menu. Vegan, they had something called a pierogi quesadilla, which I am definitely gonna have to figure out how to make a recipe for that because it was really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:59

It had like, uh, sauerkraut and potatoes and a lot of stuff going on in there, right? Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:03

And like cheese and chives and a tortilla. And then it was a quesadilla. It was crazy. It was a carb overload. Yeah, it was really good. And you know, if you're ever in Chicago on a Saturday morning Pi pie, my darling is a bakery that only does presale on Saturday mornings. And you have to, uh, pre-order, basically, she has certain cake flavors each week, but she does distribute through local restaurants. So there are a lot of restaurants in the, in the Chicago area that sell Pi Pie, my Darling cakes, and she is incredibly talented. All of her stuff that we've ever tried has been super good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:39

Uh, vegan baked goods are. Hard to find ones that they get right. Like papa, my darling's always solid. Uh, the Kitchen, 17 pizza place we talked about earlier. Oh yeah. Always has really good vegan desserts and baked goods. And then we go to another place here locally called Tiger Lily Cafe.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:55

It's hard to find ones that actually have moist, especially on cakes. A lot of 'em are not very like moist for some reason.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:01

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:01

But yeah, those three always come through.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:04

Yeah. So you know, totally useless information to anybody who's never gonna be anywhere near Chicago, but unless you're

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:09

ordering pizza from Kitchen 17. Yeah, because they ship.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:12

That's true. But there are a lot of vegans in Chicago, so there's probably at least a couple out there listening to this.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:17

And if you're planning a trip, 'cause we do this thing where we try to find vegan cities to go check out and just basically spend a week eating a bunch of random vegan food. Like lazy losers. That's like something that we do. Yeah. But anyway, if, if you are people like that, Chicago would be a great place for you to visit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:37

Yeah. And on the flip side of that note, if you're in a city and it's got a really good vegan spot, please send that to us because we will go there and try it at some point.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:46

Yes. We always look for recommendations.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:50

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:50

We're gonna go to, uh, Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In a couple months and try all their vegan fair. Yeah. So if you, if you have been to Milwaukee and have vegan recommendations, tell us

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:03

Yeah. And, uh, we'll report back if we found anything. Really cool. Yeah. All right, well I think that's all we got for this week. Uh, do you wanna say bye

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:09

Bye. Bye

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:10

everybody.