Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast. This is episode 49. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hello! Hi, everybody.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:08

So this week's topic is going to be around protein density. So this is the measurement that people get in fights about a lot on threads and the internet and Reddit and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:17

Not me, though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:18

Never. Never you. And it might explain why your peanut butter really isn't as high protein as you think.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:24

But your PB fit could be.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:25

Oh, yeah. And then we'll have our myth of the week this week, which is that some people only eat humanely farmed meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:33

Tell me more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:34

Yeah. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:36

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:37

So the first piece of news we have here is a sequel to the Billie Eilish saga.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:42

The drama keeps drama-ing. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:44

So last week we talked about Billie Eilish coming out and saying, basically, you can't love animals and eat them. That caused a lot of controversy, a lot of discussion. Kind of the theme of our last episode was around some of those arguments. But people thought maybe she'd come out and apologize after she saw the backlash. Do you think she-

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00

She didn't. No. She doubled down.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03

Yeah, she definitely doubled down. Do you want to tell us what Billie said?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06

So these are direct quotes from her Instagram story, I believe, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09

Yeah. So in case you don't have Instagram or in case you, you know, miss the stories because they disappear after 24 hours, we're not going to make you go look them up. We're going to regale you with the story. This is a direct quote. So stay fucking mad at me. I really don't give a goddamn fuck. Go watch a documentary or two and some footage of what is done to animals you claim to love and what it does to the planet you pretend to love as well. If that footage was hard for you to watch, I encourage you to please take a look at yourself, like I am so tired, of standing up for having empathy for living beings being controversial. Please continue to live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance and denial and try to convince yourself that you're not living a lie. Moi. And then a kiss emoji. um she also actually she shared some pretty graphic footage in her stories too in between um basically her text stories so i i saw a lot of people being like, I did not appreciate that she showed me graphic footage. And it's like, well, then you probably needed to see it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:12

I mean, I don't love seeing it on social media anyway, but, you know, she's approaching the non-vegan audience really with this statement. So that kind of thing can be pretty eye-opening. Yeah. There was also another celebrity that kind of replied about her, not really necessarily directly to her, but it was more about people talking about Billie Eilish. Yeah. Jameela Jamil. You might know her from the TV show The Good Place.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:34

Great TV show. Yeah. But she also posts a lot of political takes online and very, very feminist. Yeah. So I usually agree with what she says.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:43

Yeah. So I'm going to read her statement here. She says, The internet is in an uproar about Billie Eilish making a statement that you cannot care about animals if you eat meat. She speaks to the abhorrent practice of how we treat animals, sentient beings, for our own nutrition. She's not wrong. More people should be raising the alarm on this. I commend her for caring so much and using her platform to raise this much-needed awareness for creatures that cannot advocate for themselves. But, Billie is also young, healthy, and incredibly wealthy. She has access to the best food and a lifestyle where if she's too busy to prepare that food, someone else can. So she may not be in tune with how few people can afford good vegan protein that isn't highly processed, which is bad for people as the body can't digest it properly. This can cause havoc on the brain and body. Also, many people have health conditions where they literally can't tolerate vegan proteins. Many of them are very high in histamine. The many people living with mast cell can attest to this.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:36

Well, I feel like she could have done a little bit of research here before saying that unprocessed vegan proteins are the most expensive when they're actually the cheapest, right? Like your beans, your lentils, tofu, vital wheat gluten, where you can make your own seitan, those are the cheapest proteins and they're not very processed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:53

Not only the cheapest proteins, but, you know, one of the themes of our last episode was like the cheapest thousand calories you can get anywhere in the world are vegan sources.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:00

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:01

Including these proteins. So, yeah, I mean, this is kind of an odd take because somebody being wealthy doesn't really make them more likely to be vegan because, you know, typically, like I posted a thread the other day that was like, I'm seeing arguments that vegan food is both like disgusting peasant food and the elitist food on the planet. I don't understand where we're at on this.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:23

Yeah, I get a lot of both of those comments on my stuff. It's like, we don't want to eat that nasty, gross peasant food. But then some people will be like, well, you're like super duper privileged to be able to afford vegan food. And it's like beans.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:39

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:40

I don't know. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:42

Yeah. So speaking directly to like the kind of wealthy statement, there was a Gallup poll from 2018 that showed people with lower income are more than twice as likely to identify as vegan and vegetarian. And I would imagine that most of the time that's because they can't afford a lot of meat. So they have to have more vegan protein sources. So, this is like the diet you pick when you're on a pretty tight budget. Right. So, using this as an argument, saying Billie's wealthy so she can be vegan, it just doesn't track.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:09

It's a little odd. I think the health piece, there are definitely conditions or like multiple overlapping allergies that could cause a lot of challenges in eating like a fully plant-based diet. So, I think that is a fair point, but... But yeah, the wealthy pieces is kind of odd for most of the globe.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:30

Yeah. I'll also say processed vegan proteins can be digested just fine. The issue with processed food is usually like the other things that come along with it, like the salt and preservatives and other random things. Yeah. But it's not a matter of like you can't digest it properly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:45

Yeah. And that's also true with processed omnivore foods. Yeah. Okay. So still a ton of discussion happening, which I think is great because it brings it to the mainstream. Like, I'm seeing more conversations about veganism across, like, threads, Instagram, TikTok. I'm seeing it a lot. What's odd is, like, I'm on Reddit a lot, and I see, obviously, I'm in a bunch of vegan subs. But, like, I'm seeing veganism being discussed across a lot of different subs I wouldn't expect to see it in. Yeah. So, it's definitely reaching mainstream, which I think is a good thing. People need to be talking about this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:17

Yeah. It's always good to have more discussion about it because I think people learn a lot of things they didn't know before, which is very helpful. And in this case, when you learn things, that is typically going to make you lean more vegan. I haven't seen a lot of situations where you learn more about food and nutrition and how the food works and how the farming industry works. And that makes you like want to eat more meat. Yeah, that's true. I mean, just like the facts are usually and almost always in favor of like a whole food plant-based diet. Yeah. Whether that's environmental or like ethical or health, nutrition. I mean, once you really start digging into the facts on those, all of those point you towards the whole food plant-based diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:57

Yep.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:58

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:58

Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. And maybe we'll see like an upward trend in veganism and vegetarianism in the next couple of years. Thanks, Billie.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:08

Cool. The next news item is that the Department of Defense in the U.S. awarded $9 million to a California startup called Biosphere to build portable bioreactors to produce gas-fermented proteins for U.S. Army rations. So these produce protein from air, water, and energy. And the fact that they're portable, it sounds like they'll be able to take those out in the field when they're deployed and kind of create food from, you know, effectively nothing, right? But by nothing, I mean air, water, and energy. So that's really cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:38

Oh, very cool. I wonder if one day we'll all have one in our backyard.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:42

Yeah, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:43

Creating little plant-based proteins from our little portable plant-based protein generator.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:48

Our portable bioreactors.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:49

Yeah, that'd be pretty neat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:50

That's really cool. Like some kind of bioreactor gardening. Right, yeah. I wonder if there's anything like that we can do now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:56

I don't know. I want to know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:58

Yeah, that's really interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:59

It'd probably be pretty expensive since it's like pretty new technology.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:02

Yeah, yeah. But maybe we can make like a crappy version of it that would just help us.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:06

I'm a chemical engineer. There you go. What can't I do? Probably a lot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:10

We're going to Tony Stark this thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:12

Tony Stark built this in a cave with a box full of scraps and a soldering iron.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:17

We'll keep you updated on that. And then next up, Beyond, used to be Beyond Meat. Now, I guess Beyond, I don't know if it's official yet. Anyway, they had a 15% decline in sales in the first quarter this year. They're hoping that their new protein drinks and their new mycelium steaks will help turn that around. Um, if they're betting on the protein drinks, wow, I don't know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:36

I don't know. I think we, uh, we need a new something else to bet on other than those protein drinks. I hope they turn it around, man. Yeah. You know, I've seen some pretty bad takes about Beyond is super expensive and that's why people won't buy it. And Beyond is like a shitty company overcharging people and being greedy. Yeah. But like everything I see like data wise is that Beyond keeps losing money and like, yeah. I don't think they're overcharging you. I think, like, that's just how small companies are that aren't subsidized by the government, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:09

Yeah, where are the government subsidies for Beyond and Impossible?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:12

We need government subsidies for Beyond and Impossible. But I do think, um, important to bring up, because if you do like Beyond and you like Beyond products, you know, you might want to go spend some money with Beyond if you want to keep them in business. Yeah. We really don't eat too many meat alternatives.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:27

Yeah, no, and that's one of the things, like, these products, Beyond and Impossible, come up in, like, every conversation I have about vegan food. And I think non-vegans don't realize that they're just not a big part of the daily diet, which is maybe why Beyond can't sell anything. Because, like, vegans, I feel like, really, I feel like vegans don't buy this stuff much.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:46

Yeah, I would buy it at, like, an omnivore restaurant if that was, like, the option on the menu. But I don't really see many omnivore restaurants offering this product.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:54

And I do have it occasionally, like, if I'm just like, okay, a burger sounds good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:57

Yeah sometimes you'll go to burger king and get like a cheeseless beyond patty thing yeah that's impossible actually oh it's impossible yeah you're right but yeah no.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:05

Same thing but yeah i mean it's just i think these are mostly for people who are trying to eat less red

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:10

Meat yeah or transition maybe yeah and.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:12

Not really for the

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:13

Vegans hey maybe Billie's gonna save beyond by bringing up veganism to the masses maybe maybe people will start buying beyond products i think it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:22

It probably seems like there's not enough market for both Beyond and Impossible. So I wonder if one of them will just.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:27

I've always kind of wondered that. And I've had people like ask me, can you recommend one or the other? I haven't tried them. And I'm like, A, I don't eat them very much. And B, they kind of taste the same to me, if I'm being honest.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:38

Yeah. So, yeah, anyway, maybe they'll turn it around.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:41

I hope so. I hate to see a vegan business fail, to be honest.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:46

All right. So let's get into the main topic here and talk about protein density. So back in, I think it was like episode 21, we had talked about kind of a back and forth you had on threads where you mentioned that like spinach was high protein and some guy was like, I'm going to eat a wheelbarrow full of spinach.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:04

Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. I won't say that's the only time it's happened since.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:10

Is that what you were implying, that you should eat 15 pounds of spinach?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:13

Obviously. That's obviously what I'm recommending to everyone.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:17

Yeah. So, and the reason for, there are a lot of disagreements that really kind of revolve around the same thing. And there's a measurement that this whole kind of disagreement revolves around. And most people don't even know, like, which version of it they're using.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:33

Yeah. No, that's totally true. Because sometimes I've tried having a conversation and I'm like, I don't think we're talking in the same terms at all. Yeah. And it can be pretty frustrating. Like, we're speaking different languages.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:43

Yeah, definitely. So why this kind of breaks down is there are two main ways that people look at protein in their food, if they're looking at like the label, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:54

And both usually call it protein percentage.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:57

Yeah, unfortunately. And so the first one is protein per 100 grams of weight, which was what the guy on Threads was using when he was talking about his wheelbarrow of spinach. And people really like to use percentage for this because it's per 100 grams, which makes it really easy to know the percentage of because it's just the number.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:15

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:15

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And the other one, or like, I don't know if you guys have ever seen the old movie Rocket Man, but this is using what we like to call the right way. Is the percentage of calories that come from the protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:29

Which I like because it's a normalized comparison.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:32

Yeah. And that is actually like how you use protein in your day most of the time. Right. If you're somebody who's looking at the label to determine information, you probably care more about the calorie.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:41

Yeah. Especially if you have a calorie target and a protein target. I feel like. Protein percentage on a calorie basis is probably what you should be using.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:49

Yeah. It's also the only way you can really compare two foods. Yeah. Because the per 100 gram, like it sounds really simple. It sounds really intuitive, but it only works for like foods that are dry. Right. If there's any water in the food, if it's a food with a decent amount of fat in it, it goes completely out the window because, you know, fat is more calorie per gram than protein or carbs. Right. So the same weight of those things is a totally different number of calories. And then water, you can add a lot of weight in water, and that obviously doesn't add any calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:20

Hence, spinach. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:23

So, yeah, water and fat are both the big ones that kind of skew that measurement when you're trying to look at it in per 100 grams. And so you're looking at it in terms of calories, why the percent of calories matters is that the calories would actually limit how much food you eat in a day if you're tracking the calories. So if you're going through your day like, okay, my calorie target is 2,000 calories and I've got to get 100 grams of protein, then the goal is to hit that 100 grams of protein and not go over the 2,000 calories. So to do that, you're picking foods that are a high protein percentage based on the calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:56

Yeah. And I think there are also like different ways of eating. For us, we generally eat foods that are like around the percentage of protein that we're targeting for our overall day. Yeah. So, like, if our percentage target is, like, 30% protein for all of our calories, then we're usually picking foods that are, like, around the 25% to 35% mark.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:16

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:17

Because, I mean, at least me, I don't really usually drink protein shakes because I don't like them. But, like, the other way you could eat is, like, kind of, you know, you know you're going to eat, like, two protein shakes a day, so then you can kind of do whatever. Right. But I think still, for the most part, you probably want to be keeping an eye on the protein percentage. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:36

For sure. And I think the caveat is there are some situations where you might be more interested in how much protein you can shove into, like, an actual volume of food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:45

Yeah. Or, like, how many calories can you shove into 100 grams of food, right? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:50

So, like, if you're on some kind of appetite suppressant or, like, one of the GLP-1 drugs or something that, like, lowers your appetite, you're only really hungry a couple times a day, you can only eat a little bit of food at a time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:03

Yeah, or like you're on like an antidepressant or something, or you just have an overall low appetite.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:08

Yeah. So that's when you'll be looking for things that are more calorie dense, like a handful of almonds or something like that is a good example. Where it's a lot of calories packed into a very little amount of actual space.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:18

Yeah, or like peanut butter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:20

Yeah, peanut butter is usually the go-to there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:22

Yeah, you want low-volume foods, right? Like you don't want things that make you more and more full because then you might not be able to get all your calories. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:29

The other one would be like if you're on a bulk, if you're trying to gain weight, usually the number one complaint with being on a bulk is that you get full, you're having a hard time. And this is doubly true for vegans. It's actually like a pretty big issue with the vegan bodybuilders and stuff is like trying to bulk with whole foods on a plant-based diet. It's like so much volume.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:49

Yeah, you can definitely do it with like processed like vegan junk food, but to do it like with mostly whole foods. Yeah. Yeah, that could make you pretty full.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:00

Especially the people who are still in the mindset of doing like the old school bulks where you're gaining, you know, like 10 pounds a month or something crazy like that. There are still people who adhere to that, even though it doesn't really do much extra, but it's just the old, the older way to do it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:13

Yeah, I see people eating like 4,000 calories a day, mostly whole food. It's like, whoa.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:18

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:18

I feel like you'd also be eating all day. I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:22

Yeah, no, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:23

You'd be eating like a hobbit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:27

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:27

Second lunch in elevenses. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:32

Oh, man. So for the math of how you figure out the protein and to the calories, how do you do that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:38

So you would take the grams of protein, multiply that by four calories because there's four calories per one gram of protein. Now you're in the calories from protein. Right. And you're going to divide that number by the overall calories per serving.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:53

Right. So that gives you the protein percentage on a calorie basis. Yeah. Which is, again, the right way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:00

I think so. An easy way to look at it is 40%. Protein seems to be a good benchmark because that's really easy math. Yeah. Because you have like, say you have 10 grams of protein and 100 calories. That's 10 grams times 4 calories. That's 40. Divided by 100 is 40%. So if you're trying to hit around 40% or you just want to like eyeball it, divide your calories by 10 and that should be around where your protein is. if you're trying to hit 40 percent.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:33

Yeah, that sounds about right. You're pretty familiar with the math because you put the nutritional information right there with all of your recipes. So it might help to go through some actual examples of food and show how this can be kind of wildly different based on which perspective you're using.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:47

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:48

So the first one we're going to look at is spinach. We talked about the wheelbarrow spinach example.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:53

You really like to trigger me here, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:56

It gets the conversation going, you know?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:58

Yeah, I do think spinach is an interesting one. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:01

So spinach is three grams of protein per 100 grams of spinach.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:05

Got a lot of water. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:07

But it is 52% protein by calorie.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:11

That's what I meant. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:12

So if you look at it like some people do, and they're seeing the three grams per 100 grams

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:18

Yeah, then they're saying it's 3% protein. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:21

And this is a very common opinion. This is a lot of people think about it this way. But, you know, it's actually per calorie, which is the thing we care about, 52%, because most of the 100 grams of spinach is just water. It shouldn't come into the equation at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:35

Right. It's like it's a low calorie food, but it's not a low protein food because the amount of protein you're eating is based on how much of the thing you eat. Yeah. Right. Like, it's a high-volume food, but it's not necessarily, like, low-protein, if that makes sense.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:50

Yeah, definitely. And I think that becomes pretty obvious when you go to cook spinach in a pan, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:54

Oh, my God. Cooking spinach is a wild experience. You're, like, throwing an entire massive container that takes up, like, a whole drawer in your fridge. Yeah. You're throwing that into a pan, and then you get, like, two tablespoons of cooked spinach. Yeah. I'm like, I'll eyeball it and I'll be like, oh, I think I need about 10 handfuls. And then like it cooks down and it looks like there's like four leaves. Yeah. So then I throw like 10 more handfuls and then it's like five leaves. It's ridiculous.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:26

Yeah. It's pretty interesting to cook leaves.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:29

If you haven't done it before, it's an interesting experience.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:33

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's one of the really strong examples, both because if you cook it, you get that visual. Yeah. And because it's such a big, like, if you're thinking about it, 3% or 52%, like, some people are going to say spinach is 3% protein. Other people are going to say spinach is 52% protein just because of the way they read labels.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:53

Right. And I think, like, if—let's say, like, if you're on a calorie deficit and you're trying to hit a protein goal within a calorie target— spinach is a great option because it will keep you full yeah you know like if you don't have very many calories it's going to keep you full and then also um for me when i'm like picking what foods we're eating mostly because i don't like chugging protein shakes yeah i'll be making like um basically choices on like every food so like i'm gonna have a salad i'm probably gonna do a spinach base over like a romaine base just because it's got like quite a bit more protein when you look at it, like, on a protein percentage basis.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:31

Also a lot more nutrients, but... Right. But, yeah, I mean, if you're choosing between two things that you're not really going to be able to taste the difference in anyway, why not go for the one entire protein?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:38

Right. So, like, when I'm suggesting it online, I'm more talking about, like, easy swaps you can make to, like, add in just, like, a little more protein in every decision that you make. So, like, if you're eating a huge salad, that could be, like, an extra 10 grams of protein, and it's really not that much. You're not really going to care. Yeah, definitely. Unless you just hate the taste of spinach, which Popeye would be disappointed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:58

Yeah, yeah. He's pretty strong.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:01

He is. He is strong. That's his whole thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:04

All right. The next example here, also kind of a water-based example, is soy milk. So, soy milk, three grams of protein per 100 grams.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:12

Some would say that's 3% protein. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:14

But it's actually, per calorie, 36% protein. And this is obvious. Soy milk is mostly water, and that's why.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:21

But this is funny because people will say that milk is a good protein source. Like, dairy milk is a good protein source. Yeah. But dairy milk is going to have the same issue with, like, most of its weight is from water.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:33

Yeah. Also, oat milk. So, oat milk's interesting. It's a lot less, but it doesn't look like less. So, the soy milk is three grams of protein per 100 gram. Oat milk is, like, a gram of protein per 100 gram. So, you're looking at the label, maybe. If you're looking at per 100 gram, you're like, okay, it's only two grams different.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:49

Yeah, what's the big deal? No big deal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:50

But percentage per calorie, soy milk is 36%, and oat milk is only 10%. Yeah. So it's actually a pretty big difference in the calorie content, but you wouldn't really know that by looking at the per 100 gram measurement.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:02

Yeah. This is where stuff gets interesting for me personally. Like when I am making recipes, like a lot of people will use oat milk or almond milk in their recipes, but I almost always use soy milk because it's got like three and a half times the amount of protein per calorie as all the other non-dairy milk options. Yeah. So it's like those are like the little swaps throughout the day that like the protein really starts adding up because it's like, okay, I get like two grams of protein from oat milk, a glass of oat milk, but I'm getting like maybe almost eight grams of protein from a glass of soy milk. Yeah. So that's maybe six grams more. Yeah. With just a really simple swap.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:41

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:41

And I also think it comes in, I think it's interesting if you have a protein target and maybe you're trying to save money, it can get interesting to start comparing stuff on a grams of protein per dollar basis and usually things that are a higher protein density, so like. a higher protein percentage on a calorie basis end up being cheaper on a grams of protein per dollar basis just because they're packing in more protein on a calorie basis too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:08

Right. Yeah. And also, we're saying grams for milk, that's probably mostly measured in milliliters. But for things that are mostly water, grams and milliliters are the same. And then the last one for kind of a water content that's pretty common is cooked black beans. So there are nine grams of protein per 100 grams of beans. But by the calorie percentage, they're 28% protein. So it's, you know, some people might look at that and say beans are only 9% protein, but they're actually almost 30% protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:33

And they'll use that to argue with you. And they're like, well, look at my steak.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:36

Right. Exactly. And that's where a lot of these actually come up is when somebody who's like kind of comparing something to a vegan diet and saying like vegan diets are low protein. Look at this per 100 grams, but that's just the wrong way to look at it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:48

Right. Which is like, to me, it's kind of funny because if you start comparing stuff on a protein percentage on a calorie basis vegan food starts looking pretty good yeah because you're like the protein percentage is about the same but i'm gonna feel fuller for longer yeah like these are like higher volume foods are gonna fill me up so yeah that's why people eat salads right like it's like oh that's filling i get like a i'm eating like a pound of yeah greens you know yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:18

Um so now for a couple of examples that are more skewed by the fat instead of the water a Peanut butter is the huge one. So peanut butter is 25 grams of protein per 100 grams of peanut butter. So some people will be like, wow, peanut butter is 25% protein. It's not. It's not because peanut butter is a lot of fat. So it's actually only 17% protein on a calorie basis.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:40

Right, which is why something like PB Fit, which is defatted, is going to be better for you on a protein percentage and not really mess up your calories the same way.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:49

A lot of the arguments for like vegan diet, whole food diet, like really focus on peanut butter as being like a good protein source, which it has protein and peanut butter is delicious. I love peanut butter, but it's not as high protein as it's kind of made out to be.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:02

I think peanut butter is a super interesting one because I think most vegans would not consider that to be a protein source. Yeah. But for some reason, that gets spread across the omnivore circles.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:12

Is that a pun? Because you spread?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:14

Oh, it wasn't. But we can say I did that on purpose. I feel like it is spread among the omnivore circles that like, that's what vegans eat for protein. Yeah. It's like peanut butter. So then they'll show, it's really funny because in some cases, they'll be going based off of gram per gram. and showing that, oh, like meat is way better than their tofu, right? But then when it comes to peanut butter, they'll be like, look how many calories you need to get 50 grams of protein with peanut butter where I can eat a steak and get 50 grams of protein with like X number of calories. And they're like, this is a horrible protein source. Why are vegans eating that? And it's like, well, most vegans aren't eating peanut butter as a protein source.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:59

Yeah, unfortunately, I think we might have shot ourselves in the foot with this one a little bit because I think this argument really came into being when the guy who made Game Changers went on Joe Rogan to kind of argue about it. And he really leaned into like comparing peanut butter to some of the non-vegan proteins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:15

Why would you do that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:16

Yeah. So like obviously after that, it didn't end up landing very well. He made a lot of good points. Obviously we love the movie, but this really like launched this peanut butter protein thing into the stratosphere and nobody's ever stopped talking about it since.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:30

Yeah. Well, once you understand it, you can effectively argue with them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:33

So now for an example that, does make sense and because you know humans i think have a tendency to be like if they can find a couple of things that make sense they feel like they can apply that to everything so some of these things lead into some of the problems here but something that is extremely dry like a powder like vital wheat gluten for example is 75 grams of protein per 100 grams of vital wheat gluten and then it's about the same per calorie it's like 80 protein per calorie yeah because there's no water there's not much fat so it's effectively the same whether you look at it per 100 gram or per calorie.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:05

But the funny thing about vital wheat gluten is that if you're going to use that for seitan, and even if you make it like the simplest seitan ever, which is just adding water, your gram per gram is going to change pretty drastically. And the protein percentage on a calorie basis will be the same.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:19

Yeah. And for an obvious example of how adding water changes this equation, let's just think about a protein shake, right? So when you make a protein shake, you take a scoop of the protein powder. That scoop of protein powder is like, say you got 100 gram scoop of protein powder, okay? If you put that into the cup, then suddenly this thing you're about to eat or drink is 50 grams of protein per 100 grams, right? Now, you pour 100 grams of water into your protein cup. Now, it's only 50 grams of protein per 200 grams of mixture. Nothing has actually changed here. You're drinking the same amount of protein, food, everything. You just added water to it. But suddenly, if you're looking at it per 100 gram, you've gone from 50% protein to 25% protein. But if you look at this on the calorie basis, nothing changes here. Yeah. Whether before the water or after the water, the numbers are exactly the same because water doesn't have calories.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:14

Right. That's a really good point. And I like my protein powder if I'm actually going to drink it super diluted because the texture bothers me. So mine would be even less percentage of protein on a gram basis.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:25

Yeah, if you really want to make protein powder look bad, you put it in a gallon of water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:28

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:29

I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:31

It's 1% protein. Right. Don't drink that. It's horrible. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:34

So, lots of issues, but, you know, that's kind of the take. Anything that has water in it, anything that has fat in it, you're going to get skewed really quickly if you're trying to look at it per 100 grams. If you look at things per calorie, it's always going to be consistent across any kind of food, no matter what, because the calories are, like, what you're kind of measuring your food intake based on.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:54

Yeah, and I can see, like, I think this is mostly coming from Europe, right? The nutrition labels tend to show the nutrition facts in, like, per 100 grams. Yeah. But in the U.S., we don't do that. Yeah. It's just like they make up a serving size, whatever they want the serving size to be. Yeah. And so I've never thought of it per 100 grams. So like I went out there saying protein percentage and like... Was met with a lot of vitriol and I was very confused because that, I mean, comparing it on a calorie basis just made a lot of sense to me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:29

Yeah, we did the American thing where we think our way is the only way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:32

In this one case and possibly one case only, this is the right way. Protein percentage on a calorie basis, in my opinion, is definitively the right way because you have normalized the information so that you can compare it across foods. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:49

And we have grams on our labels. It just usually shows up right next to the servings or shows up next to the calories per serving size. But everything's different. It's like this. Yeah. Serving of this is 32 grams. Serving of this is 48 grams, whatever. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:00

It's like, oh, serving size is a quarter of a cup or 40 grams. And you're like, OK. Yeah. That's arbitrary. But like serving sizes in general are arbitrary. Right. I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:10

So, yeah, we're just we're not really on that system of per 100 grams in any way, really. Also, people who are making like anti-vegan content, kind of like you were referring to earlier, really lean into this to dunk on plant foods. They'll do like the per 100 gram thing because a lot of the plant foods have a lot of water in them. So they compare their protein source to some vegan protein source that has a lot of water. And then they do the comparison on per 100 grams.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:33

Yeah, they're like, look how many leaves of spinach you would need to eat to get how much protein I get from a plate of steak.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:40

Those comparison posts drive me nuts. It was like, you'd have to eat a whole bucket of strawberries or whatever. What are we doing?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:46

Oh, my God. It drives me insane. Like, we should at least be comparing something that is actually comparable. But then they'll do kind of the opposite gotcha post where they're like... here's 50 grams of peanut butter, and here's 50 grams of steak, and let me tell you the outrageous amount of calories peanut butter has. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, so you use the grams basis against us, and then you also use the calorie basis against us.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:11

And using, like, the leanest cut of steak that people don't even usually eat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:14

Right, and the highest fat protein source for vegans. Yeah. It's never, like, a genuine comparison.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:19

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:20

I would like to see them compare seitan to steak. Yeah. You know, on a calorie basis. because I think it's going to hold up pretty well.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:29

Well, it's like 80% protein. Anyway. Yeah. And then sometimes vegan creators are kind of their own enemy here because they'll put out something with some cherry picked examples and be like, spinach is high protein. And then just get absolutely decimated in the comments.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:44

Yeah. I mean, I've done that. But like when I do that, I feel like the implied thing is that this is a secondary protein source. Like you wouldn't be just solely living on spinach. That's never my intention.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:57

I think that's the thing. It's like you make a post like that and then like, obviously, nobody actually thinks that you're saying eat spinach all day to get your protein. But they're going to jump on that and use it and say, oh, look at this silly vegan. They think you can just eat spinach for protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:14

It's exhausting. It really is. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:16

So you get caught up in those arguments and it just kind of cycles and nobody wins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:21

Luckily, for the most part, you're not having these conversations in real life. I feel like for the most part.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:26

Yeah, because nobody would talk to you like that in real life because they like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:29

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:29

It's just so disingenuous that people don't really do that in real life.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:33

Yeah. I feel like I've definitely had people ask me, where do you get protein? And I've also had people be like, so you just eat salads all day. But when I respond to them and I'm like, here are the things I eat for protein. And I try to give some like percentages, examples of like how that compares to omnivore food. Yeah. They usually just go, oh, okay. Didn't know that. Yeah. They're not like vicious like people online. People online are wild. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:59

Now they might turn around and make a little tweet about, I talked to a vegan today.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:02

And they're so stupid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:06

It is what it is. And then a little bit of marketing trickery. High protein shows up on the front of the bag a lot of the time. Really, the advice is always to start by looking at the back of the package. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, a lot of those high protein claims are made for reading it based on per 100 grams. Because they are well aware that people see high protein per 100 gram and think something is actually high protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:31

Right, because you're not going to go do the math and see what's going on. how much protein is in the calories.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:36

Yeah. That whole category of marketing that exists because math is kind of hard.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:40

Right. Which it'd be nice if they just put their percentage of calories that come from protein on the back too. But they're not going to do that for you because they want to sell you things.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:48

Yeah. It can also be misleading because it can be kind of high protein in the context of what it is. Yeah. Like we dunk on Lenny and Larry cookies a lot because they say they're high protein. But, you know, I think the meaning there is like we're high protein for a cookie.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:02

Right. Which is fair because cookies, for the most part, don't have protein. So, like, yeah, maybe you are 16 times higher than a normal cookie in protein. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:12

But it might be interesting to know that Lenny and Larry high-protein cookies are not really that much higher protein than something like a Reese's Cup, which is obviously not marketed as high-protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:22

Yeah. So, like, Lenny and Larry's cookie, one of the more popular ones, the chocolate chip one, the really big chocolate chip one, for 440 calories, it's only 16 grams of protein. Yeah. Which is, like, 14% protein on a calorie basis. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:37

And what's a Reese's?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:38

So, a Reese's, you actually get 10 grams of protein for 420 calories. I don't know if this is for a plant-based one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:45

No, this is for a normal one.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:46

Yeah. Yeah. So, the plant-based one's probably going to be lower. But the point is, that's 10%. Right. 10% versus 14% when Lenny and Larry is saying, like, oh, it's a great source of protein. And, like, Reese's doesn't have anywhere on theirs that theirs is a great source of protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:00

Not only are Lenny and Larry saying theirs is a great source of protein, they're sitting in the store next to the protein bars. Yeah. Like, they're saying this is a high-protein, fitness-oriented option because of, like, where they place themselves. Yeah. But it's slightly more protein than a Reese's cup.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:17

Not saying it's not a good option, right? Yeah. But like just saying when you do the math, you can tell like marketing is happening. Right. Same with like protein Pop-Tarts. Now, they don't have any vegan ones, but we looked at the back of the box. Yeah. We didn't buy the box. But for protein Pop-Tarts, you get 10 grams of protein for 380 calories. So that's like also 10% protein. So the same as a Reese's Cup. Yeah. But they're like, we're protein Pop-Tarts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:46

So if you're eating protein Pop-Tarts, you could just eat Reese's.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:50

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:51

Vegan ones, the plant-based Reese's.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:52

Yeah. And also don't eat the protein Pop-Tarts because those are also not plant-based.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:57

And probably not that good. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:58

These are just examples.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:01

But yeah. So, I mean, it's all, there's a lot of marketing, trickery, misleading things, especially around this whole high protein thing and what they put on the label and stuff like that. So you really got to flip it over, read the label, do a little bit of math if this is something that's actually your thing. If you don't care about how much protein is in something and you're just like, I just want protein Pop-Tarts. OK, have at it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:18

Ignore the whole thing. That's fine, too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:21

So kind of to recap, two questions you should ask about any food if you're trying to hit a protein goal, understand the protein is like what percentage of the calories are protein and what's the rest of it? Is it water? Is it fat? Is it sugars? What else is in here that might skew the volume or the protein per 100 grams? And so the mental math to do the protein thing is the protein multiplied by four and then divide by the number of calories in the serving.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:45

Yeah. So if if you know your protein percentage target, like you have your calories and your grams of protein you're trying to hit on a daily basis, you can get your protein percentage target for the daily basis from there. And then you can try to target foods that are like plus or minus five to 10 percent of that target.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:04

Right. So if your protein target for the day is like every day I try to get 30 percent of my calories from protein, mostly try to find foods that are like somewhere in 20 to 40 percent protein. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:16

And maybe that changes if you're someone that just wants to chug protein shakes and kind of YOLO the rest of the day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:22

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could just be the person who wakes up, slams 150 grams of protein and shakes, then you do whatever you want the rest of the day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:29

You do you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:31

And then for the marketing piece on products, like in the store or wherever you're getting them from, it's important to look at the actual label on the back and not the front. So what are some tips for recipes you might find online?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:41

Yeah. So I think the same way that you see marketing on products in the store, you'll see that with people making recipes online. A lot of people will call things high protein, even if they're kind of like 10% protein, kind of like a Reese's. So things you can look for is if the person saying this is a high protein recipe does not share the nutrition facts, either in the caption, like if you're watching a reel or on their actual recipe blog. that's kind of weird you know i just feel like if you're saying high protein you should at least share how much data like i shouldn't have to go through and enter 15 different ingredients into my fitness pal to see what your calories and macros are so that's like to me the first red flag like if you're not willing to provide that information maybe it's not high protein yeah um the second thing you can do without having to enter all of that in is kind of like look at what is the main protein source so like if their main protein source of their protein cookies is protein powder how much protein powder are they using and like how much other ingredients are they using and like kind of like do like a like a quick volume comparison because if you're only using like two tablespoons of protein powder in a sea of flour sugar butter whatever which is very common yeah that's not high protein you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:55

See a lot of high protein cookie recipes that do that and you're like what are we doing

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:58

Here yeah i mean it's the thing is is like um kind of like you, But, like, for, and I think it really comes down to, like, people call different things different. Yeah, yeah. Like, people have different definitions in their head. Because, like, yeah, for a cookie, even if it's 10% protein, like, yeah, I guess. That's a very high protein cookie.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:21

Yeah, highest protein cookie I've had. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:23

So, like, it does get a little confusing. But, like, I would say if you're serious about hitting a calorie and protein target, it is important to kind of look through some of the gimmicky things that we call stuff. and just kind of figure out, you know, eyeball it. Does it look like it's going to be able to work with your thing? Yeah. You know, if the protein source is peanut butter, you know what I mean?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:47

Right. Yeah, that's probably not going to be what you're looking for necessarily. It's like, well. It is going to be delicious.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:53

Yeah. And sometimes you just want to eat delicious things and that's fine too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:56

That's true. So, yeah, if you're trying to figure out, you know, what you want your protein target to be, We did an episode on that, episode 41, Picking Your Protein Target. And I've also got a blog post about it on the Muscle Deficient Vegan website. If you're looking for recipes that are somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% to 40% protein, go to the Protein Deficient Vegan website. That's basically the whole thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:15

Yeah. And I put the nutrition facts on, like, the front of the recipe thumbnail, basically. So you don't have to click on anything that's not going to work for you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:24

Also, better than that, all your recipes are in MyFitnessPal already fully populated. So you just search the name of the recipe and you've got all the nutrition facts and detail.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:31

I was going to have to enter them anyway. So now we can all use it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:37

All right, let's move on to our myth of the week this week, which is that some people only eat humanely farmed meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:42

Yeah, so I'm seeing this a lot on threads because I think the vast majority of people agree that factory farming is pretty evil. Yeah. You know, like I do think like even omnivores, I think just like the normal person probably thinks factory farming bad. Yeah. Right. But I think the normal person also doesn't really understand how widespread factory farming is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:06

Yeah, there are people, and I think this section is mostly for people who are not vegan, but they've got a line in the sand for themselves that are like, okay, this is what I think is humane farming, which, you know, we disagree with in general. But there are people who think there's a method of humane farming animals, right? So the problem is that they're not actually getting from the store even what they think they're getting. Right. So they're kind of violating their own rules without even knowing it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:34

Yeah. So I want to start this with saying we are vegan, so we don't really think there is an ethical way to eat animals, period. But if you're seeing these kinds of statements like on threads, on social media, if you're talking to family and friends that are kind of saying, like, I only eat ethically farmed meat, we're going to share some data to counter some of these discussions. Just so you have all the facts, because, you know, I do think there are people like we kind of talked about in the news, right there. the new section there are people that maybe have like medical conditions in which they can't eat a fully plant-based diet and those people maybe they want to be vegan yeah and like they're trying to do the most harm reduction they can because they they physically can't eat a plant-based diet right um so here's some information around that like maybe you just don't know yeah so we're just going to kind of share these details but like ultimately like, I don't want to get it confused that we don't agree with eating animals.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:30

Period. And I think there's, you know, a big part of this is really not knowing what you're getting yourself into because you've said before that, like, you were vegetarian for a long time because you didn't really understand that the treatment of cows to make milk and cheese and stuff was inhumane.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:42

Right. Yeah. So I think this stuff is important. um now i've been tone policed on various social media posts just because i tend to argue more with like meeting someone where they are and then countering those points because like i just think it's like an easier place to start from yeah but like i knew i do know there are vegans online that will just like they don't even want to go there they're just they come in and they say eating all animals is unethical which i agree with yeah but i don't know that that's always the most effective way to have conversations.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:15

I think it's rarely the most effective way. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:17

So for me personally, like when I am trying to like go back and forth with someone, if we already have common ground where we both think factory farming is bad, like let's get that data in front of them so that they know that they're probably participating in funding factory farming. And then like really the only option from there to get away from buying factory farming, It's probably going to be to limit your meat consumption. Yeah. Which I think all vegans can agree. We really want people to reduce their meat intake so eventually we can stop eating animals altogether, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:51

Yeah. I think it would be helpful for more vegans to, like, kind of try to remember before they were vegan. Yeah. Because unless you've been vegan your whole life, like, there was always a point where you didn't understand why people were vegan. And then, like, you slowly probably had to, like, break down your preconceptions one by one over time. And if somebody had come at you at that point in your life and been like very aggressive and just the black or white, you have to stop right now, blah, blah, blah. Like that probably wouldn't have worked on you either.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:19

Yeah. I think for me, especially like I was vegetarian for 20 years. Right. And like, I genuinely thought like I was doing basically the most for the animals that I could. And I was under the misconception that, um, like basically dairy cows were treated nicely. Yeah. I know that sounds really stupid now that I know what I know, but I think like... If I happen to stumble upon like a vegan thread and then somebody was just like, just kind of said a blanket statement of like, we shouldn't use animals. Yeah. I don't know that that would have converted me. Like, I would want to know what the data was. I want to know what the information is. Like, what about dairy farming is like inherently unethical, you know? And I think having that information makes people think more. I think it moves conversation forward.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:11

Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:11

Um, so yeah, I think this section is more around like arming you with some of that data so that you can have those conversations, especially now that, uh, Billie Eilish is, you know, kind of like making this conversation, uh, enter the mainstream culture.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:26

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:26

I think it's a really good time to be having these conversations if you have the mental bandwidth. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:32

So to start off with some of the numbers, basically in the U.S., 99 percent, about 99 percent of farmed animals come from factory farms, what is more technically referred to as a concentrated animal feeding operation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:47

Right. This data is based on the EPA's definition of factory farms or concentrated feeding operations in which you hold a number of animals in an intensive feeding operation for more than 45 days.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:00

We're going to go through a couple of animals here and tell you how many of these are in this situation. So for chickens, 99.96% of chickens are factory farmed.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:09

I think that's a crazy number. Yeah. I actually had someone yell at me and say that chickens are skewing all the other numbers. But we're going to tell you they're not.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:17

Yeah. Also, if you don't know this, that's 9.2 billion chickens.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:24

That's crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:25

Billion.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:26

And this data is based on some 2022 data.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:31

So it's probably more now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:32

Yeah, yeah. Um, 99.8% of turkeys are factory farmed, 260 million of those. 100% of fish are factory farmed, which might seem kind of obvious. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:42

The fish that are farmed are always factory farmed, right? There's not really like a way to un-factory farm a fish.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:48

Free roam fish. Yeah. Anyway, 530 million of those. Um, 75% of cows are factory farmed. That's 66 million.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:57

So that's like the lowest percentage of animals that are factory farmed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:01

Yeah. 98.3% of egg-laying hens, which is different than chickens, are factory farmed. 380 millions of those.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:08

So that would be the egg industry versus like the chicken meat consumption industry.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:14

Yeah. And then 98.6% of pigs are factory farmed. 73 million.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:19

And that's just in the U.S.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:21

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:21

So on a global scale, it's estimated that 90% of all livestock is factory farmed. Right. Those are crazy numbers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:31

So if you're someone who is saying all of the meat I consume is not factory farmed, it's ethical, that's probably not true. Just based on numbers here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:43

If you're getting your meat at the grocery store, it's almost certainly factory farmed, no matter what the labels on the front say.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:49

And if you're eating meat from restaurants, from fast food places, it is pretty much certainly factory farmed meat. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:56

Yeah. So speaking of the labels, there's a lot of label confusion stuff. So there are a lot of different labels that say like humanely raised, all natural, free range, cage free. A lot of those aren't really regulated and some of them are kind of actively misleading.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:11

And I think they intentionally, they obviously intentionally do that, right? Because they want to make you feel better about your choices.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:17

Yeah. So a couple of examples of that, free range for chickens can mean basically their barn has a little door out to a small patch of concrete that they never really go out to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:26

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:27

But they have the option in theory.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:29

Yeah. If they could actually get to the door without death stomping a bunch of other chickens to get out. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:35

Cage-free eggs still come from like really crowded indoor buildings.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:40

Right. They're just not in cages.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:42

It's basically one gigantic cage because the chickens don't even have room to move around.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:46

Right. We were watching some documentary and it was saying they don't even have the square footage of a piece of paper per chicken. Like if you think in terms of that, that's insane. And that's how they live their entire lives. That's how your cage-free eggs are being created.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:04

Grass-fed beef doesn't mean like they live in a pasture all their life. A lot of grass-fed cattle are grain-finished. There are some grass-fed certifications that do require them to be like 100% grass-fed. But they're rare and obviously they don't feed the world's population with those cattle.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:19

Right. And I think this comes back to like what the definition of factory farmed is, which is like if they're in an intensive feeding operation for over 45 days, that is considered factory farmed. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:32

Yeah. And then also Dolphin Free has a shit ton of issues. Right. Basically, like, they almost never send the verifiers out there. And there's, like, a lot of, you know, shady stuff that happens. But from what I can tell, that label is effectively meaningless.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:48

Oh, absolutely. And if you're not familiar with what that means, a lot of fish, a lot of fishing in general, specifically around, I think the Dolphin Free label is typically on tuna fish. Yeah. But basically, they'll fish for tuna in really large nets and they'll effectively catch a bunch of bycatch. Yeah. And that can include, obviously, things that they're not trying to catch, like dolphins, whales, sea turtles, all the things that you really love and everyone, like, I think equally loves. You know, like you get your little necklace with a dolphin on it and you wear your sea turtle charm bracelet. Well, yeah, those are ending up in bycatch. But they have a dolphin-free label, but usually that doesn't mean anything. And probably there was a dolphin in the bycatch.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:33

Yeah. So there are a couple of certifications, like certified humane, animal welfare approved, and then something called the Global Animal Partnership that has kind of levels if you have step four or five on the ranking system. Those are some of the ones that actually verify some higher welfare. But those are very rare in, like, a store setting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:53

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the main takeaway here is most of the labels, like if you're talking to someone that's saying like, or you are someone that's saying, I eat only free range chicken, I eat only cage free eggs, like you should know that most of those labels are. Almost, if not always, entirely meaningless and very misleading.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:14

Yeah. And most of the, like, actually small farm, you know, quote unquote humane, which, you know, again, issues with that. But those operations, the meat that comes from those isn't really sold at, like, Costco, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's. Even those kind of places that orient themselves more towards that kind of ethical type thing, they aren't even in those stores most of the time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:34

Right. I think, you know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:36

And definitely not in restaurants.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:37

Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're not buying the more expensive versions of anything. Yeah. I do think for the, I don't want to say across the board, but I think a lot of like the small farms, a lot of the people they're selling to are like people in their local neighborhood. Like you almost have to know a guy. Yeah, yeah. At least that's what I've noticed from people I've talked to. It's like they know a guy. Right. Not everyone knows a guy. Yeah. If you don't know a guy, you're probably not buying one of these things. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:03

If you don't have the option to go and like pet the animal that you're trying to eat, it's probably not a small farm, quote unquote, humane operation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:12

Yes. And like if I think it's go even a step further. Right. Like if you're not able to go visit this place and see how they're treating it. Yeah. You know, it's probably not what you think it is. Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point of putting these operations indoors. It's so the general public can't see how animals are living. And then, like, also in terms of, like, you know, you can't really just shop at a grocery store and find these, like, quote unquote, humanely farmed animals. You also can't just eat out or buy processed foods and expect those to also be, quote unquote, ethically farmed. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:47

Yeah. I mean, like all the little things that go into different packaged foods or like toppings on your food at the like the restaurant or whatever. All that stuff's going to be just mass-produced, factory-farmed options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:00

If you're ever eating out, you're not getting away from factory-farmed. Yep.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:04

And then even the certified humane farms that do actually have the real certifications that verify the animal welfare, they still typically use the same slaughterhouses or like methods that the factory farms use to kill the animal itself.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:16

Yeah, that's true. Most small farms aren't even slaughtering the animals they raise, sending it off somewhere else.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:22

Yeah, that humane label only applies to the life of the animal, not how it dies. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:27

I really like that quote. I can't remember who said it, but it was basically like, if all slaughterhouses had glass walls, the entire world would be vegan. Like, if you could see what's actually happening, you wouldn't eat it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:42

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the thing for me has always been like, imagine yourself as one of the animals on this farm and like your human form or whatever. Like, would you want to be treated this way? Because I think like if I was on a farm and I lived my whole life and then I just died, I don't care if people eat my body or whatever. Yeah. But like if I.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:59

You naturally died. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:00

Naturally died. Yeah. But if I'm like crammed into a small space or even if I have a great life, but then they kill me when I'm 10 years old. Like. Right. Like none of that stuff really tracks with humane to me.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:10

Yeah. And if you don't even want to go so far as to think of yourself in that position, if you've ever had a family pet, if you have a dog or a cat that you truly loved, would you want them to be treated the way cows, chickens, turkeys, pigs, fish are treated? I just don't think that you would. Yeah. I don't think you feel good about it. Even if they got to live on a pasture their whole life and have like, you know, the best life ever where they're just kind of free roaming. But then you end their life like super early and send them off to a slaughterhouse. You wouldn't do that with your family pet. Why are you doing it with other animals when there are plant-based options?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:46

Yeah. And one of the other issues not even really related to the animal that ends up turning into meat is like with their babies when they get pregnant. Right. The chickens are bad about this. It's like they basically don't keep male chickens.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:59

Right. So this is one of the things that I did not realize as a vegetarian. I had a like I just. had a complete lack of knowledge as far as like what happened to um male offspring in the dairy industry and the egg industry that was just a black hole of information for me i had no idea right so like that's why i think some of these conversations are important to like actually bring up the details because i mean i think like dairy and meat propaganda is like so widespread Yeah. And they try to make it seem okay for the animals. And I think you can be easily tricked. And if you're not in these spaces where you're reading about this stuff, I mean, you're just not going to like randomly stumble upon it. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:45

Yeah. I mean, this conversation is not really for people who don't care how the animals are treated because you're not going to care about the details anyway. But for the people who, like, think they're doing the right thing, even while they're still eating animals, there's a lot of stuff here that is not happening the way you probably think it is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:00

Yeah. And I also think, you know, if you didn't care, you probably wouldn't be saying, I buy humanely sourced meat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:06

Because it's more expensive. Why would you be doing that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:08

Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, if you don't know. Kind of like you said, any male offspring in the egg industry, as soon as they're gendered, and it could be within hours of them being born, they're killed and they're not used for meat and they're not used for anything. They either gas them or they throw them in a blender, which is horrific. um but similarly in the dairy industry since um male offspring obviously uh can't be milked right and can't be pregnant yeah um what's interesting that maybe i think most people don't really understand is that um so with animal agriculture we have bred animals to do different things yeah so with chickens there are chickens that are specifically bred to have like more basically more meat on them yeah um so that specific breed of chicken is the one used in like meat meat production but then there's a different breed of chicken that just rapidly um lays eggs so that specific breed of chicken is only used in the egg industry which is why you can't raise it's not i guess financially economical is what i've heard to raise male chickens born in the egg industry because they won't have the same amount of, like, meat on them as, like... the chickens used in the meat industry yeah and then that's like the same for um cows right so or cattle i guess cows is a feminine term and i've been colloquializing it um it's always something. Uh but yeah so there's like dairy cattle which are specifically have been i don't want to say genetically modified but like we've uh essentially engineered them to produce a lot of milk yeah and like be more uh beneficial in the dairy industry specifically and then like the opposite would be the beef industry in which the cows have been bred to be better for the beef industry more muscle more muscle right like they get more meat they fatten up faster whatever yeah um so basically if you have a male calf born in the dairy industry they're not going to grow the way a beef cattle would right right so like they're probably not going to go in the same path as the beef cattle which means that they could either be sold as veal and i think i read the statistics on that is like 20 to 30 percent of all male calves that come from the dairy industry end up being sold for veal at like a few months old yeah and then like sometimes they just kill them yeah and then i think other times um there's like a variety of other things they do i think they can use them for like cheaper meat yeah um but the point of all of that is that if you're eating dairy or eggs and you think that like yes the animals might be being exploited you know but they're not being killed you are wrong yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:05

So yeah i mean we personally don't think there is any ethical way to eat animals because of like the variety of issues here even even in the situations where like the actual animal that turns into the meat or produces the milk or whatever is treated well There are still a lot of other issues surrounding it. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:20

And there are alternatives that exist, I think, is like the main thing for me is like, why would I even want to eat animals when there are so many plant-based alternatives?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:30

Yeah. And, you know, just because we've always done something one way, it doesn't mean that we should keep doing it that way going forward. I mean, we have a lot of options now. We don't necessarily need animal products anymore. You know, this was a lot different back when we were living in caves trying to survive. And there are still people across the world in survival situations like this. And they, you know, eat whatever you can get your hands on. It's understandable. But for people that, you know, have other options available, it doesn't really make sense to stick with these, you know, less humane things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:01

Right. I think the next piece is, you know, even if you think that they're living a good life on a farm with farmers that truly care for them, they're still being forcefully impregnated and forced to have babies over and over and over again. And I don't know how you could think that was humane.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:22

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:23

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, even if you were, even if you got through everything else and you were like, I'm okay with everything else.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:28

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:29

Do you think it's humane to continuously impregnate all of these animals to keep continuously producing offspring animals?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:38

Or like milk right yeah and then the last piece for the animals that become meat there's not really uh an ethical way to end an animal's life before the end of its natural life right no matter what you do you treat it well like it still would have lived much longer right

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:56

I think um an interesting data point that i read like looking through all this stuff is a natural like a cow in the wild would live to be 15 to 20 years old yeah that's the natural lifespan of a cow yeah cows are not living to be that old on farms yeah yeah you know yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:13

Again i mentioned like before i was vegan i had a lot of thoughts obviously in preconceptions and the more you learn about this the more you kind of become self-aware and uh you like you start rethinking things you get pretty uncomfortable with the reality of things and um you know just feels like everything you learn really leads more towards vegan diet, vegan lifestyle, not just diet. And then, you know, for health and nutrition, like whole foods, plants, stuff like that. So it's kind of hard to ignore once you really start learning, you know, more about the facts and the science and the data.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:44

And that's why I think like education and having these difficult conversations with people is probably the most important thing that we can do, because I don't think anyone's learning more about it and being like, well, I definitely don't want to go vegan now. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like you said, the more you learn, the more likely you are to go vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:02

Yeah. So I think, you know, we can call that myth busted because I think most people who think they're eating humane meat, quote unquote, are probably not, even if they don't know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:12

I've definitely seen more than 1% of people saying that they do this. And that doesn't really make sense because supposedly only 1% of livestock in the U.S. is not factory farmed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:23

Yeah. So both our topics this week were kind of about, you know, reading labels, not getting what you think you're getting. So maybe you can educate yourself a little more on the things you're confused about.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:31

And educate others in a kind and respectful manner, unless they're dickheads.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:36

Right. So a couple of quick takeaways for the calorie math on protein. Take the grams of protein, multiply that by four, divide that by the total number of calories in that serving, and that gets you the percentage of protein on a calorie basis,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:50

Which is the right way. Yes. And then the next takeaway is that humane meat is not really a thing. But also even the meat being labeled as humane isn't following their own beliefs and ideals around humane meat consumption. So like omnivores have these set rules around what they think is humane. They're still probably not even adhering to those. So it's important that we educate. All right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:13

Well, we appreciate everybody listening. If you could subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, that helps us out a lot. You can also join the Deficient Vegans Discord server. We are going to be starting a book club. Yeah. That's kind of exciting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:27

Yeah. In the next couple of weeks, we're going to be starting a book club. and we decided the first book we're going to start with is Eating Animals.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:34

By Jonathan Safran Foer.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:36

This is actually the book that made me go vegan. Yeah. I read this and I pretty much went vegan overnight. It's also the book that made Natalie Portman go vegan and apparently she just gives this out to people, friends and family that she knows and she's like, read it if you want, don't read it if you don't want, but now you have the information basically.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:53

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Speaking of giving it out, we are planning on raffling off a couple copies of the book for the book club. More details to come on that. And then if you do want to join the book club, it's going to be in Discord. So go to the show notes, join our Discord server. We'll have a channel for the book club. And it's just going to be kind of a channel where we talk about the books and all like formal meetings or video or anything like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:11

Our plan is to make a channel specifically for the book club. And then we'll like talk about which chapters we're going to be reading or like what page you should get through for that week. And then we'll be like talking through some discussion questions and having conversations around it. But, yeah, the plan is not no Zoom meetings, no meetings at all, no specified time requirements. It's just going to be kind of like a book club chat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:37

Yeah. Um, also if you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can leave us comments. We like those. Um, really appreciate that. And then if you're looking for high protein recipes, check out the protein deficient vegan website and social media down in the show notes. If you're looking for fitness, nutrition information, maybe online personal training, find the muscle deficient vegan website and social media. Cool. All right, guys. Uh, do you want to say bye? Bye guys. Bye everybody.