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- Published: Thursday, 01 February 2024 14:57
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Diet and Supplements
There are lots of things that we need in our diet to fulfill our body's nutritional requirement.
There are 6 essential nutrients that our body needs from food and drinks (our body can't make them):
- Macronutrients (Needed in large amounts)
- Carbohydrates => Main source of energy
- fats => Provided energy, and helps body absorb vitamins/minerals
- proteins => Needed for strong bones, muscles, organs, skin and nails
- Micronutrients (Needed in small amounts)
- vitamins => Body needs 13 different essential vitamins to fight infections, heal wounds, regulate hormones and more. There are two types of vitamins:
- Fat soluble Vitamins: Imp for muscle/bone
- Water soluble vitamins: Imp for nerves/heart
- minerals: More than a dozen minerals are needed
- water: Water makes up > 50% of our body. It helps to carry nutrients and bunch of other functions.
- vitamins => Body needs 13 different essential vitamins to fight infections, heal wounds, regulate hormones and more. There are two types of vitamins:
There are few non essential nutrients that your body makes. Ex are vitamins as cholesterol, Vit D, etc.
Let's look at some of the nutrients and associated food/diet. A more detailed section is in "Biology" section. Brief summary is again presented here.
Diet/Food:
Below are common food items along with their content:
- Milk: Milk is produced by mammary glands of animals, and as such has lot of nutrients to support health of babies. Dairy milk is milk collected from farm animals, mostly cattle. Initially, humans didn't have the ability to digest mammal milk as adults, as milk contained lactose. An enzyme, lactase was needed to digest lactose, which was present in high levels in small intestine of babies immediately after birth but declined as babies grew. However a chance mutation 1000's of yrs back enabled production of lactase in adults, and we started consuming this milk directly. Before that humans converted milk to curd, cheese, etc to consume as those had lower levels of lactose.
- Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk
- Production: About 1B Ton of milk from 300M cows produced every year (~4000L/cow per year or 10L-15L ($10-$15 in milk assuming price of $1/L) per day per cow. About 1B ppl live in dairy farming households (10% of population). India is the largest producer and consumer of milk in world. It produced 200MT, followed by USA at 100MT. Cow and Buffalo milk are produced in largest quantity, with India and US producing 100MT and 90MT of cow milk, and India and Pakistan producing 90MT and 40MT buffalo milk. Goat milk is 3rd most produced milk with India and Bangladesh producing 6MT and 3MT. Milk yields per cow are highest in Israel at 12,000L/cow per yr, while India is pretty low at 1000L/cow per yr.
- Consumption:
- Nutritional value: asfwrite fixme
- Egg: Eggs have been consumed as food for millions of years. Most common is chicken eggs. Hens may live upto 10 year, but their peak egg laying age is from 1-3 years, where they lay 1 egg/day (200-300 eggs per year) under optimal conditions. By age 5 o 6, they stop laying eggs. In 2023, 90M tons of eggs were produced from about 9B hens (9B*200*50g=90B kg of eggs/yr). China is the largest producer of eggs at 1/3 of world production, followed by distant US and India at 8% and 5% respectively.
- Nutritional value: 100 g of egg contains water=75g, proteins=13g, fat=10g, carbs=1g (cholesterol=0.3g). It has 18 different amino acids, and various minerals and vitamins. It has 150 kcal. Since a medium egg is around 50g in weight, it has 6g of protein and about 75 kcal. Egg white is primarily water (88%), more protein and no cholesterol. Egg yolk (the center yellow part) has all the cholesterol and fat, and as such was considered not so healthy. However, research has found no evidence of this for people consume about 1 egg a day. Consuming too many eggs a day may cause diabetes and other cardiovascular issues, though research is not conclusive. Better to stick with no more than 1 egg per day.
Proteins are needed for body to build muscles. Proteins is in larger amount in meat products, but not so much in plant based products. So, for vegetarians, the big source of Proteins comes from dairy based products as milk, yogurt, cheese. For vegans, even dairy products are off the menu, so they have even limited things to fulfill their protein requirement. It's also in lentils, beans, tofu etc for vegetarian and vegans out there. Our body needs massive amounts of protein to help build and maintain muscles. At a minimum, our body needs 0.36 g of protein per lb of weight or 0.8 g of protein per kg of body weight. Most people around 60 kg of weight need minimum of 50g of protein per day. Basically every year you need to consume about 20Kg of Protein, which is 1/3 of your body weight. This is huge amount of protein, and that's needed just to maintain muscles that you have !!
Link below states 0.8g to 1.2g of protein per kg of body weight. Very active people as body builders, marathon runners may go up to max of 2g of protein per kg of body weight but that's the upper limit. Too much protein may put stress on your kidneys as the by product from protein breakdown is Nitrogen which needs to be excreted out via kidneys.
Link => https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-truth-about-protein-how-to-get-enough-at-every-age
I'm listing below Protein products for a vegetarian diet:
Plants don't have too much protein. Each cup size serving may have max of 2g protein, which isn't going to suffice for your body, no matter how much plant you eat. Here are top vegetables rich in protein => https://www.self.com/story/high-protein-vegetables
Beans are another option for vegetarians, but lot of beans do cause gas and bloating (you might have heard that before from your elders).
Protein based supplements: You will have to supplement with Protein supplements. One of the most popular ones is whey protein. ON whey protein may be had for $10/lb (or $20/kg), which is a good price. It will cost you < $1/day in protein supplement.
Isolate usually has higher protein concentration, but online videos claim there's not much difference b/w isolate and concentrate. FIXME ...
Proteins:
A more detailed section on Proteins is in "Biology" section. Brief summary is again presented here.
Proteins are needed for body to build muscles. Proteins is in larger amount in meat products, but not so much in plant based products. So, for vegetarians, the big source of Proteins comes from dairy based products as milk, yogurt, cheese. For vegans, even dairy products are off the menu, so they have even limited things to fulfill their protein requirement. It's also in lentils, beans, tofu etc for vegetarian and vegans out there. Our body needs massive amounts of protein to help build and maintain muscles. At a minimum, our body needs 0.36 g of protein per lb of weight or 0.8 g of protein per kg of body weight. Most people around 60 kg of weight need minimum of 45g-50g of protein per day. Basically every year you need to consume about 20Kg of Protein, which is 1/3 of your body weight. This is huge amount of protein, and that's needed just to maintain what you have !!
Link below states 0.8g to 1.2g of protein per kg of body weight. Very active people as body builders, marathon runners may go up to max of 2g of protein per kg of body weight but that's the upper limit. Too much protein may put stress on your kidneys as the by product from protein breakdown is Nitrogen which needs to be excreted out via kidneys.
Link => https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-truth-about-protein-how-to-get-enough-at-every-age
I'm listing below Protein products for a vegetarian diet:
Plants don't have too much protein. Each cup size serving may have max of 2g protein, which isn't going to suffice for your body, no matter how much plant you eat. Here are top vegetables rich in protein => https://www.self.com/story/high-protein-vegetables
Beans are another option for vegetarians, but lot of beans do cause gas and bloating (you might have heard that before from your elders).
Protein based supplements: You will have to supplement with Protein supplements. One of the most popular ones is whey protein. ON whey protein may be had for $10/lb (or $20/kg), which is a good price. It will cost you < $1/day in protein supplement.
Isolate usually has higher protein concentration, but online videos claim there's not much difference b/w isolate and concentrate. FIXME ...
Meals:
- Breakfast: Get 2 bread slices (each 5g of protein for whole wheat bread with multi grain) with peanut butter on it (5 g of protein for 1 tablespoon). Drink a glass of milk (another 8g of protein in one glass) with Protein powder (1 scoop is around 10g of protein) in it. Do take 10 nuts which give you about 5g of protein. This will will give you around 30g-35g of protein in the morning meal.
- Lunch/Dinner: For a vegetarian diet, I don't count too much on protein intake in home made curries, roti
Calcium:
Calcium is needed for bone development, and 1.2g per day is the recommended amount. Basically you need to consume 1/2 KG of calcium every year, which is a lot of calcium.
Vitamins:
Vitamin B12: Very essential
Deals:
2025:
01/03/2025: Amazon Dymatize whey protein for $42 (5 lb)
This is cheaper than Costco, but brand is different. Also, it's concentrate and NOT isolate, which usually has slightly lower protein content. People like their Isolate version. This is cheaper than even Costco ON Whey protein, but this price is only for 1st S&S order.
2024:
12/26/2024: Costco ON whey protein for $49 (5.5 lb) in store => expires 01/20/2025
Costco has 5.5 lb (2.5Kg) ON whey protein isolate for $55 online and $49 in store. Prices are lowest for buying in store. It's 5.47 lb for Vanilla flavor, and 5.64 lb for Chocolate flavor, but both of them have same protein 24g per scoop. Vanilla has 24g protein per 31g, while Chocolate has 24g protein per 32g. Either way, price is < $20/kg which is as low as it can get. So load up.
UPDATE 03/20/2025: Amazon has the vanilla flavor for $93 (with 5% S&S discount) for 10 lb bag ($9.30/lb). This is still more expensive than costco, as costco is $49 for 5.5lbs ($9/lb). Only If you get 4 more items and get the S&S discount to 10% bringing total down to $87, it'll be able to beat costco price. Good thing is that there's an extra 5% on Chase cards starting Apr 1 (for their next quarter), so you can have the delivery set for mid Apr, so that you can get this additional 5% off.