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Reply to: Going vegetarian after an event – would you? Posted October 10, 2021
Reply to: Going vegetarian after an event – would you? Posted October 10, 2021

“Are the sugar sources about the same re nutrition eg beet sugar versus cane sugar ?” Simple answer: For the most part, probably. Complex answer: The devil, as always, is in the details, and we’re a bit hazy on the details. Assuming it’s a sugar your body can handle — so not something like cellulose or, if you’re like me, lactose — in the end it’s all Glucose as far as your body is concerned. Simpler sugars take less time and energy to convert, complex sugars have to be broken down in stages and thus have a slightly higher TEF (Thermal Effect of Food, digestion takes energy). The wildcard here is Fructose, a sugar common in, as the name would suggest, fruit. Fructose, unlike other sugars, is metabolized (turned into Glucose) in the liver, rather than the digestive tract. Some have pointed to this, and the fact that in The US we subsidize HFC (High Fructose Corn syrup) production and use it in a ton of processed foods, as a potential smoking gun for a variety of possible issues. Personally, I remain unconvinced, mostly because there’s a depressingly long and deep history of particular Micronutrients, Macronutrients, and/or food sources being demonized with said demonization typically being dead wrong or even grossly counterproductive. Doesn’t mean HFCs aren’t a problem, I just tend to doubt there are any easy answers or solutions where something as complex as nutrition is concerned. “Is it “sugar” causing the large US diabetic situation or how the sugar is refined ? India, with it’s huge population is a large consumer of sugar. Does India have a diabetic problem like the US ?” Diabetes is one of those complex issues people like to throw simple answers at. Certainly sugar is at the heart of the problem, as diabetes is defined by the body not properly regulating blood glucose (sugar) levels. Why? Too much sugar in our collective diet? Too much of a ‘wrong’ type of sugar in our collective diet? Something else? A lot a something elses? Keep in mind that Diabetes is not a binary condition. If you X-ray a femur it’s either broken or it’s not, it’s a binary condition. With Diabetes things are more nebulous. The diagnostic criteria, and thus who is defined as ‘Diabetic’, has been changed several times over the years, most notably in 1998. In The US the way surveys are done to determine what percentage of the population is diabetic has been changed markedly over the years, generally in ways that increased positive responses. The diagnosis has expanded to cover four types of diabetes, rather than two, with a fifth, and somewhat nebulous, ‘prediabetic’ condition being added. What constitutes ‘diabetes’ has been a lot more of a moving target than the medical community or press seems to want to acknowledge. Not to say that diabetes isn’t an issue, it absolutely is, or that non-binary conditions aren’t common, they are, but comparisons to prior years and talk of ‘explosions’ in diagnosis tends to ignore just how much of a by-definition issue this quickly becomes. Throw in an aging population in many countries — age is a primary risk factor — and there’s a lot of variables to contend with when trying to look for cause-and-effect relationships. “Is honey considered an animal protein source ?” No, honey has extremely little protein in it (0.3g protein/100g). Honey is primarily sugar, mostly Fructose and Glucose (same as Sucrose, AKA table sugar, albeit in honey not bonded as a disaccharide ). “Well, I’m overwhelmed with it all. Have been told that the type of cooking oil can determine the overall value of the animal value” We’re just slowly (depressingly slowly) coming out of a very long period where fats (oils are a kind of fat), as a macronutrient, have been demonized endlessly. The two main reasons for this are that fats are very energy dense — fats have 9cal/g, whereas both carbs and protein are 4cal/g — and a lot of it comes down to heart disease (keeping in mind that heart disease, in the end, is what kills the most people), blood lipoprotein profiles, and exogenous (from outside the body) fats. The energy density issue is very real, fats contain over twice as many calories as either of the other two primary macronutrients. In the end, weight (whether you’re looking to gain, lose, or maintain) is an issue of thermodynamics — energy in minus energy out. Taking a step back: A Calorie is simply a measure of energy, like a Watt or Erg. A Calorie is defined by the amount of energy it takes to raise one gram of water one degree centigrade. Originally, and for some purposes even now, the amount of Calories in a given type or amount of food was determined by literally burning said food and seeing how much it raised the temp of a set amount of water. In any event, one calorie is a really small amount of energy, so for the most part when you’re talking nutrition what we really mean is a kilo-Calorie, or 1,000 calories. This is sometimes specified as ‘kcal’ or, by convention, Capital-C ‘Cal’. So calories-in are what you eat and drink. Calories-out is your TDEE — Total Daily Energy Expenditure. TDEE is made up of ~70% BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate, the energy it takes to keep you alive), ~15% NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, your general daily activity level), ~10% TEF (Thermal Effect of Food, what it takes to digest what you eat), ~5% EAT (Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, working out, running, whatever). The sad truth is that you can have very minimal effect on calories out. All those Peloton adverts about torching off the calories are BS of the highest order. There are a ton of benefits to exercise, but, for a variety of reasons, changing your basic caloric output to any meaningful degree isn’t one of them. So you can’t change the caloric-out side of the equation much, but you have total control over the caloric-in side. The current obsession with an “Unknown virus of unspecified origin” aside, for many years the medical community has been primarily worried about obesity, because it is a comorbidity for everything under the sun, and heart disease, because ultimately that’s probably what’s gonna kill you. Fats were seen as the devil incarnate where both problems were concerned. First, tell people fats are bad, they won’t eat as much of them and, given they’re over twice as calorically dense as carbs or protein, they’ll eat fewer calories. Yeah, no, nice logic but not the way things work in the real world. Fats got demonized, for sure, but those calories got replaced, mostly with carbs (protein tends to be expensive), and, as mentioned previously, the body needs some fats from your diet or bad things start happening. From the heart disease side of things it was a matter of lipoprotein profile, a numbers game. An overall reduction in exogenous fat intake, especially ‘bad’ fats (saturated- and, worse, trans-fats) would improve the lipoprotein profile, and thus overall heart health. Nice theory, the evidence for it is, however, a bit mixed. Endogenous lipoprotein production seems to be, overall, far more relevant, and there’s a lot of evidence for stress (both physiologic and psychologic, it not being clear there’s a difference as far as the body is concerned) playing a bigger role in vascular plaque formation and the resulting heart health issues. A lot of really smart people disagree here, and still see exogenous fats to be a huge issue, so do your own reading, take an appropriate-sized grain of salt, and come to your own conclusions. To be safe, stick to unsaturated fats (generally fats that are liquid at room temperature), minimize saturated fats (generally fats that are solid at room temperature) and avoid Trans Fats (not used much anymore). “I cannot go to a Chinese fast-food take-out restaurant and understand if a basic “Budda Delight” (vegetarian only) lunch is OK ref the neutrients.” For the average person, it’s not a huge issue. Chances are their diet is far from optimal, more than likely it’s way high in carbs, low in protein, with fats going either way depending, but in general they’re getting enough of a mix of plant and animal sourced foods that it’s not a big deal. For someone only eating plant-source (or, for that matter, only eating animal-source, though it’s a bit easier there) foods it’s a lot more complicated. We’re omnivorous by design, going against that requires some care to maintain long-term health. If it’s just a meal now and then, it doesn’t matter, but my whole emphasis with the original post is that to eat an all- or mostly plant-sourced diet long-term and maintain your health requires research and learning what combinations of plant-source proteins you need to ingest to meet your body’s macronutrient needs. You can do a search for ‘vegetarian complete protein combinations‘, or variations on that theme, and you’ll find tons of lists, images, and such. Look through such lists, find combinations you like (and/or combinations you could reasonably get/have in a SHTF situation), include those in your diet as your primary protein source, and you’re better prepared for a vegetarian diet in a bad (or good) situation. “Was told white rice not healthy. Was also told whole grain breads healthier than mixed grain ? What am I missing ?!” Not unhealthy per se, as usual it’s a bit more complicated. Most seeds and grains have a hull or husk around them. Either at harvest or through processing and storage, that hull or husk is usually removed. Those husks are usually indigestible fiber, very long chain tightly bonded sugars that our bodies can’t break down, they literally come out looking pretty much the same way they went in. Even though this indigestible fiber serves little direct nutritional purpose, it turns out that it’s very important to the proper function of our digestive tract, acting as water storage, ‘bulk’ for maintaining digestive motility (everything moving through the system at the proper pace), regulating digestive processes, helping to regulate our gut biome (something we’re increasingly recognizing as being critical to our physical and emotional health), and helping the body eliminate some unwanted metabolites. Our dietary fiber comes almost entirely from plant-source foods, there’s very little in meat, but, for a variety of reasons, a lot of common processing results in less and less fiber in the food we eat. For this reason prioritizing ‘whole’ foods were possible is a Good Thing™ for most of us. ‘Whole’ grain products generally means the grains used included their husks and thus could be seen as ‘more healthy’ than, say, a bread made from bleached white flour. In general the less processing the more fiber, and for many people this is important. For a vegetarian, though, at least one that has plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables in their diet, and not depending mostly on processed foods, vegetarian or no, it’s not a super high priority and shouldn’t ever be treated as the only consideration. You want plenty of fiber in your diet, yes, but that doesn’t make white rice, with its relative lack of fiber, ‘bad’. At least not as long as said rice is Basmati or Jasmine, anything else is, of course, an abomination. A lot of things like “white rice is bad for you” come from oversimplifications that can be understandable in some circumstances, but end up going well beyond their relevant points and taking on a life of their own. In some parts of the world, where rice is a dominant component of the daily diet, is its relative lack of fiber in the form most commonly consumed problematic? Well, yeah. Is having the occasional bowl of rice curry with some veggies as part of a varied diet bad? Not so much. I hope that helps, sorry that brevity is just not my forte.

Reply to: Going vegetarian after an event – would you? Posted October 9, 2021

Some hopefully relevant Human nutrition basics (please be aware that I’ve simplified things a tad, but hopefully hit the important parts): Food can be broken down into two gross components: Micronutrients and Macronutrients. Micronutrients are vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. The bad news is that when it comes to Micronutrients what you need and how much is mostly guesswork, oftentimes amounting to someone near-literally pulling a number out of their rectum. That, and there are probably trace elements we need but don’t even really know about, because… Well, that leads us to the good news. The good news is that for the most part Micronutrients take care of themselves as long as you eat a decent diet with a bit of diversity and have a source of clean groundwater (you’d be amazed at how many of the trace elements you need are in the water) to drink. In other words, for the most part, absent some specific health issues and/or disorders, there’s no reason to worry about micronutrients and supplementation is generally neither called for nor results in any measurable benefit. Macronutrients are Protein (4cal/g), Fats (9cal/g), and Carbohydrates (4cal/g). Alcohol (7cal/g) is sometimes listed, but that gets complicated and isn’t relevant here, so I’ll be skipping it. Carbohydrate is basically a fancy word for sugar. There are Monosaccharides (Fructose, for instance), Disaccharides (Sucrose, for instance), and Polysaccharides (what people tend to think of when they hear ‘carbs’). An odd side-chain of this family are what we call fiber — soluble and insoluble. Fiber is basically long-chain sugars so tightly bonded that the human digestive system can’t break them down. Still, they serve a useful function in our digestive tract, they’re just not ‘food’ per se, unless you’re a rabbit, cow, or what have you. As far as your body is concerned, all sugar is ultimately Glucose (or Glycogen, really, Glucose+Water molecule). Most sugars are converted in your digestive tract, Fructose is the lone exception and is processed through your liver. Glycogen is one of the two energy substrates your body uses (the other being fats) as part of ATP regeneration (Krebs Cycle) in Mitochondria. At any given time a healthy individual stores about 2,000Kcal of Glycogen, mostly in muscles and the liver. There are no essential (in this context ‘essential’ means you get it in your diet or die) Carbohydrates. Your body can survive without Carbs via a backup pathway called Ketosis (albeit not without some sever downsides and one potential upside) or your body can make Glycogen via a process called Gluconeogenesis. Your body can and will make sugar from amino acids it gets by breaking down protein, up to and including your own muscle protein (Catabolism). Fats are, well, lipids, an energy-dense storage mechanism that your body uses for a variety of functions. There are two fats that are essential, you must get from your diet as your body requires them but cannot manufacture them — Linoleic acid and Alpha-Linolenic acid (there’s some debate on this, but it gets overly esoteric and isn’t relevant here). Your body uses fats as a storage mechanism, energy source (Krebs Cycle again, as a gross generalization your body prefers glycogen for short term anaerobic activity, fats for longer term aerobic activity, more often it’s using a little of both)), and as a basis for a variety of biosynthetic pathways. Sex hormones, for instance, start as Cholesterol. Cholesterol -> Progestins (Progesterone) -> Androgens (Testosterone, DiHydroTestosterone) -> Estrogens (17ß-Estradiol, Estrone). Proteins are, basically, long chains of amino acids. Your body does not use the protein you eat, instead all proteins are broken down to their constituent amino acids. There are a very large number of amino acids, but life as we know it is made up of combinations of 22 of them (well, 21 for humans, we don’t use one that some other creatures do). Of those 22, an adult human (note, different for non-humans and human children) cannot synthesize 9, these are referred to as essential amino acids — you get them in your diet or you’re gonna have a bad time. There are a further 6 that are referred to as conditionally essential, but that’s mostly relevant to children or persons with certain disorders they probably already know about. Any protein source that contains all 9 essential amino acids in sufficient quantity is referred to as ‘complete’. …And here is where we get to the whole SHTF going vegan thing as potentially problematic. Any animal protein source — dairy, egg, fish, meat, whatever — is going to be complete for humans. Almost all plant source protein will *not* be complete for humans — the common exceptions are Soy and Quinoa. Humans are not herbivores, in point of fact we’re not very good at digesting plants. Animal-source proteins, for instance, in general have a ~80% bio-availability. Plant-source proteins have a ~60% bio-availability. Under normal circumstances the average person needs roughly 2,000Kcal/day, split roughly between ~60g Fat/day and 2g/Kg *complete* Protein/day (both mins, obviously, IIFYM, and all that). While it’s quite possible to do that on a plant-only or plant-mostly diet, it’s bloody damn hard to do it consistently over a long period of time and, I’ve never actually had a client do it right despite my efforts and despite having had a depressing number of vegetarian clients. Oversimplifying a tad, animals are mostly protein and water, plants are mostly sugars and water. A plant-only/mostly diet tends to be rich in carbs and low in complete (for humans) proteins — fats can go either way, depending on what you like. To maintain an adequate complete (for humans) protein intake, something that is critical to maintaining muscle mass, healing though injury or illness, and overall health, requires going above the general 0.8g/lb/day recommendation (remember, bio-availability is lower) and being careful with your mixing and matching. Rice does not have a complete protein profile. Beans do not have a complete protein profile. Rice and beans together? Bingo! It’s not all that complicated or difficult, but doing well on a plant-only/mostly diet requires having a good grasp of the fundamentals of human nutrition and, especially if you’re planning for post-event, you have to do the research beforehand to come up with combinations that give you an adequate complete protein intake while keeping the carbs and fats reasonable. So, if going vegetarian post-event is your plan, it would be exceedingly wise to do a whole lot of research and planning now to make sure you have an adequate diet for your long-term health.

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Reply to: Going vegetarian after an event – would you? Posted October 10, 2021
Reply to: Going vegetarian after an event – would you? Posted October 10, 2021

“Are the sugar sources about the same re nutrition eg beet sugar versus cane sugar ?” Simple answer: For the most part, probably. Complex answer: The devil, as always, is in the details, and we’re a bit hazy on the details. Assuming it’s a sugar your body can handle — so not something like cellulose or, if you’re like me, lactose — in the end it’s all Glucose as far as your body is concerned. Simpler sugars take less time and energy to convert, complex sugars have to be broken down in stages and thus have a slightly higher TEF (Thermal Effect of Food, digestion takes energy). The wildcard here is Fructose, a sugar common in, as the name would suggest, fruit. Fructose, unlike other sugars, is metabolized (turned into Glucose) in the liver, rather than the digestive tract. Some have pointed to this, and the fact that in The US we subsidize HFC (High Fructose Corn syrup) production and use it in a ton of processed foods, as a potential smoking gun for a variety of possible issues. Personally, I remain unconvinced, mostly because there’s a depressingly long and deep history of particular Micronutrients, Macronutrients, and/or food sources being demonized with said demonization typically being dead wrong or even grossly counterproductive. Doesn’t mean HFCs aren’t a problem, I just tend to doubt there are any easy answers or solutions where something as complex as nutrition is concerned. “Is it “sugar” causing the large US diabetic situation or how the sugar is refined ? India, with it’s huge population is a large consumer of sugar. Does India have a diabetic problem like the US ?” Diabetes is one of those complex issues people like to throw simple answers at. Certainly sugar is at the heart of the problem, as diabetes is defined by the body not properly regulating blood glucose (sugar) levels. Why? Too much sugar in our collective diet? Too much of a ‘wrong’ type of sugar in our collective diet? Something else? A lot a something elses? Keep in mind that Diabetes is not a binary condition. If you X-ray a femur it’s either broken or it’s not, it’s a binary condition. With Diabetes things are more nebulous. The diagnostic criteria, and thus who is defined as ‘Diabetic’, has been changed several times over the years, most notably in 1998. In The US the way surveys are done to determine what percentage of the population is diabetic has been changed markedly over the years, generally in ways that increased positive responses. The diagnosis has expanded to cover four types of diabetes, rather than two, with a fifth, and somewhat nebulous, ‘prediabetic’ condition being added. What constitutes ‘diabetes’ has been a lot more of a moving target than the medical community or press seems to want to acknowledge. Not to say that diabetes isn’t an issue, it absolutely is, or that non-binary conditions aren’t common, they are, but comparisons to prior years and talk of ‘explosions’ in diagnosis tends to ignore just how much of a by-definition issue this quickly becomes. Throw in an aging population in many countries — age is a primary risk factor — and there’s a lot of variables to contend with when trying to look for cause-and-effect relationships. “Is honey considered an animal protein source ?” No, honey has extremely little protein in it (0.3g protein/100g). Honey is primarily sugar, mostly Fructose and Glucose (same as Sucrose, AKA table sugar, albeit in honey not bonded as a disaccharide ). “Well, I’m overwhelmed with it all. Have been told that the type of cooking oil can determine the overall value of the animal value” We’re just slowly (depressingly slowly) coming out of a very long period where fats (oils are a kind of fat), as a macronutrient, have been demonized endlessly. The two main reasons for this are that fats are very energy dense — fats have 9cal/g, whereas both carbs and protein are 4cal/g — and a lot of it comes down to heart disease (keeping in mind that heart disease, in the end, is what kills the most people), blood lipoprotein profiles, and exogenous (from outside the body) fats. The energy density issue is very real, fats contain over twice as many calories as either of the other two primary macronutrients. In the end, weight (whether you’re looking to gain, lose, or maintain) is an issue of thermodynamics — energy in minus energy out. Taking a step back: A Calorie is simply a measure of energy, like a Watt or Erg. A Calorie is defined by the amount of energy it takes to raise one gram of water one degree centigrade. Originally, and for some purposes even now, the amount of Calories in a given type or amount of food was determined by literally burning said food and seeing how much it raised the temp of a set amount of water. In any event, one calorie is a really small amount of energy, so for the most part when you’re talking nutrition what we really mean is a kilo-Calorie, or 1,000 calories. This is sometimes specified as ‘kcal’ or, by convention, Capital-C ‘Cal’. So calories-in are what you eat and drink. Calories-out is your TDEE — Total Daily Energy Expenditure. TDEE is made up of ~70% BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate, the energy it takes to keep you alive), ~15% NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, your general daily activity level), ~10% TEF (Thermal Effect of Food, what it takes to digest what you eat), ~5% EAT (Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, working out, running, whatever). The sad truth is that you can have very minimal effect on calories out. All those Peloton adverts about torching off the calories are BS of the highest order. There are a ton of benefits to exercise, but, for a variety of reasons, changing your basic caloric output to any meaningful degree isn’t one of them. So you can’t change the caloric-out side of the equation much, but you have total control over the caloric-in side. The current obsession with an “Unknown virus of unspecified origin” aside, for many years the medical community has been primarily worried about obesity, because it is a comorbidity for everything under the sun, and heart disease, because ultimately that’s probably what’s gonna kill you. Fats were seen as the devil incarnate where both problems were concerned. First, tell people fats are bad, they won’t eat as much of them and, given they’re over twice as calorically dense as carbs or protein, they’ll eat fewer calories. Yeah, no, nice logic but not the way things work in the real world. Fats got demonized, for sure, but those calories got replaced, mostly with carbs (protein tends to be expensive), and, as mentioned previously, the body needs some fats from your diet or bad things start happening. From the heart disease side of things it was a matter of lipoprotein profile, a numbers game. An overall reduction in exogenous fat intake, especially ‘bad’ fats (saturated- and, worse, trans-fats) would improve the lipoprotein profile, and thus overall heart health. Nice theory, the evidence for it is, however, a bit mixed. Endogenous lipoprotein production seems to be, overall, far more relevant, and there’s a lot of evidence for stress (both physiologic and psychologic, it not being clear there’s a difference as far as the body is concerned) playing a bigger role in vascular plaque formation and the resulting heart health issues. A lot of really smart people disagree here, and still see exogenous fats to be a huge issue, so do your own reading, take an appropriate-sized grain of salt, and come to your own conclusions. To be safe, stick to unsaturated fats (generally fats that are liquid at room temperature), minimize saturated fats (generally fats that are solid at room temperature) and avoid Trans Fats (not used much anymore). “I cannot go to a Chinese fast-food take-out restaurant and understand if a basic “Budda Delight” (vegetarian only) lunch is OK ref the neutrients.” For the average person, it’s not a huge issue. Chances are their diet is far from optimal, more than likely it’s way high in carbs, low in protein, with fats going either way depending, but in general they’re getting enough of a mix of plant and animal sourced foods that it’s not a big deal. For someone only eating plant-source (or, for that matter, only eating animal-source, though it’s a bit easier there) foods it’s a lot more complicated. We’re omnivorous by design, going against that requires some care to maintain long-term health. If it’s just a meal now and then, it doesn’t matter, but my whole emphasis with the original post is that to eat an all- or mostly plant-sourced diet long-term and maintain your health requires research and learning what combinations of plant-source proteins you need to ingest to meet your body’s macronutrient needs. You can do a search for ‘vegetarian complete protein combinations‘, or variations on that theme, and you’ll find tons of lists, images, and such. Look through such lists, find combinations you like (and/or combinations you could reasonably get/have in a SHTF situation), include those in your diet as your primary protein source, and you’re better prepared for a vegetarian diet in a bad (or good) situation. “Was told white rice not healthy. Was also told whole grain breads healthier than mixed grain ? What am I missing ?!” Not unhealthy per se, as usual it’s a bit more complicated. Most seeds and grains have a hull or husk around them. Either at harvest or through processing and storage, that hull or husk is usually removed. Those husks are usually indigestible fiber, very long chain tightly bonded sugars that our bodies can’t break down, they literally come out looking pretty much the same way they went in. Even though this indigestible fiber serves little direct nutritional purpose, it turns out that it’s very important to the proper function of our digestive tract, acting as water storage, ‘bulk’ for maintaining digestive motility (everything moving through the system at the proper pace), regulating digestive processes, helping to regulate our gut biome (something we’re increasingly recognizing as being critical to our physical and emotional health), and helping the body eliminate some unwanted metabolites. Our dietary fiber comes almost entirely from plant-source foods, there’s very little in meat, but, for a variety of reasons, a lot of common processing results in less and less fiber in the food we eat. For this reason prioritizing ‘whole’ foods were possible is a Good Thing™ for most of us. ‘Whole’ grain products generally means the grains used included their husks and thus could be seen as ‘more healthy’ than, say, a bread made from bleached white flour. In general the less processing the more fiber, and for many people this is important. For a vegetarian, though, at least one that has plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables in their diet, and not depending mostly on processed foods, vegetarian or no, it’s not a super high priority and shouldn’t ever be treated as the only consideration. You want plenty of fiber in your diet, yes, but that doesn’t make white rice, with its relative lack of fiber, ‘bad’. At least not as long as said rice is Basmati or Jasmine, anything else is, of course, an abomination. A lot of things like “white rice is bad for you” come from oversimplifications that can be understandable in some circumstances, but end up going well beyond their relevant points and taking on a life of their own. In some parts of the world, where rice is a dominant component of the daily diet, is its relative lack of fiber in the form most commonly consumed problematic? Well, yeah. Is having the occasional bowl of rice curry with some veggies as part of a varied diet bad? Not so much. I hope that helps, sorry that brevity is just not my forte.

Reply to: Going vegetarian after an event – would you? Posted October 9, 2021

Some hopefully relevant Human nutrition basics (please be aware that I’ve simplified things a tad, but hopefully hit the important parts): Food can be broken down into two gross components: Micronutrients and Macronutrients. Micronutrients are vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. The bad news is that when it comes to Micronutrients what you need and how much is mostly guesswork, oftentimes amounting to someone near-literally pulling a number out of their rectum. That, and there are probably trace elements we need but don’t even really know about, because… Well, that leads us to the good news. The good news is that for the most part Micronutrients take care of themselves as long as you eat a decent diet with a bit of diversity and have a source of clean groundwater (you’d be amazed at how many of the trace elements you need are in the water) to drink. In other words, for the most part, absent some specific health issues and/or disorders, there’s no reason to worry about micronutrients and supplementation is generally neither called for nor results in any measurable benefit. Macronutrients are Protein (4cal/g), Fats (9cal/g), and Carbohydrates (4cal/g). Alcohol (7cal/g) is sometimes listed, but that gets complicated and isn’t relevant here, so I’ll be skipping it. Carbohydrate is basically a fancy word for sugar. There are Monosaccharides (Fructose, for instance), Disaccharides (Sucrose, for instance), and Polysaccharides (what people tend to think of when they hear ‘carbs’). An odd side-chain of this family are what we call fiber — soluble and insoluble. Fiber is basically long-chain sugars so tightly bonded that the human digestive system can’t break them down. Still, they serve a useful function in our digestive tract, they’re just not ‘food’ per se, unless you’re a rabbit, cow, or what have you. As far as your body is concerned, all sugar is ultimately Glucose (or Glycogen, really, Glucose+Water molecule). Most sugars are converted in your digestive tract, Fructose is the lone exception and is processed through your liver. Glycogen is one of the two energy substrates your body uses (the other being fats) as part of ATP regeneration (Krebs Cycle) in Mitochondria. At any given time a healthy individual stores about 2,000Kcal of Glycogen, mostly in muscles and the liver. There are no essential (in this context ‘essential’ means you get it in your diet or die) Carbohydrates. Your body can survive without Carbs via a backup pathway called Ketosis (albeit not without some sever downsides and one potential upside) or your body can make Glycogen via a process called Gluconeogenesis. Your body can and will make sugar from amino acids it gets by breaking down protein, up to and including your own muscle protein (Catabolism). Fats are, well, lipids, an energy-dense storage mechanism that your body uses for a variety of functions. There are two fats that are essential, you must get from your diet as your body requires them but cannot manufacture them — Linoleic acid and Alpha-Linolenic acid (there’s some debate on this, but it gets overly esoteric and isn’t relevant here). Your body uses fats as a storage mechanism, energy source (Krebs Cycle again, as a gross generalization your body prefers glycogen for short term anaerobic activity, fats for longer term aerobic activity, more often it’s using a little of both)), and as a basis for a variety of biosynthetic pathways. Sex hormones, for instance, start as Cholesterol. Cholesterol -> Progestins (Progesterone) -> Androgens (Testosterone, DiHydroTestosterone) -> Estrogens (17ß-Estradiol, Estrone). Proteins are, basically, long chains of amino acids. Your body does not use the protein you eat, instead all proteins are broken down to their constituent amino acids. There are a very large number of amino acids, but life as we know it is made up of combinations of 22 of them (well, 21 for humans, we don’t use one that some other creatures do). Of those 22, an adult human (note, different for non-humans and human children) cannot synthesize 9, these are referred to as essential amino acids — you get them in your diet or you’re gonna have a bad time. There are a further 6 that are referred to as conditionally essential, but that’s mostly relevant to children or persons with certain disorders they probably already know about. Any protein source that contains all 9 essential amino acids in sufficient quantity is referred to as ‘complete’. …And here is where we get to the whole SHTF going vegan thing as potentially problematic. Any animal protein source — dairy, egg, fish, meat, whatever — is going to be complete for humans. Almost all plant source protein will *not* be complete for humans — the common exceptions are Soy and Quinoa. Humans are not herbivores, in point of fact we’re not very good at digesting plants. Animal-source proteins, for instance, in general have a ~80% bio-availability. Plant-source proteins have a ~60% bio-availability. Under normal circumstances the average person needs roughly 2,000Kcal/day, split roughly between ~60g Fat/day and 2g/Kg *complete* Protein/day (both mins, obviously, IIFYM, and all that). While it’s quite possible to do that on a plant-only or plant-mostly diet, it’s bloody damn hard to do it consistently over a long period of time and, I’ve never actually had a client do it right despite my efforts and despite having had a depressing number of vegetarian clients. Oversimplifying a tad, animals are mostly protein and water, plants are mostly sugars and water. A plant-only/mostly diet tends to be rich in carbs and low in complete (for humans) proteins — fats can go either way, depending on what you like. To maintain an adequate complete (for humans) protein intake, something that is critical to maintaining muscle mass, healing though injury or illness, and overall health, requires going above the general 0.8g/lb/day recommendation (remember, bio-availability is lower) and being careful with your mixing and matching. Rice does not have a complete protein profile. Beans do not have a complete protein profile. Rice and beans together? Bingo! It’s not all that complicated or difficult, but doing well on a plant-only/mostly diet requires having a good grasp of the fundamentals of human nutrition and, especially if you’re planning for post-event, you have to do the research beforehand to come up with combinations that give you an adequate complete protein intake while keeping the carbs and fats reasonable. So, if going vegetarian post-event is your plan, it would be exceedingly wise to do a whole lot of research and planning now to make sure you have an adequate diet for your long-term health.