Show Notes

Unlock the secrets to thriving on a plant-based diet as we traverse the landscape of micronutrients essential for vegans. We’ll explore the mighty kale’s calcium offerings and dive into the ocean of algae oil for that omega-3 goodness. Come along for an inspiring journey into the world of vegan nutrition, where knowledge meets flavor and every bite is a step toward a healthier you.

Referenced in episode
Wholier Multi-vitamin

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:09 Understanding Micronutrients
00:55 Importance of Iron in Diet
04:24 Vitamin B12: The Essential Nutrient
07:02 Vitamin D: The Sunlight Vitamin
09:29 Zinc: The Immunity Booster
09:52 Iodine: The Thyroid Function Regulator
10:54 Calcium: For Strong Bones
11:47 Omega 3s: The Good Fats
13:04 Multivitamin for Plant-Based People
14:11 Sneak Peek into Upcoming Recipes
16:23 Conclusion

Full Podcast Transcript

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Hi, welcome to the VeGAINS Fitness and Nutrition podcast. This is episode nine. I’m the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Hi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Hi. So this week we’re going to talk about micronutrients finally really tilted more towards because it’s Veganuary micronutrients that vegans in particular need. But a lot of these also apply to anybody. So first things first. The easiest way get all the micronutrients that you need, whether you’re plant based or not, is to just eat a wide variety of foods. Really. You tend to run into a nutrient deficiency when you eat kind of the same things over and over. And maybe you’re missing a food that you need to get some of the nutrients that you don’t normally get.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Eat the colors of the rainbow.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That’s what they say.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Not skittles, though. You don’t think skittles. Skittles won’t give you your vitamins?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: No, not any good ones. But they look kind of like vitamins. So I got to count for something, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: No.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That’s unfortunate. So the first one up is iron. Iron is actually the most common deficiency in the world as far as nutrients go across the whole population.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I’ve had this. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So iron helps your red blood cells move oxygen around your body. So basically, if you are low on iron, you start to have a lot of issues with fatigue. And I guess since you’ve had it, what are some of the other things you might run into?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. So you’re tired, you’re a little weak, your hair can start falling out, your skin gets dry, your nails get brittle. It’s not good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I think in general, low iron is referred to as anemia, and that can have all kinds of issues. I think you can also pass out, stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So obviously, for any of these, the best way to find out if you’re actually deficient is with a blood test. So if you don’t want to take a bunch of vitamins or supplements, you can just get a blood test. You can probably get it through your doctor. If you have an actual concern or.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Pro tip, you could just go donate blood and they’ll test you for your iron for free. And then sometimes you get a cool shirt.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That is a good pro tip. They actually tell you what your iron is or just if it’s low.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Just if it’s low. Sometimes they’ll tell you that’s all you really need. Is it 12, 14? Whatever they usually tell you that’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So as far as food goes, the top five vegan sources of iron are lentils, spinach, tofu, kidney beans, and swiss chard. And also a bunch of the other dark leafy greens. So that’s typically where you’re going to get that from in your diet. So if you just try to get leafy greens in a lot of your meals, you’ll get lentils probably pretty naturally on a vegan diet. And tofu and tofu and beans. I mean, these are all kind of things we’re rotating around as staples anyway. So as long as you’re getting a diverse mix of those, you probably won’t run into iron issues. But it’s one of those things your doctor will probably see on your regular blood work if you actually go to the doctor like you’re supposed to. So if it turns out you are actually low on iron and you go to your doctor, they’ll probably tell you to take an iron supplement. So there are a lot of these you can get. Some of them can cause issues with your stomach. So there’s a couple out there that market specifically, like gentle on your stomach.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes. I had this where I was taking one in the morning without food because I don’t listen or read directions on the bottle. Anyways, it was making me throw up and I was like, why am I throwing up in the mornings? And it was because of my iron supplement. So now I take it with food and usually at night.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, that’s a good idea. But you also want to make sure you take it with some vitamin C that helps the iron absorb. And then also for vegans, the plant based version of iron is referred to as non heme iron. That’s actually a little harder to absorb. So you really want to make sure you take it with that vitamin C, and you might even need a little bit higher dose. And that’s why we want to try to get extra through all of our dark leafy vegetables and things throughout. Also, fun fact, cooking in a cast iron skillet actually adds non heme iron to your food, so it can actually help supplement. I saw something said. In some cases, it can add up to 16% to the iron content of the food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I’ve never used one of those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I tried a couple of times. I’m not very good at it. My mom’s good at it. I can’t never manage to actually cook in one without making stuff stick all over it. So I don’t have the magic touch.

Protein Deficient Vegan: You have that problem with all pans, so it’s not just cast iron specific.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That’s a really good point, I guess.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Who can destroy an always pan? You can.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: It’s not so always anymore. All right, next up on our list is vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is the one that’s almost impossible to get from plant sources. There are actually some mushrooms and seaweed that have B12, but it’s really not a reliable source of it. So you may not know B12 actually comes from bacteria. So now with modern agriculture, the way they clean and wash our foods, the bacteria doesn’t really make it into the plant sources we eat anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: So we’re all screwed if there’s a zombie apocalypse on the B12 front.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That’s true. I wonder if you could grow the bacteria somehow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I don’t know. My thing is like, if I feel a zombie apocalypse is coming, I’m just going to go grab all the B12 from the stores.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, well, I think we’ll probably be pretty well stocked up on nutritional yeast anyway. And nutritional yeast is one of the good sources of B12.

Protein Deficient Vegan: That’s true and violife.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah. So some of the sources other than the mushrooms and seaweed you can’t really rely on are some of the enriched or fortified vegan options. So they usually do this with nutritional yeast, some cheeses, some of the plant based milks, and a lot of the cereals will all have B12 fortified. B12 is also water soluble, so you can’t really overdose on it. Mostly you’ll just pee out all the extra that you take. So if you do look at some B12 supplements, you’ll see a lot of the Times they’re like really high doses, like 12,000% of your daily value. And one, that’s because it doesn’t absorb super well in a supplement form. And two, since there’s such a low risk of overdose, they just give you a high dose to make sure you’re getting the daily allowance.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. They even do B12 shots.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Have you ever had one?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: I’ve never had one, but I know that’s really common.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I got one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah. Not only will a doctor give you a B12 shot, I think there are like just fun places to go. People get B12 shots.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Exactly. They gave it to me at work once during, like a health fair.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I don’t know if it actually did anything or if I was like, oh, this is supposed to make me feel better? And then it did. I’m not really sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Another fun fact for B12, the form of B12 that’s in the fortified foods and supplements is actually easier to absorb than the form of B12 that is in animal derived products. So that’s a win for the vegans. I guess that’s right. A lot of people who aren’t vegan also have a B12 deficiency. Even when I was pre vegan, I took a B12 supplement pretty regularly because it’s still something a lot of people have issues with. All right, so another one you might be missing out on, especially now that it’s wintertime is vitamin D. And where.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Do you get vitamin D from?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Normally you get vitamin D from the sun.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Whose son?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So sunlight is actually the best source of vitamin D. It hits our skin and turns into the vitamin in our body. Essentially it’s a simplified form of that. But in the winter we’re all arms are covered up and everything. When we go outside, even if there is sun, we’re pretty covered up.

Protein Deficient Vegan: That’s me in the summer, too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That’s a good point.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I get cold.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So most people should probably take a supplement for this. You might even need to take it year round. But you should probably definitely supplement this in the winter just to cover your bases. There are some food sources of it for vegans. You can get it from mushrooms. And again, like fortified things, like fortified milks, fortified tofu, those have vitamin D. Typically the supplement form is going to be vitamin D3. So if you’re looking for a supplement and you see D3, that is the one you need. Also, if you’re going to take a vitamin D3 supplement, you should take it with vitamin K2. And you can find supplements that are actually combined, D3 and K2. And that’s just because if you take vitamin D3, especially in high doses on its own, it can cause some calcium to get into your bloodstream and that can do bad things for your arteries and tissues. So if you take it with K2, that pulls the calcium more into the bones and other places where it belongs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Okay. D3 and K2. Does that sound like something from battleship?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, you sunk my battleship.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. So if you do D3 and K2, you’ll sink your own battleship or not. You won’t sink your battleship anyway. You should do that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Well, you’ll be happy because you won’t have a vitamin D deficiency. Oh, also, vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, so you’ll want to take it with some sort of fat. Eat food with oil or something when you take your vitamin D to help it absorb.

Protein Deficient Vegan: If you’re taking omegas, could you take it with that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, that helps me probably want a little more fat. A little more fat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: So shove it in an avocado.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, that’s a good plan. Well, actually they have vitamin D. Also, a lot of the time will come in drops. So you can do little drops into your avocado and make it taste really terrible because that stuff does not taste good in droplet form.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah, you do eat the drops, don’t you?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Sometimes I don’t like them very much. Okay. The next one that vegans can have trouble with is zinc. Zinc is important for your immune function, fighting infections. You can get this from beans and lentils and some of those same foods you get iron from. So make sure you eat your beans again.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Also, zinc has the coolest name. Be like a good kid’s name.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: It is a really cool name. Kind of sounds like a superhero name.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Also we have iodine. Iodine is important for thyroid function and it’s pretty hard to get as a vegan, you can get it from seaweed. The problem with seaweed, and it would be nori, seaweed is the one people typically use for this. But the problem is seaweed is not a very consistent dose of iodine. So you can actually get seaweed that has way more or way less than is kind of the average. And if you eat a lot of seaweed that happens to have way more, you can get too much iodine and it can start wreaking havoc, kind of on your thyroid function.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, just be careful because the thyroid function is pretty important.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah. Some other options are basically an iodine supplement or they also have iodized salt you can use in replacement for your normal salt.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, just be careful and make sure you actually need to take it before you take that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I don’t think this is a supplement where every vegan should take it or anything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: No, it’s not like B12.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Okay, next is calcium. A lot of people have concerns about calcium going onto a vegan diet, but we do actually have a lot of options for calcium. We have kale, broccoli, chickpeas, fortified milks. I usually get my basically daily allotment from like an almond milk or an oat milk or something like that. That’s just the easiest way. Most vegans, they’ve found across a couple of studies, don’t get enough calcium. So you want to at least make sure you’re paying attention and trying to get some calcium for the day. Maybe use something like Cronometer just to make sure for a week or two that you’re kind of hitting the daily allowance on average. You might need to supplement calcium if you’re really not able to get it into your diet in a way that works for you, but if you can, you want to try to avoid it. You don’t really want to get too much calcium in a supplement. So I really recommend just trying to get it through food. Next, omega 3s. We talked about these a little bit in the macronutrients episode, but a lot of people don’t get enough omega 3s. And this is not just a vegan issue. A lot of omnivores will supplement fish oil. We have algae oil we can use, which is the same forms, EPA and DHA of omega three s, which is just a fatty acid, a form of fat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Oh, and I’ve always heard omnivores complaining that their omega 3s give them fish burps, but I don’t have that issue with the algae ones. I’ve never taken the fish ones, though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, so algae oil nordic naturals has a really nice algae oil, and you can get other vegan omega three supplements. They come in a form called ALA that kind of converts to EPA and DHA, but it doesn’t convert very well. But if you use the nordic naturals algae oil or really any other algae oil, it will have directly the EPA and DHA forms that are better for supplementation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Isn’t this one of the ones that’s tied to longevity too? Like they’ve had studies that say you should be taking these?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah. Omega 3 is good because it fixes what we talked about before, kind of the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio. You want to have a lot more omega 3s than you’re probably already getting to help prevent heart disease and improve your longevity, like you said and things along that line. So that’s really all the micronutrients. So if you want an easy way to kind of check all these boxes, there is a multivitamin for plant based people that I like to use, not associated with them or anything. I just happen to like it. And it’s not really that expensive. It’s about the same price as any other multivitamin. It’s called Wholier. Basically, they just have six or seven ingredients, and they’re just the ones that plant based people have issues getting. And you can get refills in a little pouch and keep using the same glass bottle over and over. And they come in the mail super easy once a month.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And they’re pretty.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: They’re pretty. Yeah, they kind of are see through.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And you can see all the little green beads.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Look at all the beads and components inside the vitamins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: They’re so cute.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: They’re really cool. So anyway, that’s the one I use. Just because it’s pretty limited. I don’t get a whole bunch of vitamins I don’t need.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I was using home, but I think I’m going to switch to holier just because I have a lot of bottles of things. I don’t want to have a lot of bottles of things.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: So we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. It’s not a special affiliate link or anything. We don’t get anything for it. It’s just a.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Because they don’t know who we are.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Cool. All right, so now we have some recipes coming up this week. They’re not out yet, but we wanted to give a little sneak peek of them. So we had a high protein granola bar that we made.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes. With TVP. Had some craisins and chocolate chips in it, too. I thought it turned out pretty good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it was really tasty. It was like a little, kind of like a little protein bar, but granola style I liked a lot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Easy to make, too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah. We also had a Caesar salad that was super good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes. We figured out how to make Caesar dressing out of silken tofu, and I thought it was pretty damn close.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I thought so, too.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And we made these, like, little garlicky, seasoned, like TVP croutons, kind of.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Oh, yeah, those are for the salad.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I thought they were really good, and they added some protein and kind of took the place of what you would normally put croutons on a Caesar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, they had a good texture. Helped. We also made a pretty cool lasagna that tasted really good. What was in that one?

Protein Deficient Vegan: So we made ricotta out of tofu, and then I was lazy and so I just dumped pasta sauce in there. And I accidentally used two different types of pasta sauce because I ran out of one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, accidentally. But now I think it might be like a trademark thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it was pretty good. It was pretty good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: It was like, what, the normal pasta sauce? And then we finished it with the bolognase.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. Like a vegan bolognase. I don’t know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: That’s such a fancy word.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I’ve never belonged. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: And then the last one we had was a nutter butter pie cheesecake.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Cheesecake. Yeah. It’s a lot like the peanut butter cheesecake, but we also threw in some nutter butters that we happen to have left over.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Yeah, I think it gave it a little more of a dense texture. It was really.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah, it was nice. And peanut buttery.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Very peanut buttery. Yeah, it was very good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: And I had a potluck at work this week, and I made the broccoli salad and I made the chocolate cheesecake just on a cookie crust, not a TVP crust. And people liked it. Or at least they lied to me and told me they liked it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: You didn’t bring much back home, so I think that’s pretty good indication that they liked it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Or they like me enough to pretend to eat the food they don’t like. And either way, I’m happy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: I mean, it’s pretty much the same, right? All right, so that’s it for this week. Next week, we’re going to have another kind of veganuary focused episode. We’re going to be talking about debunking some of the vegan myths and maybe easing your mind on some of the hesitations you might have about going vegan or trying a plant based diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I’m excited.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Me too. That’ll be really cool because there’s a lot of stuff out there that. There’s a little bit of truth in everything, but there’s a lot of stuff out there that. One is really not as big of a deal as you think it is when you actually switch to be vegan, and two is just really not relevant at all. Actually, there are a lot of those.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yes. I had a very angry lady on Instagram tell me that my skin was terrible and that my gut was leaking or something because I eat tofu. Don’t know what that was based on, but it was weird.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: It’s pretty impressive to make a medical diagnosis like that through a comment.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Pretty impressive.

Protein Deficient Vegan: I didn’t even have any pictures on Instagram for her to comment on my skin. It was odd.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: You didn’t have pictures of your leaky gut?

Protein Deficient Vegan: No. I don’t know how she knows I have a leaky gut.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Wow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: Yeah. I don’t know what that is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Okay. Well, I hope you learned some stuff about micronutrients, and we’re looking forward to talking to you next week about the vegan myth. So hope everybody has a good week. Do you want to say bye?

Protein Deficient Vegan: Bye?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: Bye, everybody.

Vegan that likes to pick up heavy things and put them down again.
USAW Level 1 Coach
NASM CPT

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