Vegan Nutrition with Marty Davey

Marty Davey is a Registered Dietitian and has a Masters degree in Food and Nutrition from Marywood University. She became a vegetarian in 1980 when she discovered that the chemicals in American meat made them unsellable to Europeans. She and her husband have raised their son as a vegan. She teaches nutrition and has a private practice specializing in assisting clients transitioning to a plant-based regime step by step. Her website is martydavey.com

Does front loading your carbs, say 65% for your breakfast meal, work for scaling down your intake for the remainder of your day? .

Article continues below

When living a plant-based lifestyle, the terms carb-load, front load or back load really don't work because when you are eating plant-based you are always loading carbs. These terms work for meat eaters because there are no carbs in animal flesh. Therefore, they can eat food sources missing an entire macronutrient. [Dairy products have carbs, protein and fats.] For vegans, every source of food we eat has carbs, fat and protein. Thus when I hear people speak about carb or front loading, I figure they are carnivores. What you may be referring to is foods that have very high carb concentrations versus foods that have lower carb concentrations.

For example, let's look at seeds and nuts. You can talk about using nuts and seeds as a major protein source, they are lower in carb concentration than fat and protein concentrations. I think you are wondering if it would make sense to eat that type of protein later in the day. For that I would say, yes, especially if you workout in the morning. In the morning you really need those carbs to start your metabolic furnace. Then, after your workout you need the protein for muscle rebuilding. Since protein gives satiety, [or feeling satiated], not only will it help rebuild, but will keep you from being hungry at the end of the day. But, you really need to check out the table I have put together below.

I was unsure if the 65% you mentioned was for 65% of the breakfast meal itself or 65% of carbs eaten for the whole day are to be ingested at breakfast. Of course, I have to answer both scenarios because I am widgety and have no life.

If 65% of your breakfast meal is a high carb concentrated food, such as oatmeal made with water and topped with fruit, I think that is fine. You are getting protein in the oatmeal and a small amount in the fruit. Yes, fruit has protein. If you wanted to pump up the protein in the oatmeal, you could switch out some of the water for soy milk, and add a small handful of chopped walnuts. If the soy milk is enriched you would get some B12, vitamin A and D. The walnuts would donate some protein and Omega-3 fats to boot.

If you wanted to put 65% of your carbs that are eaten for a day at breakfast, I don't know how you would do that. As I stated above, if you eat a plant-based diet everything you eat has carbs in it including nuts and seeds. Any grains, vegetables, or legumes have carbs in them at a much higher concentration than their amount of fats or protein.

Here is a link to the USDA food composition website: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl so you can check it out yourself.

Below is a table to help illustrate what I mean about the lack of macronutrient [fat, carb, protein] divisions in plant foods compared with carnivore choices:

	Protein	Carb	Fat
Amounts in 100 grams
Walnuts	15.23	13.71	65.21
Sunflower seeds hulled, toasted	17.21	20.59	56.8
Oatmeal cooked with water	2.54	12.0	1.52
Quinoa, cooked	4.40	21.3	1.92
Brown Rice, cooked	2.58	22.96	0.90
Romaine	1.23	3.29	0.30
Carrots	0.93	9.58	0.24
Onion	1.10	9.34	0.10
Apple	0.26	13.81	0.17
Banana	1.09	22.84	0.33
Strawberries	0.58	17.36	0.60
Black beans, cooked	8.86	23.71	0.54
Green split peas	8.34	21.1	0.39
Navy bean	8.23	26.05	0.62
Ground beef lean, 5% fat, cooked	27.31	0.0	6.37
Chicken breast, roasted	31.02	0.0	3.57
Salmon, dry heat cooked	22.1	0.0	12.35

The numbers show that in plant food sources other than nuts and seeds, [I know it is a small sample], that there will be ~70-90% more grams of carbs in a food than protein. So, how can someone on a plant-based diet not carb load when targeting food high in protein such as quinoa or black beans? Did you notice that the highest amount of protein versus amount of carbs, other than the nuts and animal flesh, was in the romaine? About 4 cups of romaine will give you 2 grams of protein. You will also get around 6 grams of carbs.

Another nutrition point to consider while trying to frontload is that you want a steady flow of glucose throughout the day. Glucose can be gotten from protein breakdown, however, the preferred source is carbs. So, to keep you happy and ready for a full day of challenges you need to eat steady stream of carb sources. When eating plant-based foods that is no problem if you eat enough calories.

The term plant-based front load may be an oxymoron, but you are a sharp cookie to ask. It is a great question and I hope I shed some light for those of us moving from a carnivore workout world to a plant-based one.

Get your own personal nutrition consultation with Marty here.

Disclaimer: The advice given here is for eductional purposes only. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a qualified health care provider.

See full index of questions

Sponsors: