to be very honest with you ... i dont think anyone knows apart from the person themself. i feel the government's RDA is more of a guideline. there are many many communities who dont follow how we do it. take the japanese for instance. traditionally i would say half their plate is grains, and a quarter is veggies (one or two - not a huge variety) and a quarter protein.
right now nutrition is at the stage where medicine was in the 1400s when Da Vinci was studying cadavers.
in this country we worry too much about protein. in fact if anything we eat way too much protein even in a plant based diet. except of course those people who jump into vegetarianism without fully understanding a varied diet and thus dont eat enough protein. but to be protein deficient you need to be a famine victim. i think the idea of protein deficiency has come from the meat industry.
what is ideal is what your body handles, if you can tell what your body handles. most of us have lost the ability to figure out what our body prefers. if my dd and i ate as much protein as my plates suggest we'd fall sick. even as vegetarians.
we dont even talk about seasonal foods as well as climate foods. should someone from florida be eating the same as someone in new york?
wouldnt our bodily needs change with the seasons. do we need to each spinach all year around. do we get teh same nutrition from spinach all year round. or do we really get more out of it in winter and less of it in summer.
look at a crop of kale for instance. the moment the winter frost hits the crop kale turns sweeter.
i feel crappy eating tomatoes in winter. eating carrots in winter is much more refreshing to me in winter than in summer.
no one ever talks about how little fat we need in our diet. and if you ARE eating high fat foods like nuts and avocado in a plant based diet - that really you dont need any other fat in your diet.
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