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1. Obtaining All Essential Amino Acids ๐Ÿ”—

Conclusion: Lack of essential amino acids can make you tired. Getting all essential amino acids exclusively from soy beans seems acceptable in cost, risk, and convenience.

Inadequat essential amino acid intake leads to tiredness. Essential amino acids can't be produced by the body, so you need to get them from food. Almost all plant foods do not provide a sufficient ammount of all essential amino acids. You can either eat certain animal products, eat some of the few plant foods that are complete, or combine various incomplete plant foods such that in combination they are complete. Here we focus on using complete plant sources. Mostly on soy.

Likely I was deficient in essential amino acids for very long. Intuitively it seemed that eating 350-700g of silken tofu, made me noticable more awake (I noticed that unpromped). 700g silken tofu provides all essential amino acids for a day all at once. Usually I would eat a lot of lentils. However they are low in methionine. I would have to eat ~850g of cooked black lentils to get enough methionine.

Some people confuse the problem of "I didn't get enough essential amino acids" with "I didn't get enough protein". But that's like saying "I have enough balls. Just look how many I have." When you have 100 green balls, when you actually need 5 red balls.

It is quite possible that there are other factors at play. Eating very large ammounts of soy increases IGF-1 levels (a groth hormone), which can cause cancer. Potentially increasing my IGF-1 levels also makes me have more energy.

Meta: Writing this article is a great experience. I put it on this website, send it to people, notice how they don't understand it, and then notice how the article actually sucks! Then I improve it iteratively as I discuss the topic with the people I send the article to (Mainly I chatted whith Matthias about it). Often new relevant pices of information come up in the conversation and I add them during the convo to the article.

Links:

1.1. Soy Harm Analysis ๐Ÿ”—

Soy might be harmful for more than 3-5 servings of soy. A serving of cooked soy beans is 1/2 cup. 1 cup of cooked soy beans is 172g.

Soy beans double in volume and weight after soaking.

150g of dried soy beans become 300g of cooked soy beans. Number of servings:

  (* (/ 300.0 175) 2)
3.4285714285714284

1.2. Soy Cost Analysis ๐Ÿ”—

Buying organic soy beans is 5 times cheaper than silken tofu (more if you buy in bulk).

1.2.1. Soy Beans ๐Ÿ”—

150g of raw soybeans are complete.

Euro cost per 150 gram organic soybeans. Store link. For 2.5kg:

  (* (/ 18.0 2500) 150)
1.08

For 25kg:

  (* (/ 120.0 25000) 150)
0.72

1.2.2. Silken Tofu ๐Ÿ”—

For firm silken tofu 700g are required. Store link.

  (* (/ 30.0 ; container price
        (* 349 12)) ; gram contained in one package
     700) ; gram needed
5.01432664756447

1.3. Alternative Solutions ๐Ÿ”—

250g Quinoa (uncooked weight) and 250g canned red kidney beans, cover all amino acids.

350g edamame is also complete.

Other foods with good amino acid balance include:

  • Nutritional Yeast
  • Soy (e.g. Tofu)
  • Buckweat
  • Amarath

Many combination of foods with incomplete amino acid profile can in combination yield a complete profile.

2. Kale Bloat ๐Ÿ”—

Observation: Me eating a lot of Kale leads to unbearable bloat. When eating 400g I need to semethicon to prevent my stomach hurting a lot. This happens primarly when the kale is not mixed with other food.

Fact: Kale contains complex indigestible sugars. Bacteria feed on them producing gas. The ammount of complex sugars can be removed by soaking the kale in water for 1h.

Observation: Useing a geling agent, like agar agar, remedies much of the problem. Note that the gel is more satiating. I usually eat half the ammount of kale.

Inference: Eating (finely chopped) kale on it's own makes it travel too fast trough the stomach. Solidifying it makes it travel lower through the gut allowing more time for non-microbial digestion.

3. Geling Agents ๐Ÿ”—

Agar agar is a vegan geling agent.

4. Emulsifiers ๐Ÿ”—

  • Polysorbate 80 (Bad according to 10s of google)
  • mono- Diglycerides
  • Lecithin seems good. Not tried yet.

5. Creatin and the Brain ๐Ÿ”—

ATP is the bodies energy store. Your mixer uses elecricity to run, your muscles and brain use ATP. When used ATP turns into ADP.

The body only produces 250g new ATP daily, but recycles it's body weight in ATP each day by having phosphocreatine donate a phosphate group to ADP. Phospocreatine serves as an energy buffer, as it can be used directly to make more ATP from ADP.

Creatine is natuarlly created by the body in a chain starting from arginine and glycine. Creatine (without phosphate which is the supplement form) is converted to phosphocreatine by the liver. Most dietary creatine is found in meat. I have heard that there are some studies that show that creatine makes vegetarians/vegans smarter (perform better on some partiucal cognitive test).

I currently eat almost no meat. I have also noticed some intuitive evidence that after thinking hard I get exhausted in a way different from feeling like I want to sleep.

I want to try creatine and see if this still happens.

In my current model supplementing creatine would basically increase "the brains stamina" in some form. When the brain uses up ATP we can immediately make more with phosphocreatine. It's pretty unclear what the role of ATP in the brain is to me, or how much ATP in the brain is even recycled using phosophocreatine (I heard that most ATP is created in another way, but perhaps they where only talking about synthesising new ATP, not recycling ADP). But ATP is in the brain, and it is fuling some processes there. Whatever these processes are, supplementing creatine makes these process be able to run longer at full capacity (assuming that supplementing creatine increases phosphocreatine in the brain wich seems very likely).

So creatine/phosphocreatine is a tiny bit like sugar, but not for glucose metabolic processes, but for ATP metabolic processes.

I wonder if thinking really hard is analogos to aerobic exercise, in that it uses an ATP metabolism.

5.1. The Best Creatine ๐Ÿ”—

I heard on reddit that Creatin marked with Creapureยฎ is best. They said kreatine mainly is manufactured in Germany or China. Creapureยฎ is the trademark of a Germany Chemicals company who makes creatine. There are many distributers.

5.2. Random Quotes about ATP's role in the brain ๐Ÿ”—

ATP is also a substrate of adenylate cyclase, most commonly in G protein-coupled receptor signal transduction pathways and is transformed to second messenger, cyclic AMP, which is involved in triggering calcium signals by the release of calcium from intracellular stores.[33] This form of signal transduction is particularly important in brain function, although it is involved in the regulation of a multitude of other cellular processes. – Wikipedia

ATP has been shown to be a critically important signalling molecule for microglia - neuron interactions in the adult brain,[41] as well as during brain development. – Wikipedia

6. Iron ๐Ÿ”—

  • Fact: Iron deficiency causes fatigue/low-energy.
  • Obs: Eating meat significantly raises my energy levels.
  • Fact: Iron in meat (Heme iron) is easier to absorb than iron compounds in plants.
  • Fact: Iron absorbtion can be boosed 2-3x by the presence of vitamin C which can transform plant iron into a more absorbable form.
  • Goal: Optimize plant iron absorbition to potentially improve energy levels.

Soy beans are rich in iron (15mg per cup, more than twice than lentils).

Foods rich in vitamin C (non-exhaustive):

  • Red Bellpeper
  • Citrus fruits (e.g. oranges)

One bellpeper, or one orange, should provide enough vitamin C to boost absorbtion.

These foods should be eaten at the same time! The transformation of plant iron ( ) requires that vitamin C and soy beans are mixed in the digestive tract. GPT says the acidic environment of the stomach helps with the transformation. Geneal digestive processes breaking down and extracting the nutrients (including iron) also facilite the process by pulling out the iron such that it can react.

Instead of soybeans another high iron plant food can be used.

7. Kale ๐Ÿ”—

Kale contains antidepressive compounds: Kaempferol, Quercetin, Chlorogenic acid.

Kaempferol and quercetin are fat soluable (eat with fat).

All are heat sensitive.

8. Magnesium ๐Ÿ”—

Magnesium important. Lack causes low energy. L-threonat crosses blood brain barrier, potentially memory/contition enhancing.

1: (setq magnesium-l-threonat-coef (/ 24.0 294))
2: (setq magnesium-malat-coef (/ 24.0 156))
3: 
4: (+ (* 2000 magnesium-malat-coef)
5:    (* 1500 magnesium-l-threonat-coef)) ; => 430

430mg is a good dose of magnesium. So taking 1g of malat, and 1.5g of l-threonat seems good. Note that this is at most 215mg of magnesium that is actually absorbed (not part of calculation above). I assume remaining will be from diet. Potentially increase malat (cheaper) more in future.

9. Menu ๐Ÿ”—

  • 500g oil toped, Gelified, Kale, with bellpeper and/or orange.
  • Soy-1
    • 300g soy beans
    • mixedin with cut bellpeper and/or orange.
    • 1 tea-s kurkuma
    • 1 tea-s brokoli seeds
    • 1 tea-s garlic powder
    • 2 large tea-s ginger powder
    • 6 spoons of rapseed oil (Vitamin E)
  • Condiment
    • Nutritional yeast
    • Raw Ginger
    • Raw Garlic
    • Raw Onion
    • mustard
    • Soy sauce
  • Extras
    • Fruit
    • Whole grain bread
    • Pasta-1 (Pasta + Tomato Onion sauce)
    • Quinoa

10. Supplements ๐Ÿ”—

For reproducability here is a list of supplements I take (or plan to take soon) around [2024-12-17 Di].

Table 1: Take in Morning.
Substance ammount
Creatin (Creapureยฎ) 6g
Vitamin D 250mcg
B12 (metyl) 1mg
Benfotiamin (B-1) 600mg
B Complex See
Iodine (Kelp) 150mcg
Iron (bisclycinate) Bcomplex
Zink 25mg
Magnesium L-Threonate 2000mg
Omega 3 (alge) 450 mg DHA; 225mg EPA
Selenium (1 paranuss) 96mcg

Table 2: With Food
Vitamin E (6 Teaspoons of rapseed oil) 15mg

Table 3: B Complex Ingredients
B-1 (Thiamin) HCL 100mg
B-2 100mg
B-3 100mg
B-6 100mg
Folate 680mcg DFE (400mg folic acid)
B-12 (cyano) 100mcg
Biotin 100mcg
Pantothenic Acid 100mg
Choline (bitartrate) 10mg

Magnesium deficiency leads to neuronal overexcitability.

11. Medication ๐Ÿ”—

Only do something if you know what you are doing (I have/had a prescription where relevant).

List of useful medications:

  • Huberzine-A (short acting)
  • Nicotin (short acting)
  • Modafinil
  • Benfotiamin (And other tiamins that cross the blood brain barrier.)
  • L-Tyrosine every hour.
  • Methylhenidate 5mg oral, 5mg sublingual, every hour.
  • Lisdexamphetamin (morning only)

11.1. Oral + Sublingual MPH ๐Ÿ”—

The problem with MPH is that it's very "on/off" in that it works fast, but then get's metabolized very fast. I found it most effective to take small doses throughout the day, such that I have a consistent but not too strong effect. However this requires dosing probably every 30 minutes 5mg. To make it more convenient you can do 5mg oral, 5mg sublingual, of MPH every hour. This seems to work better than 10mg oral once, probably because sublingual is fast in absorbtion, and oral is slow, such that I get two overlapping peaks. I wear a teeth guard (against teeth grinding) for mind protection against the slightly acidic solution MPH-HCL creates. Also sublingual has a higher bioavailability and therefore is perhaps more like 12.5mg oral (this is a random guess).

12. Vegans should eat just enough Meat ๐Ÿ”—

Once I talked to a person who said they were asexual. They were also heavily depressed and thought about committing suicide. I repeatedly told them to eat some meat, as they were vegan for many years. I myself had experienced veganism-induced depression. Finally, after many weeks they ate some chicken, and the next time we spoke, they said that they were no longer asexual, nor depressed.

I was vegan or vegetarian for many consecutive years. Vegetarianism was manageable, perhaps because of cheese. I never hit the extreme low points that I did with veganism. I remember once after not eating meat for a long time there was a period of maybe a weak, where I got extremely fatigued. I took 200mg of modafinil1, without having any build-up resistance. Usually, this would give me a lot of energy. But then I was barely able to enter some terminal commands to transcribe some of Rob Miles' videos with a whisper such that he could add better captions. Another day I took 30mg of lisdexamfetamine1 which would usually last the entire day and have a pretty strong effect, but this time I got so tired after 3 or 4 hours that I had to lay down and take a nap.

But then I ate some tuna. And felt a lot better the next day. Some time later I did a blood test that indicated iron deficiency as a probable cause.

But even when I take a lot of iron supplements and eat my soybeans (which contain a lot of iron) with bell peppers (which contain Vitamin C, which boosts iron absorption) I still notice a big difference when I eat meat after a long period of abstinence.

So here is my proposition. If you are working on AI alignment then what you think with your brain is very important. If don't usually eat meat you might be missing some important nutrients that would help you think significantly better. As somebody who didn't eat meat until my body screamed into my ear from 5 inches away, I think I understand why you don't want to eat meat. But if you do the expected utility computation is it actually worth it?

What if it makes you only 5% worse at thinking? Is whatever animal suffering you prevent worth the tradeoff in reduced probability of saving the world? What about 10%? What about 50%? Don't answer this question in the abstract. Instead, I recommend the following experiment:

Eat 7 days in a row a large amount of meat. E.g. 1kg of chicken every day. (Start with a lower quantity the first day. My body sometimes does weird things when starting to eat meat after long abstinence.) The goal: Gather data. You want to eat too much meat (more that you likely end up needing) to make sure that if you are missing any nutrients, you'll definitely got them by the end of the week, such that you can notice an as large as possible difference. While doing this experiment write a journal (ideally starting at least a couple of days before you start to eat meat) in which you precisely document:

  • Every 2 hours:
    • How you feel.
    • How much energy you have.
    • How easy is it to focus.
  • How well did you slept.

For each point give a 0-9 score, plus prose comments where appropriate.

This generates a lot of data on how much of a positive impact eating meat has.

If meat didn't have a positive impact: Congratulations, you can continue not eating meat. And now you know that this is actually the correct thing to do, because you are not missing out cognitively.

If meat had a positive consider the following options:

  1. Just start eating meat.
  2. Research what exactly it was that was missing before from your diet such that you don't eat meat. You'll end up not eating meat, but eating meat was useful in noticing that something was wrong in your diet.
  3. Combine the previous two approaches. Eat meat but try to minimize how much meat you eat by improving your diet over a longer duration. This way you don't need to fix it all at once. I still haven't managed to do fully do this after spending at least 20 hours on this (probably much more).

Important: Consider that you can minimize animal suffering by eating less meat. I'd guess usually people eat more than the optimial ammount of meat (which I think is can even be unhealthy). If you eat 20% (this is a random guess) of what people eat on average it might be sufficient to avoid any negative nutritional side effects, while still reducing animal suffering.

It's much easier to be fundamentalist about not eating meat. It makes things simple. Saying "Never eat meat, it's evil" is quite simple, and an easy rule to follow. Saying "Animal farming is terrible, and how we treat "food animal" is one of the greatest moral failures of our time. But AI is gonna destroy the universe. You are trying to prevent this, and possibly not eating meat negatively effects how well you can utilize your brain. So you need to eat meat now first to figure out if there is a nutritional problem, and second to fix that nutritional probelm if required. Because that is actually what maximizes the expected utility of getting a good future. But because animal farming is actually terrible you want to minimize the ammount of meat that you eat." This is much harder to act upon. It boils down to "Hey, you don't know what's best! You'd better run a bunch of experiments to find out."

Footnotes:

1

I have/had a prescription.