Okay vegan.
You’ve answered questions about your protein, omega 3s, calcium, iron, vitamin D, B12, zinc
and iodine, which had a horrible intro, by the way.
But I have one you can’t possibly get. Carnitine. I mean, it has “carn” in it, right? So also carnosine...actually too.
You know what? I’ve been quite the good sport throughout this doing costume changes
and various characters and attempting to make this all fun and approachable. And frankly,
as my iodine video intro so excessively illustrated, I’ve run out of my nutritional mockery mojo.
So, you’ve left me with no choice but to utilize the inherently amusing facial structure
and loud breathing of my bulldog to create a humorous visual directly before cutting to the opening logo.
Hey there weakling! Yea, you!
Wanna get strong and muscular like this beast?
Want to spark your appetite for awesome and become a carnal carnivorous carnivore like this?
Then you need CARNITINE!
Just take one 2lb jug a day and you’ll be as built as this carnitine-fueled carnivore.
What a beast!
Get yours today and Carn the F- Up!
Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. Today is the final
video in the “Where Do You Get Your___?” Vegan Nutrition Series with Dr. Michael Greger
of Nutritionfacts.org. I feel like we should have a moment or something…
I'll just have my own moment.
We’ve gone through some of the most common concerns when switching to a plant based vegan diet
and have come to those nutrients you find out about during a 3am Google search. Carnitine,
often paired or confused with carnosine and creatine, or even taurine, is a quaternary ammonium compound
biosynthesized from the amino acids lysine and methionine.
Which not be helpful...at all.
As far as what it does, it’s main job is transporting fatty acids from the intermembraneous
space in the mitochondria into the mitochondrial matrix during the breakdown of lipids or fats
for the generation of metabolic energy. Basically it helps with burning fat for energy.
This sounds like a great thing, right? Apparently so as carnitine supplements abound! As far
as direct food sources, carnitine is almost exclusively found in animal foods, though
tempeh, avocado, whole-wheat and white bread, peanut butter, and cooked rice do make the list.
So, is carnitine- and for that matter carnosine and creatine- something vegans should be concerned about?
Let’s hear from the doctor.
So, the final nutrient that we’ll go over is something that, it’s not something that
really comes to people’s minds in the very initial worries about a vegan diet, but usually
once they’ve done some digging, they come across things about carnitine. And, the term
itself almost sounds like ‘carnivore’ so, of course vegans will be concerned. So,
could you talk a little bit about, what is carnitine, where is it found, what does it do for the body?
Alright, so there’s a number of nutrients carnitine, carnosine, taurine,
creatine that are not made by plants, then you say ‘uh oh!..that’s all I eat, what
do I do? They’re only made by animals’. Well guess what? You’re an animal, right?
And we make it just like the cow makes it that people eat, we make it to, we’re animals
to, and so we make all the, you know, carnitine we need just like the cow does. So, for example
we have a requirement for vitamin C. If we don’t get enough vitamin C, we get scurvy
and die, but actually we used to be able to make vitamin C. We actually have the gene
to make vitamin C but our bodies basically junked it because there was no need, why?
Because we evolved eating plant heavy diets just like all our other great apes,
great ape cousins. And so, all we’re doing is eating vitamin C all day long. Why would we
need to make our own? It seems wasteful so we just scrapped it, similar like cats. Cats
need taurine, excuse me, cats need...taurine in their diet, why? Wait a second, we make
all the taurine that we want, why don’t cats make taurine? Why would cat need to make
taurine? They’ve been...they get all the taurine from all the mice that they eat. So
let the mouse make it and they don’t even have too. So, the fact that we don’t make
some of the plant based nutrients like vitamin C but we do make the animal based nutrients
kind of suggests that maybe we were meant to eat lots of plants. We don’t need to
eat animals because we make all the animal kind of derived, these animal derived, typically
your kind of amino acid configuration. So anyway...now having said, you need to have
the enzymes that create these compounds at about 1 in 40,000 births as a hereditary disease.
As a carnitine transport protein disorder where you can actually still make all the
carnitine you need but you actually lose it in your urine. And so, in about 1 and 40,000
people actually need to do carnitine, so I rapport that I have a video about this kid
in Israel about 30 years ago. He was seen in and out of the hospital every couple of
months. They didn’t know what was wrong with him, and then he went vegetarian, and
things got really worse. Like he was in the hospital every couple of weeks, and that was
the clue ‘ah ha!’. It turns out that he had this rare 1 in 40,000 carnitine problem.
And so...and so, when he went vegetarian, all of a sudden he wasn’t getting it in
his diet, and so...he couldn’t, he was losing too much of it in his urine. So anyway, they
gave him carnitine supplements and he did fine, he continued being a vegetarian actually.
And so, there are indeed rare cases in which there’s some biochemical abnormality where you have
to actually take in supplemental form. But for the 39,999 kids that are born out of 40,000,
they make all they need.
I hope you enjoyed hearing from Dr. Greger on this final nutrient. At this point I typically tell you
that if you want to track your own carnitine, to check out Cronometer. But it actually doesn’t
track carnitine because it’s a non-essential amino acid we make ourselves. And as incredibly
awesome as Cronometer is at tracking your daily nutrition, fitness and even supplements,
it’s not quite good enough to track what’s going on inside your body...
...yet
But seriously, it’s a totally free service and pretty awesometastic.
I'm running out of adjectives- so much so that they’re actually sponsoring this video to get this
vital information out to you. Be sure to use the link in the video description below to
go make your free profile. I don’t get any money when you click on it but it lets Cronometer
know that I may be someone to work with in the future even though the Vegan Nutrition
Concerns series is over.
Now, I’d love to hear from you on this. Is carnitine or carnosine, or creatine, or even taurine things that
you’ve heard of before? If you’re vegan is it something you’re concerned about?
If your’e not vegan is it something that you worry about not getting when going vegan?
Do you supplement or just allow your body to make its own? Let me know in the comments!
If you enjoyed this final nutrient of a nugget, give the video a big thumbs up and share it
around to spread the nutritional truth. You can find the playlist to the entire series
in the infocard sidebar and the video description below. If you’re new here be sure
to hit that big red subscribe button down there for more awesome vegan content every
Monday, Wednesday, and some Fridays. If you want to help keep Bite Size Vegan educating,
check out either of the support links in the video description below and for perks and
rewards for your support, just click the Nugget Army icon there or use the icard sidebar on
your phone. And hey, check out some of the related videos while I'm here, which are also linked down below.
Now go live vegan, make your own carnitine and I’ll see you soon.
nope, nope! getting attacked....getting attacked.
[loud snoring]
WHAT A BEAST!