this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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Over >50% of the space humans occupy is for agriculture. 3/4 of that space is dedicated to livestock/feed.
Recently I learned that plants like Bambara Nuts (africa) and Water Lentils (duckweed) have complete amino complexes and b12. They're probably not the only ones either.
There's also many pest/drought resistant perennial crops that are nitrogen/nutrient fixers that eliminate the need for fertilizers and pesticides.
I expect that the impending climate induced supply chain collapse of global agriculture will force people to return to these more ancestral, and arguably superior, food sources.
i think it's more like >90%.
i.e. of the area that is used (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),
so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that's 98%. The remaining 2% are for streets and housing.
By the way, all plant foods have all amino acids. They just have them in proportions to one another that don't quite match the proportions that we need. But this is only relevant, if you eat the minimum amount of protein necessary to sustain your body tissues.
In a Western diet, we typically eat significantly more protein than that. As such, if e.g. black beans only provide 50% of an amino acid compared to the other amino acids and compared to what we need, you can totally eat 200% black beans to make up for it.
Or, what's more likely the case, you're not gonna eat just black beans, but rather mix and match them with lots of other protein sources, which will have different amino acid distributions. Even wheat and rice contain protein. Well, and then you're gonna eat significantly more of that mixture than you actually need, so you don't need be particularly cautious at mixing+matching either.
Not the most scientific source, but has some decent illustrations: https://vegfaqs.com/essential-amino-acid-profiles-beans/
The human body require 20 amino acids of which 9 our bodies cannot produce. A "complete amino complex" contains all 9 of those unproducible acids. Most plants do not contain all of them. Black beans lack methionine; so simply eating more black beans will not suffice.
No, that's what I'm saying. Black beans 'lack' methionine in that they have less milligram methionine per gram protein than other protein sources, but they don't have none.
This table in the source that I linked is to be read as "you should eat 4.59 cups of black beans per day to cover the methionine RDA (if you weigh 70kg and all you eat is black beans)":
Here's another diagram showing that black beans do contain methionine, which got published in a scientific paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amino-acid-composition-of-quinoa-black-bean-and-lentil-proteins-g-100-g-of-protein_fig1_351804462
Huh, isn't duckweed pretty easy to grow?
yes, but also super invasive. we have them in areas where thier are bonds in norcal they blanket the entire water surface. they spread by vegatative propagation.
Just watched a lady "grow" it in buckets of pond/tap water. It doubles in biomass every 48h. Literally just let it sit there.
Most things with weed in the name is going to be easy to grow. A lot of people with aquariums or ponds feel plagued by it. I love it for aquariums it's one of the few things that can out compete algae
Youtube has sent me down the rabbit hole. Almost every common weed that's not native to North America was once a staple food crop in Europe.
But in the mid 20th century big agriculture realized they'd make more money selling annuals, fertilizer, and pesticides... instead of letting people grow perennial plants that solved those problems on their own.
most of them escape in the wild, and established wild population. iceplant is another one, its from south africa, it actually doesnt help with preventing spread of fires,it blankets the coasts of california. relatives of the plants are quite nifty succulents for hobbyist(aizocae, aka stone plants) while the ornamentals are very hard to take care off, the iceplants is very hardy and invasive. blue gum, a type of eucalyptus grows fast, also invasive but the biggest problem is since its a eucalyptus it makes fires more dangerous because of the oils.
Tis a question of "how much of it can be absorbed by humans".
For example absorption rate of vitamin A from animal sources is ~90%, but about 10% from veggies (if you use vegetable fat it's a bit higher, animal fat even more higher, cook it, juice it, the absorption rate plateaues at 30%; and technically it's not a vitamin A but something that will become a vitamin A when dissolved in fat) - and the amount of it in veggies is lower compared to animal byproducts.
Bambara has apparently been a staple in Western Africa for centuries. So if it had any critical nutritional deficiencies I'd imagine a cultural/culinary solution would have presented itself by now. And the B12 in Bambara is uniquely bioavailable; unlike the b12 in most other plants.
Rentinol (vitamin a) is not an amino acid. It is a fat soluble molecule which is why you get more from fatty sources. It's a logical train of thought but you're comparing apples to oranges.
Isn't vit A the one we produce from carotenes? So technically we don't need to ingest the vitamin itself if we eat enough of the pro-vitamin? Am I confusing it with other vitamin?
Carotene is 10% absorption rate from my example (IIRC 30% from juice), but you still need to dissolve it in fat to get vitamin A.
Thank you!