valine

valine is a "branched-chain amino acid" like leucine and isoleucine, and again seems to end up with coA as the end point. i don't see any derivatives or transformations worth measuring separately, and i seem to be getting quite a lot.

water - 0

=============

raspberry - ?. raspberries have very low amounts of amino acids, low enough that nobody bothered measuring it, or that it couldn't be measured. i have not been able to find data, but it's minimal across the board.

guava -  87*.3 = 26.1 mg

banana  -   55

strawberry  -  19

avocado  -  161

kiwi  -  39

soy - 67*4  = 268

ice cream - 217*.825 = 179.025

yogurt - 474*.5 = 237

yeast - 612*5/20  = 153

vector cereal -  

all bran cereal -  726*.45 = 326.7

wheat bran -  726*.07 = 50.82

sunflower seeds - 1315*.08 = 105.2

flax -  1072*.12 = 128.64

algal oil -  1020*.1922*.0517 = 10.1354748

===============

100*(26.1 + 55 + 19 + 161 + 39 + 268 + 179.025 + 237 + 153 + 326.7 + 50.82 + 105.2 + 128.64 + 10.135)/1820 = 96.6274725275

if you didn't see this coming, you're blind.

well, how else do you expect them to pay the bankers?

raise taxes? 

naaah. that's not austerity! what you need to do is sell the cn tower to a group of foreign investors. that's the right way to pay the imf.

so, it seems like trudeau is selling air canada to saudi arabia.

might as well; they already own the wheat board.

how do i get out of here?

we're setting up a society where everybody is wasting their lives serving the elderly.

i don't want to live in it.

i'm singularly driven by the art, and need to get back to it, in some way that makes sense, once i figure it out.

but, that's not why i live.

i live for the adventures - and i don't want to live for anything else.

i hate this.

this is what i never wanted to be.

all that's left is frugality, conservatism, family, labour, religion - meaningless trivialities that are a nice escape to waste time with, but aren't worth bothering with, broadly.

i'm an introvert. i need a lot of time by myself, it's clear....

but, those concerts were really my life. if you take away those fleeting moments of actual meaningful existence, there's not much left to bother breathing for - or not much i'd care about, anyways.

i don't care about the flow of money in the economy.

but, what this shut down has done is completely eradicate any purpose to existence. why bother, when there's nothing worth doing?

i'm getting antzy again, do i even want to finish this?

yes.

now that i'm over the weird hump with methionine & cysteine, let's see if i can get the essential amino acids finished tonight, before i get through some end of the month stuff after that. and, i'm going to have to pick up back where i was, or something - i don't even know. 

i'm completely lost, right now.

i think i had resigned myself to suicide and sort of given up. i was in such a rut. with the complete collapse of any concept of social existence, i completely stopped caring about life sometime in the summer, and sort of found myself lost in setting up a diet, as a kind of way to cope.

if my fruit meal is so great, why not eat it twice a day? well, that's not a bad question, i guess.

i'm horribly depressed about everything and need to get out to a show to exist....this is a life, right now, with everything shut down, that isn't worth living....

there's a line of thinking that the chinese economy is best described as "neo-confucianist", which is actually a kind of casino capitalism with large overlaps with calvinism. the chinese are not the same as us the way that the russians or iranians are, it's an inherently different culture, but the jarring thing about them is how similar they are to us.

and, what he's saying about wages is true, but that's fordism.

also, to tie into previous posts, let's remember that nationalizing the railroads was one of the prime goals and accomplishments of 19th century populism. historians of populism will present it as a farmers revolt against the banks, and i tried to explain that they get the class analysis completely wrong when they do that. wolff's deconstruction of that point is quite useful, here, and backs up my points on the topic.

the other thing i want to point out is that the united states once had 10% growth rates, too, and that it's a function of the development level and technology level more than anything else. really, everything that has happened in china over the last fifty years happened in the united states a hundred years earlier, and if you could find an even less developed economy that needed to be built up even more, you'd see growth rates there hit those levels, too. it's consequently worthwhile to recognize that china's embrace of capitalism has no future but the same thing we saw happen in america; that is capitalism, it undoes itself in the end. as such, it is predictable that rising wages in china will inevitably lead to outsourcing in countries like vietnam, which is contributing to lower growth rates. and, in the end, you'll end up with chinese workers complaining that africans and malaysians stole all their jobs, as shanghai falls apart in post-industrial decay.

you sleep with the devil, right?

so, what wolff has forgotten is that america built it's wealth through state control, as well - not through free markets. chomsky & hudson are better sources on this topic; they'll both explain the point that china got rich by following the example that america followed, not by reversing it. but, they're crystal clear that america was, at the time, a state capitalist economy, as well - something wolff tends to obscure, to try to build them up as a counter-model.

so, is crystal getting married after the show, or what?

now, that said....

i'm not measuring these meat-only molecules - carnosine, carnitine (ok,i am measuring carnitine), taurine, etc - but i'm running up against a choice this weekend, as i get to the last little bit of salami: do i want to do away with this, and go full ovo-lacto?

i've gone ovo-lacto or ovo-lacto-pesco before, and a big part of what i'm doing is trying to figure out if it's actually practical or not. i have no moral opposition to eating eggs (although i wish i could afford to buy them from better sources), and while dairy is kinda iffy, milk is too central to too many things to drop it. it really doesn't seem like i need to eat animal flesh, but these byproducts are not replaceable.

one of the things i've been toying with, though, is whether i want to replace a $10.00 stick of salami with a $10 roasted chicken. the reason i didn't do that previously is that the salami was being consciously utilized as a high-density source of fat in a diet with almost no fat in it. but, i've added things like avocados and, in the process, reduced the amount of salami down to something quite minimal. as that logic recedes, more traditional arguments about the superiority of poultry over processed pork begin to assert themselves. so, while eating chicken as a supplement with eggs opens up some ancient and silly questions in terms of ordering the food preparation (well. which one?), it may be the better option.

you'll note i never added the salami to the chart because i never really intended to hold to it. it's a holdover from the old pasta meal and the days where i mostly alternated between melts and tomato sandwiches and consequently needed a high density source of protein; it's run it's course and should be replaced, or discarded altogether.

i might not stick with it in the longterm, but i'm probably going to do it at least once. and, there's some unassailable logic to it - if i add just a bit of actual unprocessed chicken in the 36 hour cycle, it's no doubt getting me a bit of these extra molecules at minimal to no harm, even if am technically getting enough to synthesize via the high protein onslaught in all three meals. that could be a tipping point, giving me that extra bit of amino acid base to produce those extra anti-oxidants, or those extra neurotransmitters.

so, yes - i think i've proven to myself that meat is not required.

but, i'm still toying with what is optimal and whether that little bit of chicken is worthwhile or not.

methionine + cysteine + taurine + glutathione (sulfur containing amino acids)

Methionine is a nutritionally indispensable amino acid required for the normal growth and development of all mammals (1, 2), whereas cysteine is conditionally indispensable (3, 4). In addition to its required role in protein synthesis, methionine supplies the methyl group for numerous methylation reactions and the sulfur atom for cysteine formation (5–8). Through the intermediate S-adenosylmethionine, methionine is the source of the methyl groups of choline, creatine, and both DNA and RNA intermediates (1, 5, 6, 8). Cysteine is involved in the protein synthesis and biosynthesis of taurine, sulfate, and glutathione (6).

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/6/756/4737429

so, the amino acid here that is considered essential is methionine, but it seems like the major purpose of methionine in the diet is actually to act as a source of sulfur (in conversion to cysteine) or as a methyl donor (via s-adenyl-methionine, or sam); taurine and glutathione are actually both derived more directly from cysteine, which is formed by the combination of serine & sulfur (from the methionine). it's really serine that is the precursor here, not methionine. as such, if i'm concerned about synthesizing cysteine, i need to ensure i'm getting enough serine.

serine is apparently primarily converted from glycine, but glycine is then apparently mostly converted from serine, so that doesn't help. rather, it seems like i should aim to get sufficient serine levels directly.

but, then, i should just focus on getting cysteine directly. right? yeah.

so, the main thing i'd want to do with methionine, proper, then, is use it to build s-adenosyl-methionine which is the form that methionine seems to be used as most readily. methionine also plays a role in synthesizing some neurotransmitters (including acting as a precursor to choline, where necessary), but this is a general role for amino acids, and they seem to be converted back and forth fairly easily. i'm actually going to do some more research into neurotransmitters as it's own unit topic, and may add further requirements to ensure i'm generating enough of them. for now, i'm going to assume that the rdis for the amino acids & vitamins, together, are enough to ensure i'm getting enough brain food. if i get extra methionine it could potentially end up as cysteine, but excess homocysteine (the intermediate) should be avoided - which is partly what all the extra betaine is about. b6 & b12 also help in clearing out excess homocysteine. so, i want to get a little extra methionine, but broadly keep it down a little.

so, the two main derivatives of cysteine are glutathione (with glutamic acid & glycine), which is one of the few known antioxidants that actually functions in vivo but cannot be absorbed in tact and must be synthesized, and taurine, which, due to the lack of red meat in my diet, can only be derived from cysteine. i'm phasing taurine out because i just don't get it in my diet, but i'll be working the 100 mg/day requirements into the cysteine requirements as a subcomponent.

rdi:

this is unsettled science, at this point. i've looked at a number of sources and built up the following chart:

eu: 10.4 mg/kg for methionine, 4.1 mg/kg for cysteine 

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid)

usda: 19 mg/kg total 

(source: https://www.nap.edu/read/10490/chapter/12#674)

di buono 1: 21 mg/kg total + taurine & glutathione requirements

(source:  https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/6/756/4737429 )

caveat:

Therefore, the total SAA requirements found in the present study represent the amount of dietary methionine needed to fulfill all the functions of methionine in vivo. However, it cannot be concluded from the present study whether the amount of cysteine required for the synthesis of glutathione, taurine, or sulfate was achieved with methionine intakes at the breakpoint for protein synthesis. This is an important consideration for deciding on appropriate dietary reference intakes for SAAs; additional research is required on this issue.

di buono 2: 10.1 mg/kg for methionine (lower bound) + 10.9 mg/kg cysteine (upper bound)

(source: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/74/6/761/4737434 )

Results: The mean and population-safe (upper limit of the 95% CI) methionine requirements in the absence of exogenous cysteine were found to be 12.6 and 21 mg·kg−1·d−1, respectively. The mean and population-safe methionine requirements in the presence of excess dietary cysteine were found to be 4.5 and 10.1 mg·kg−1·d−1, respectively, representing a cysteine sparing effect of 64% in a comparison of mean methionine requirements and of 52% in a comparison of population-safe methionine intakes. Furthermore, the difference between population-safe intakes with and without dietary cysteine establishes a safe cysteine intake of 10.9 mg·kg−1·d−1 in the presence of adequate methionine intakes.

milk study 1: 36.3 mg/kg total, with a cys:met ratio of ~ 1.25

(source: http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_url?url=https://www.academia.edu/download/49337378/Amino_acid_composition_of_human_milk_is_20161004-5347-1k12hxa.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xMoTYKv8A9KE6rQPgJa78Ac&scisig=AAGBfm3ssHxTHUBS0WRVVxdV8Fi8JhzvgA&nossl=1&oi=scholarr)

milk study 2: cys/met ratio of ~ 1.42

(source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/mothers-milk-amino-acid-profile-from-biological-chemistry.pdf)

further sources:

1) who: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/43411/WHO_TRS_935_eng.pdf?ua=1

2) the survey:  https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/136/6/1682S/4664458

---

that's a messy pile of data. some comments are necessary.

i posted this earlier:

i think a part of the reason this is confusing - and the survey states as much up front - is that the language they're using is often inexact, to say the least. the ideas are not being presented clearly. so, let me work through this and try to get the ideas clarified, first.

their argument is that cysteine can "substitute" for methionine if it's present in sufficient quantities that you can prevent the conversion of methionine to cysteine. but, this isn't actually a substitution process at all. it's more like a blocking process. they should by talking about transsulfuration-blocking, not cysteine-sparing.

they then erect this idea of "total sulfur requirement", which is the amount of methionine you need without any cysteine, and subtract out the minimum obligatory amount of methionine, which they decide is the amount of methionine you need to do methionine things. the argument is that what's left should be the amount converted to cysteine, but, as i've said before, that doesn't actually make any sense, and i'd advise against citing that deduction. i guess you could use that number as a crude upper bound, but you don't actually know how much non-essential methionine gets converted, so you can't actually say anything besides that. the amount of cysteine you need to block conversion could very well be half of that. worse, if you go back to the first study, it mentions that they don't know that the amount of methionine cited is truly sufficient for what i'm measuring - they explicitly poi\int out that that number may be insufficient to produce enough taurine and glutathione. so, you can only deduce that you need some amount that is less than 10.9 mg/kg of cysteine to block transsulfuration from occurring at levels that may or may not be sufficient to meet cysteine needs.

so, what's the right experiment, then, even if i can't find it?

what you should do if you want the answer i'm looking for is measure the maximum amount of methionine that gets converted to cysteine, and base your cysteine requirements on how much you observe your body transsulfurate. so, what you want to do is give the subject massive levels of methionine & serine with zero cysteine and zero cysteine derivatives and see where the breakpoint occurs. that will determine total dietary cysteine requirements, independent of methionine. i'd want to take that number and build an rdi for cysteine on it. then, i could subtract that out from the total sulfur requirements to get a methionine rdi.

the confusion is likely stemming from methionine being seen as essential and cysteine being seen as inessential. that may be technically true, in terms of the chemistry, but cysteine seems to be the more valuable chemical, so it should really be what the requirements are built around. methionine may be indispensable, but only at much lower levels, and only as an after thought, in the presence of sufficient cysteine.

so, i'm taking a giant step back and asking a different question - has anybody tried to measure how much total cysteine your body requires, independent of methionine? let me figure that out first...

so, the way that this has been approached up to now has generally been to look at the two of them as "sulfur containing amino acids" and try to determine the total amount of sulfur required by the body. as methionine can convert to cysteine, but cysteine cannot convert back to methionine, and specifically cannot convert to sam, methionine is labeled as "essential", while cysteine is not. unfortunately, cysteine requirements are then generally approached with the intent to minimize methionine requirements by "sparing" them, which is really a blocking process - what di buono 2 really does is determine how much cysteine you need to take before your body decides it has enough that it can stop converting methionine to cysteine, but it doesn't tell us how much cysteine we need, altogether, if we aim to minimize our methionine intake to methylation and stop transsulfuration from occurring, altogether. so, this is ultimately a very conservative argument that ignores the implication that we may have evolved these pathways - we transsulfurate in only one direction - for a good reason, and that maybe excess cysteine is a better idea than excess methionine because of it. as mentioned, excess homocysteine is bad news for your arteries; loading up on cysteine seems like a better idea. yet, it means that we need to ensure we get enough methionine in it's own right, too, because it remains essential, in the form of sam.

the second question - how much cysteine we need, altogether, if we aim to minimize our methionine intake to methylation and stop transsulfuration from occurring, altogether - is the one i'm seeking an answer to, and it doesn't seem to be a question that has been asked. rather, the question that has been asked is the third one, "what is the minimum methionine requirements in the presence of sufficient cysteine, whatever the latter is",  and we have two answers:

- 10.1 mg/kg (di buono 2 ) & 10.4 mg/kg (eu)

these are relatively close, but let's take the bigger number. then,

methionine: 10.4*70 = 728 mg

to go back to the second question, then, the bounds are 4.1 mg/kg (eu) and 10.9 mg/kg (di buono 2 ). 10.9 is explicitly an upper bound, although they acknowledge that the upper bound may not be sufficient. i've previously calculated that 100 mg/day is a reasonable target for taurine production, so that should be added to the derived upper limit, whatever it's determined to be. so, these numbers are in truth only marginally useful. if nobody wants to ask the question i'm asking, what else can we do?

one thing we could do is look at human breast milk for clues. 

i've found two studies, both of which determine that there is more cysteine than methionine in breast milk, which suggests that humans have indeed evolved these pathways in some sort of complicated manner; it doesn't seem to be an accident that we only transsulfurate in one direction, given that our mothers give us an excess of cysteine, and just enough methionine to act as a methyl donor. the two studies provide ratios of 1.25 and 1.42. while an upper bound of 1.5 is nice and round, i am already exaggerating by using 70 mg/kg, so let's take an average instead. then, (1.25 + 1.42)/2 = 1.335 and, adding in the 100 mg/day for taurine (https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/10/taurine-is-something-that-im-sort-of.html):

cysteine: 10.4*1.335*70 + 100 = 1071.88

in total, that would be: (1071.88 + 728)/70 =  25.71 mg/kg

this number is higher than any of the numbers presented, except the numbers in breast milk. however, note that (1071.88 + 728)/50 = 35.9976, so a more realistic body weight estimate takes me much closer to the sulfur levels in breast milk, which are no doubt way more than enough. at 125%, that's 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/50 = 44.997 mg/kg, which is approaching the upper limit in the next section; 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/55 = 40.9063636364, 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/60 = 37.4975, 1.25*(1071.88 + 728)/65 = 34.6130769231.

after much hair pulling, i believe this is sufficient.

upper limit:

this article sets it at 46 mg/kg:

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/150/Supplement_1/2606S/5913294

1.5*46*50/728 ~ 474%

.5*46*50/728 ~ 158%

i'm going to use the same ratio for cysteine.

1.5*46*50/1072 ~ 322%

.5*46*50/1072 ~ 107%

so,

methionine (728 mg):

per meal: >50, <158

total: >150, <474

cysteine (1072, includes taurine + glutathione):

per meal: >50, <107

total: > 150, <322

methionine

water - 0

=============

raspberry - ?. raspberries have very low amounts of amino acids, low enough that nobody bothered measuring it, or that it couldn't be measured. i have not been able to find data, but it's minimal across the board.

guava -  16*.3 = 4.8

banana  -   9

strawberry  -  2

avocado  -  57

kiwi  -  17

soy - 16*4 = 64

ice cream - 81*.825 = 66.825

yogurt - 169*.5 = 84.5

yeast - 184*5/20 = 46

vector cereal -  

all bran cereal -  234*.45 = 105.3

wheat bran -  234*.07 = 16.38

sunflower seeds - 494*.08 = 39.52

flax -  370*.12 = 44.4

algal oil -  1020*.1922*.0135 = 2.646594

===============

100*(4.8 + 9 + 2 + 57 + 17 + 64 + 66.825 + 84.5 + 46 + 105.3 + 16.3 + 39.52 + 44.4 + 2.64659)/728 = 76.8257678571

cysteine

the usda has 0 for cysteine in soy milk, but that seems to be wrong. here is a different source:

h ttp s : / / w w w . r e s e a r c h g  a t e . n e t / fi g u r e / D i e t a ry -  so u r c e s - o f - c y s t e i ne _ tb l 1 _2 2 3 9 5 9 3 0 5

water - 0

=============

raspberry - ?. raspberries have very low amounts of amino acids, low enough that nobody bothered measuring it, or that it couldn't be measured. i have not been able to find data, but it's minimal across the board.

guava -  ?

banana  -   11

strawberry  -  6

avocado  -  41

kiwi  -  21

soy - 113*1.6 = 180.8

ice cream - 29*.825 = 23.925 

yogurt - 52*.5 = 26

yeast - 102*5/20 = 25.5

vector cereal -  

all bran cereal -  371*.45 = 166.95

wheat bran -  371*.07 = 25.97

sunflower seeds - 451*.08 = 36.08

flax -  340*.12 = 40.8

algal oil -  1020*.1922*.0062 = 1.2154728

===============

100*(11 + 6 + 41 + 21 + 180.8 + 23.925 + 26 + 25.5 + 166.95 + 25.97 + 36.08 + 40.8 + 1.21547)/1072 = 56.5522826493

methionine + cysteine

met: (4.8 + 9 + 2 + 57 + 17 + 64 + 66.825 + 84.5 + 46 + 105.3 + 16.3 + 39.52 + 44.4 + 2.64659) = 559.29159

cys: (11 + 6 + 41 + 21 + 180.8 + 23.925 + 26 + 25.5 + 166.95 + 25.97 + 36.08 + 40.8 + 1.21547) = 606.24047

tot: 728 + 1071.88  = 1799.88,

(559.29159 + 606.24047)/1799.98 = 0.64752500583

....but i'm not measuring this. 

i have a lengthy summary for the sulfur amino acids that i'm almost ok with, i just need to finish reading through the articles i've put on my plate before i decided i'm done and give it a post.