the daily recommended intake of choline is 550 mg/day for grown men. the usda gives dramatically different numbers for men and women, and i wonder if that is reasonable or ultimately just sexist bullshit; i don't particularly see why men would require higher levels of neurotransmitters than women, unless it's intended to counteract the retarding effects of the testosterone?

i actually don't know whether i should be looking at male or female numbers, but i'm going to aim for the higher number and suggest ciswomen do, as well.

i eat my eggs whole & fried, and i get the extra large variety, indicating i should get about 150 mg each. so, on days that i eat four eggs (1-2 times a week), i will easily blow by this with 4*150 = 600 mg.

i can get about 90 mg from a serving of salami. i think. this is variable, as salami is a strange idea, conceptually. that's probably an average.  i should also get about 10 mg from the bread (pumpernickel, toasted) and another 10 mg from the cheese. so, that would mean i'm getting over 700 mg when i make salami & eggs. if my sole concern was choline, that would be a great meal. in fact, it's a great meal, anyways - so long as you understand how your body creates and converts cholesterol (note: it's probably not what you think, and you should blame the msm for it, certainly.).

what about my pasta meals?

well, i should get about 30 mg from the pasta, 10 mg from the tomato, 10 mg from the red pepper, 90 mg from the salami, 20 mg from the caesar salad dressing (which i use as pasta sauce. ie. a lot.) and about 75 from the cheese. so, that's 235 to start - but i only eat half of it a day, remember. so, that's only around 110.

so, clearly my pasta meal has much less choline than my egg meal, but we can store choline. so, what is the weekly amount?

(2*700 + 5*110)/7 = (1950)/7 ~ 280.

hrmmn.

what am i getting from my fruit?

banana - 15 mg
strawberries - 5 mg
raspberries - 2 mg
blueberries - 2 mg
kiwi - 10 mg
cherry ice cream - 15 mg
soy milk - 60 mg
apple juice  - 10 mg
===============
~120

there's also about 6 mg of choline in a cup of coffee, and considering that i drink around 10 "cups" of coffee (which are very small things.) a day, with chocolate soy milk, i must be getting 50 mg on average, anyways.

so, that takes me up to 450, which is still a little low, although above the rdi for women. i'm probably doing better than most people. but, the difference in the meals - 870 v 280 - is kind of startling. and, a big part of it is coffee. oddly.

if i ate the whole plate of pasta, i'd be at around 550, which is actually spot on.

choline is actually something that i designed my diet around, as i've been aware of the need to ensure proper daily intake for a long time. i used to eat eggs more often; i knew that i was over-emphasizing the eggs for both the choline and the a when i brought in the pasta, but i was mostly concerned about c, and actually about gaining some weight. i calculated everything with the idea of eating a full plate of pasta, and that seems to have backfired on me when i cut the total amount i was eating down to a half a plate because....i just couldn't eat that much. yeah, i changed my diet to gain weight and then ended up cutting it in half because i couldn't eat it all. in hindsight, it was kind of pointless. i didn't recalculate anything, and it's clear that i should have - i cut some of my vitamin intake in half. it seems like i should add some choline to my pasta now, too, doesn't it?

or, should i go back to the more egg-heavy diet, and replace the pasta with what was there before, namely a combination of tomato sandwiches and salami melts?

how many days do i need to eat eggs for to get the weekly amount of choline?

(n*700 + (7-n)*110)/7 > (550-120) <---->
700n + 770 - 110n > 7*430 <--->
590n > 2240 <--->
n > 3.79

so, if i switched to eating eggs 4 days a week and pasta 3 days a week, which is closer to what i had when i built this, i would get up past that rdi. but, i'd lose all of those pasta calories - which i felt i needed because i was just chronically underweight, and unable to build up fat in places that women have it.

how much do i have to add to the pasta meal to fix this?

(1400 + 5(x+110))/7 > 380 <--->
x > 142

that's a lot, more than bringing back the broccoli (which i took out due to e-coli issues) is going to get me. broccoli would appear to be a little overrated, in terms of nutritional content. i get the c elsewhere. it didn't seem necessary.

what if i eat eggs three days a week instead?

(2100 + 4(x+110))/7 > 380 <---> x >30

that's more along the lines of what i can do with broccoli.

i'm going to think about this.

and, yes, dramatically reducing total caloric intake does have the side-effect of reducing vitamin intake, which is something you need to watch for if you're going to play with low total calories like this. as with the a, i should have paid closer attention to this, but i kind of decided it was fine - and it was, until i cut my calories down. the fact that my bmi is low should reduce my rdis for most things, but choline is one of the things where you probably want to get above it, regardless.

in practice, i often end up buying too many eggs and eating them up at the end of the month (something that's going to happen again; i've got a dozen eggs with an expiry in the first week of august, so i'm going to need to put the pasta on hold and eat them soon - something i do regularly. i'm evaluating a model that i don't hold to as well as i'd like to.).

if i eat eggs every second day then, over a two-week period, i'd average:

(7*700 + 7*110)/14 + 120+ 50= 7(810)/14 + 170 = 810/2 + 170 = 405 + 170 = 575

....and, that's what i actually built my diet around before it got distorted.

yeah.

how'd i manage to do this right, then do it wrong without realizing it? for years?

i guess when i started making the pasta and realizing i couldn't eat the whole plate, the alternation turned into every three days; instead of eating a plate of pasta on monday and eggs on tuesday, i ended up eating half on monday, finishing it on tuesday and then moving to the eggs on wednesday. and, that just became normal without me ever really sitting down and working it out.

then, because i would make a few days worth of pasta at a time rather than just a day, i ended up not wanting it to sit in the fridge while i alternated with the eggs. so, i would make the eggs after i got through a batch of pasta, and the period between pasta runs and eggs got stretched out even further. and, then the size of the batches got bigger. you get the point - it was this incremental thing that happened without thinking it through, and that was supposed to work itself out and then basically didn't.

it's time to reverse that and get back to the diet i actually designed, but is pasta the best way to do that?

comparing the pasta to the tomato sandwiches,

bread <-----> pasta*
mayo <------> caesar*
tomato <------> tomato
cheese <-------> cheese*
salami <--------> salami
nothing <--------> green pepper*

* increases in calories

the pasta has a lot more calories, clearly, but the only major difference nutritionally was the introduction of a green pepper. i mean, that was kind of the idea - i just took what i was eating anyways and embiggened it to increase the calorie intake. do you see what i did? do you get it?

however, i then went and cut it in half, thinking it was temporary, and i'd eventually get used to it (at this point, it is clear that i won't - that is just too much food for me). i'm probably still getting more calories from the pasta than the bread, and the caesar than the mayo, and the much larger amount of cheese, and the peppers are definitely a net benefit in terms of c and a, but i actually reduced both the amount of tomato and the amount of salami in half. that is, i'd have a whole tomato when i made a sandwich; now, i have half. and, the amount of salami i'd prepare for a sandwich is the same as the amount i put into the pasta, which was intentional - but now halved.

so, how much choline do i get in a tomato sandwich, then?

bread - 10
cheese - 10
mayo - < 5
salami - 90
tomato - 10
hot sauce - <5
================
~125

125 < 220. but, 125 > 110.

but, i can actually make a tomato sandwich and eat it without having to put it in the fridge, afterwards and finish it later. usually, anyways.

and, what have i lost? the answer is a half a red pepper a day, which i could just as happily use to make omelettes, instead. and some calories, which i'm just not eating anyways.

yeah.

so, it seems like the switch i made however many years ago hasn't worked out, in hindsight. i'm going back to my old diet, which is to alternate between eggs and tomato sandwiches on a day-to-day basis.