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.