From my reading I don’t think it is possible, but I’m open to learning how one can achieve a zero carbohydrate diet using only plant foods. @Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com has graciously offered to look into the matter.
Motivation - Why zero carb matters:
- Carbohydrates end up in the blood stream as glucose
- blood glucose is a direct driver of insulin
- persistently elevated insulin is a serious health concern
- cancers can only metabolize glucose, and cannot perform oxidative phosphorylation - i.e. they only run on glucose, so carbohydrates feed cancers.
why chronic hyperinsulinemia is bad:
- type 2 diabetes
- high blood pressure
- atherosclerosis
- pcos
- visceral fat
- ectopic fat (i.e. snoring)
Functional differences between pbf and abf:
- plant sterols interfere with human cholesterol signaling, we are made of cholesterol, this leads to higher inflammation and lower ldl (that is actually a bad thing)
- lectins and inflammation - most pbf have lectins inside of them, these lectins bind to cells throughout the body which leads to autoimmune responses (from mild inflammation, to full anaphylactic shock)
nice to have’s on a zero carb diet:
- local food that doesn’t have to be shipped around the world
- regenerative agriculture, there is no top soil without ruminants
- farming without external inputs like industrial fertilizer
- food without pesticide residue
One of my concerns for trying to do low-carb with only plants would be vitamin B12. Perhaps the first step to going low-carb entails eating only the parts of the plants that are above-ground (i.e. no roots and tubers) and that aren’t fruit. Would this enable vegans to go below 20g/day, or would the nutritional requirements result in a higher dose of carbohydrates no matter what?
Diet doctor has a whole section on vegan keto and they are about 150g a day. It would be challenging to maintain nutritional ketosis over 20g/day.
I’m not sure it can be done
I suppose you could call fasting a form of vegan keto, but it’s not sustainable.
150g is better than 300g a day, but it’s not exactly low-carb either, plus I suspect that the commensurate intake of oxalates and various other plant toxins would cause issues down the road.
The consumption of fat is a requirement for the effective absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K. People on vegan keto would still be consuming all three macronutrients leading to the continued activation of the Randall Cycle (not a cycle), which means they will still have higher levels of inflammation. Since the fat being consumed in question would be mostly polyunsaturated and of plant origin, as you mentioned in the OP it will be more inflammatory, even if we avoided all industrially refined oils.
I’m really not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. It looks to me like a choice of your long term health or your ideology, but not both.
Yeah on balance of what I know so far, it isn’t a good tradeoff.
Especially given that the only demonstrated benefit is philosophical.