Lysine is found in alfalfa sprouts, apples, apricots, beets, carrots, celery, cucumbers,figs, grapes, papayas, pears beets, carrots, celery, cucumber, dandelion greens, parsley, potatoes, spinach, turnip greens, sunflower seeds and soybean sprouts. Probably found in many other foods as well. A wide variety of fruit, veg, grains, nuts as natural as possible is well to eat!

KAL brand Nutrional Yeast Flakes: Two heaping tablespoons / Lysine 704 mg
http://www.myvitanet.com/nutyeasflak.html

Twin Labs Nutrional Yeast powder: Tablespoonful / L-Lysine 560 mg
http://www.vitanetonline.com/description/.../Nutritional-Yeast-Powder/






Foods with highest ratio of Lysine:Tryptophan in Vegetables and Vegetable Products. Not sure how to use the info!
http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-011990500100000000000-1.html

An interesting food! Moringa oleifera

Good finds crater.

Green, how much daily Lysine is required for your subject?

Years ago nutritional yeast (yellow engevita flakes) were all the rage. It was easy to add one or two teaspoons to a glass of orange juice, or a salad.

Crater and Gordon,

From the best evidence that I can gather, it would seem necessary to find 600 mg of Lysine per day. The Brewer's Yeast could fulfill that, and it is possible to purchase it here in Taiwan, but it is an imported product. For a sealed can of it about a pint in size (contents settle, and are less than a pint, but I've never measured it), imported from France, it costs more than $12 US. At two heaping tablespoons per day, that would be a little pricey. Health is worth something though. Nevertheless, the Lysine supplements would be cheaper. One bottle of lysine is enough to last about three to four months (each tablet would be 1000 mg lysine). I haven't priced four bottles of it, but it is almost certain to be less than the roughly $360/yr for the yeast.

To help underscore the importance of those high-lysine legumes, let's take a quick look at the lysine from some of the foods crater mentioned.

Avocado: How much of this can you eat before reaching satiety? Avocado is very filling. I suspect it would be difficult to consume more than about three 100-gram servings in a day. That would be just over half of the daily requirement, and it's expensive.

Cucumber: Here in Asia, they sometimes fry this vegetable and put it on rice. The cooking process cooks it down a bit, so one could theoretically consume more of it. However, at 13 mg lysine per 100 grams of this, to meet 600 mg lysine, one would still need to cook up, and eat, 4600 grams of it per day. That's 4.6 kg!

Summer squash: This veggie does a little better. However, due to its high Vitamin A content, consuming large quantities of it could contribute to an overdose of Vitamin A. Just half a cup of squash is said to contain about 1000 mg of Vitamin A (and I have no idea how that translates into I.U.). I sometimes get a headache or sore eyes if I eat too much squash. Anyone else ever experience that?

Sunflower seeds: Again, this is a very concentrated food. It would be difficult to consume a full 100 grams of sunflower seeds in a day. If this were possible, it certainly looks like a good source of lysine.

These foods are available here. I have guesstimated that an average day, without meat or legumes, provides somewhere between one and two hundred milligrams of lysine on the local fare. However, perhaps if we were to concentrate on more avocado, squash, and sunflower seeds this could be doubled. It still seems like a stretch to me to consistently get a minimum of 600 mg per day. Apparently it is not a problem to get more--so we could take the diet up higher without injury (to a point I'm sure), but the body will not store the excess.

From that first list, given the situation here, the following are not options: alfalfa sprouts, apricots, figs, dandelion greens, potatoes, and soybean sprouts.

Thank you for the list, though! I appreciate the links as well, so that I can look up the information.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

PS -- In my "dairy days" I used to love putting food yeast on vanilla ice cream....mmm, mmm! I do like food yeast, but have had to wean myself of it and similar "luxuries" here.

Green, what's the weight of two spoonfuls of yeast?

That's a good question. I don't know the answer. I do know that yeast is not heavy when compared to its volume. Of all the foods I have packed into my luggage when traveling, flake yeast was definitely the lightest (i.e. required more space per pound). If you bring large amounts of it, it does add up, but just a spoonful? I have no idea.

There are at least two kinds, though. The one I described as imported from France is the flake variety. There is another one in powder form but I don't remember its price. It is also imported. I'm sure the powdered kind would be heavier.

From what crater posted, it would seem that of the flake yeast variety one would need about eight teaspoons of it for a daily dose, and perhaps just three teaspoons of the powdered variety--assuming that is the only difference between those brands. (And we don't have those brands here, naturally.)

I do wonder if Sarah comes back if she will find an answer here to her questions. I feel like I've adopted her topic!

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

There is a history and a current population being Vegan in Taiwan for centuries because of their religious Buddhist belief? Monks and nuns in Taiwan have done it for centuries.

Is there any documentation of lysine deficiencies in these stricted Buddhist believing people?

That's a good question. I know most of them use peanuts and soybeans, among other legumes. At some Buddhist restaurants here it is possible to order peanut tofu (tofu made from peanuts instead of from soybeans). It is good.

There are tribal groups in Taiwan who have the highest prevalence of G6PD disorder. They are not predominantly Buddhist, however. The Buddhists seem to be those of the Chinese people and of the Japanese descent (remnants from the Japanese occupation of Taiwan). I'm sure there must be some cases of the favism among Buddhists, but if there were any documentation of it, it would likely be in Chinese, which I do not read.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Green, let's consider Crater's post. I think we've arrived.


• If 100g sunflower seed furnishes 912mg lysine, then 65g of seeds will render the required 600mg.

Spread over two meals, 65 grams is not excessive, a little more than an ounce at each meal. If complemented by other lysine sources, even less.

• And it's quite possible one's protein requirement is lower if uncooked.

• A local health store sells engevita flakes for CDN $20.00/kg, Red Star Yeast @ $30.00/kg. If you stayed off ice cream, how long would a kilo last?

Small update here. Some good news and some bad. Let's get the bad out of the way first. I asked about the sunflower seeds yesterday, and was told they are off the list due to allergies. I had begun to have some very positive thoughts about sunflower seeds, only to be disappointed on that count.

Here's the good news, but still preliminary. It seems that Lamb's Quarters may be in Taiwan, especially in the sunny south. I have yet to see one. Inquiries were made with a biologist at a local university who claims the plant is in Taiwan, so we may be able to locate some. Having said that, I still have yet to see it, and errors in translation are possible. Apparently, three specimens were collected by someone else that I may be able to look at later today. (I would recognize it in a hurry if I had it in hand.)

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Well, they weren't Lamb's Quarters. Much more similar to some kind of milkweed with mini-dandelion style flowers, but not milky sap. Also, the leaves were much broader and larger than Lamb's Quarters. Oh well. I now begin to wonder if there hasn't been an error in translation. No one that I have talked to here knows what the plant is.

Found a place on eBay that sells the seeds and promotes the nutritional value of Lamb's Quarters. The seeds were cheap, too. I know Taiwan's laws, though, and it's a no-can-do. Sigh. If I don't find them here...

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.