Vegan Paleo

Since my recent foray into the paleolithic diet, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of keeping to a said diet and still staying vegan. The biggest problem as I see it would be in making certain you’re taking in enough essential amino acids to make up for the lack of meat. Obviously you could eat soy, but soy is the devil (doubly so if you’re going paleo) so that’s out. Using a bit of Google-Fu (aka Wikipedia in this case) you’ll find that the essential amino acids are: Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, Tryptophan, Valine, Histidine, Tyrosine, and Selenocysteine (with the last three not always actually essential). I’ve found the following vegan food sources that provide amino acids without violating the paleo principle:

Isoleucine – seaweed
Leucine – walnuts
Lysine – spinach
Methionine – garlic
Phenylalanine – banana
Threonine – apple
Tryptophan – banana
Valine – seaweed
Histidine – seaweed
Tyrosine – avoacdo
Selenocysteine – walnuts

The one that I can’t seem to get a straight answer about though is whether or not seaweed actually counts as paleo. Your thoughts?

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