The Essential Nutrient Your Tracking App Does Not Have A Row For
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People who eat plant-based tend to be the best-informed eaters in any room. B12 supplemented, iron watched with vitamin C alongside, algae oil for the long-chain omegas, protein comfortably over target. The bloodwork usually reflects that.
And then two lines come back flagged — ALT and AST — while everything that was being tracked looks excellent.
Auditing a list that is missing a row
The natural response is to go back through the log looking for the mistake. The problem with that exercise is that the nutrient in question is usually not in the log, because most tracking apps do not have a field for it.
Choline is an essential nutrient with a formal adequate intake — roughly 425 mg a day for women and 550 mg for men. Population surveys consistently find most adults fall well under it, and the diets that fall furthest under are the ones built deliberately around plants.
Not through carelessness. The three richest sources in the food supply are egg yolk, liver and beef. Remove all three and no plant food quietly replaces them at that scale. Soya, cruciferous vegetables and beans contribute, but hitting the number becomes difficult on purpose, let alone by accident.
Why it shows up specifically on a liver panel
Fat cannot drain out of liver tissue. It has to be packaged into a transport particle and exported through the bloodstream, and the body builds that packaging from choline. Short on material, the fat stays in the tissue — which is why the consequence appears on the two lines that report how the liver itself is doing, and nowhere else on the panel.
On dose, honestly
Liver formulas typically list choline at around 50 mg. That is not a day's requirement, and any label implying otherwise is misleading. A dosed amount closes a gap alongside the three other pathways the organ needs — rebuilding glutathione from NAC, draining through bile, and protecting cells with milk thistle. It is not a replacement for changing the food.
See Nordvia Complete Liver Support
General health information, not medical advice. Abnormal liver chemistry should always be evaluated by a doctor.