Not all Protein is the same! Here's why

Not all Protein is the same! Here's why

Protein is not just protein. For example, did you know that 30 grams of protein from one food could build less muscle than 30 grams of protein from another food? In a person who requires a minimum of 50 grams of protein a day for healthy body function, 50 grams of protein from one source might not actually meet their protein needs. This is important because the body requires protein for various functions to stay healthy, from building bones to making hormones.

Data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey suggests that 40% of Americans aren't even hitting their minimum protein requirements.

Protein Quality and Digestibility

How can 30 grams of protein not be 30 grams of protein? Well, we absorb and utilize certain proteins better than others. There's a scoring system called DIAAS, recognized by the FAO, that tells you the quality of a protein. Animal proteins like cow's milk, boiled eggs, beef, and chicken breast are all considered high-quality proteins because they are very digestible and have high amounts of all the essential amino acids.

Plant protein powders like soy or pea are of a lower rank but are still good quality proteins.

Another good rank protein is baked chickpeas. However, many plant proteins, such as rice, lentils, peanuts, almonds, and wheat, are all considered poor-quality proteins.

Essential Amino Acids

People often just assume 18 grams of protein from chicken is the same as 18 grams of protein from lentils, a peanut butter sandwich, or some eggs. But here's something you might find surprising: 50 grams of protein per day is the minimum protein requirement for adults. If you look here, most of these 103 countries get most of their protein from plants and they're hitting their 50 grams a day just fine.

However, plant proteins aren't digested as well. So, if you incorporate the digestibility of the proteins, far more countries are just under the 50-gram requirement.

If you account for the fact that many plant proteins don't provide enough of one or more of the essential amino acids and therefore that protein can't be fully utilized, it turns out that none of these 103 countries are hitting the 50-gram protein requirement.

These countries could certainly hit 50 grams of utilizable protein by simply eating a lot more plant protein. In developed countries, we simply eat a bunch of protein in total, so this is less of an issue. However, research suggests that protein quality may still matter. In a study looking at the height of men in 105 countries, they found that in developing countries, the height of men correlated with protein quantity. Unsurprisingly, the challenge in developing countries is having access to enough protein. However, in developed countries, where people eat plenty of protein, the quality of the protein they were eating is what mattered for height.

Protein Quality in Diets

“In 15 public schools in Brooklyn, we will be instituting Meatless Mondays.”~Mayor de Blasio

Let's hope Mayor de Blasio at least adds an extra soy protein shake to lunches on Monday. Especially considering another March 2021 study looking at 187 Polish children found that children not eating meat, a high-quality protein, were three centimeters shorter and had weaker bones. Protein quality comes down to amino acids. We don't just need protein; we need all nine essential amino acids that the protein source provides, and they each have important functions.

Just to name two: leucine is a very important amino acid for muscle growth, and tryptophan is a precursor for making the hormones melatonin and serotonin. So DIAAS scores consider how much and how absorbable the essential amino acids in a food are.

Comparing Protein Sources

Here's an easy example: say you're trying to gain muscle in the gym. Both leucine and essential amino acid content are important for that. Soy and pea protein powders do have a decent amount of well-digested amino acids, but still, to match the leucine content and essential amino acid content of 25 grams of whey protein, you need 40 grams of soy protein or 38 grams of pea protein.

This protein quality issue may be why this study found that women not eating meat have less muscle mass than women who do eat meat, even though they ate the same total grams of protein.

"I ate my 10-15 eggs a day. You know, I had my 250 grams of protein a day, but as I got older, I recognized the fact that you really don't have to get your protein from meat. So we start going more in the direction of the vegetarian kind of a diet.” ~Arnold Schwarzenegger

Of course, plant foods have various benefits other than just protein. But the recent very popular film "The Game Changers," backed by big names like Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron, makes it sound like you can get all the protein and the essential amino acids you need from only plant-based foods without much effort at all. For example, one cup of cooked lentils or a peanut butter sandwich has about as much protein as three ounces of beef or three large eggs.

Protein Intake Recommendations

Recent research says the old 50 grams of protein a day recommendation was way too low, and that a 62-kilogram or 135-pound person needs at least 75 to 100 grams of high-quality protein per day. So if you eat 75 grams of protein from animal foods, then you've met your protein requirements because most animal proteins have a DIAAS score of 100 or higher.

However, since lentils, for example, have a DIAAS score of only 54, 75 grams of protein from lentils would only cover a little over half of your protein requirement.

But nobody eats just lentils, and you can combine foods to make up for the essential amino acids other foods lack. It's really good that people typically eat a variety of proteins in the same day because if you're not getting enough of one amino acid, you can't properly utilize the other amino acids.

Practical Examples

Cornflakes cereal has a very poor DIAAS score of 19 and it is very lacking in the amino acid lysine. However, milk has a very high DIAAS score of 114 and has plenty of extra lysine. So if you eat your cornflake cereal with milk like most people do, then the DIAAS of your breakfast is actually 89. Also, eating lentils with your millet will improve the protein quality of the millet. But unfortunately, as this 2021 paper shows, as the percentage of plant protein in the diet goes up, the overall protein quality of the diet goes down.

In this study, even athletes who were following a vegetarian diet didn't end up getting the minimum recommended amount of protein.

The vegetarian athletes were getting enough protein in terms of total protein, but they only utilized 89% of the protein they ate. So they missed the lower end of their protein target by 10 grams and the upper end of the target by 22 grams of utilizable protein.

Now, 89% is actually not bad, but as vegetarians, they would be eating high-quality proteins like dairy or eggs. So if they were vegan, we would expect their overall protein to be a lot lower than 89% utilizable.

The solution for these athletes is quite simple: they could just add another scoop of soy protein powder a day. But it was surprising to me that even these athletes, who I imagine would be very calculated with their protein, could be missing their recommended protein intake.

The Right Knowledge and Diligence

With the right knowledge and diligence, yes, you can meet your protein requirements on a vegetarian or vegan diet. But you need to make sure to pick the right proteins. What are you eating? Peanut butter? Let's go back to this example from "The Game Changers." One cup of cooked lentils or a peanut butter sandwich has about as much protein as three ounces of beef or three large eggs. So, yeah, technically you get the same grams of crude protein from a peanut butter sandwich, a cup of lentils, a three-ounce steak, or three eggs. But let's look a little closer. Here are the DIAAS scores of these foods: boiled eggs are 113, beef is 112, lentils are 54, roasted peanuts are 43, and wheat bread is 29.

Wheat and peanuts are both limiting in lysine, so even if you combine them, their DIAAS score couldn't be higher than 43. So let's say you start off with a peanut butter sandwich. Here are the amino acids you're getting. We'll want to make up for the poor lysine content of the peanut butter sandwich, so you can add some lentils, which have plenty of lysine. This will have increased the overall protein quality of the meal, but now you're still quite low in methionine. So then you add some edamame, boiled soybeans, because they're one of the best plant sources of methionine. But even then, you're not getting that much methionine relative to all the other amino acids.

So that's the amino acids you're getting from 54 grams of protein from these plant foods. Now compare this to what you get from just eating three eggs and a four and a half ounce skirt steak.

At first glance, you can see that with the plant-based meal, you have to eat 245 more calories to get fewer essential amino acids, and you get a better balance of the amino acids from the animal proteins.

So the point is, if you're not eating meat, you'll need to get a variety of plant proteins every day. Dr. Lane Norton did his PhD dissertation on the critical role of the essential amino acid leucine in building muscle. He discussed in this video how, despite "The Game Changers" being all about athletes and performance, it glossed over this very important topic. So with 54 grams of protein from steak and eggs, you're getting 5.3 grams of leucine, but only 3.7 grams from the plant-based meal. This means you'd have to eat almost 1200 calories of these plant foods to match the leucine content of the steak and eggs meal, which is only 570 calories.

“You can get enough protein from vegan sources, but if you're using whole food vegan sources, you will have to eat a ton of them.”~Dr. Lane Norton

“Something like 59% of children globally aren't given eggs, seafood, dairy, or meat. The WHO says the best foods for them are meat, eggs, dairy, and seafood. While they specify high-quality or nutrient-dense in the text, in the footnotes they clarify these recommendations.”~Dr. Peter Ballerstedt

Expert Insights

I had a chat with forage agronomist and animal nutritionist Dr. Peter Ballerstedt, who has been a key voice on this protein quality topic. His detailed presentation on YouTube called "When is Protein Not Protein?" sparked my interest in this subject. In his presentation, he delves into important nuances. For example, processing plant foods can lower the protein quality of that plant food. We don't just eat wheat; we process that wheat into bread, which worsens the protein quality.

“Making whole wheat bread cuts that value in half because processing inactivates or makes lysine unavailable, which is already the limiting nutrient.”~Dr. Peter Ballerstedt

Animal vs. Human Nutrition

Interestingly, human nutritionists don't fuss too much about protein quality or specific amino acids. But for an animal nutritionist like Dr. Ballor, paying attention to protein quality is just common sense. After all, animal nutritionists have been balancing the rations given to pigs based not just on protein but amino acids for almost 40 years. In fact, the FAO has suggested that maybe we should put individual amino acids on food nutrient labels.

Global Protein Supply

This protein quality discussion is important not just because of the recent popularity of plant-based diets, but also because, as Dr. Ballor points out, more than 60% of our current global protein supply is already plant-based.

“Humanity gets less of its protein supply from all animal source foods combined than it does from cereals.”~Dr. Peter Ballerstedt

Developed countries certainly eat much more animal-source foods, so you might think protein quality is an issue for developing countries. However, data from 2015 indicates that 40% of Americans are not getting the minimum recommended amount of protein, based on the old low recommendation of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

As we discussed, researchers now say we need at least 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram.

The 2015 data only looks at total protein, not accounting for the fact that some proteins are of lower quality than others. So, we would expect that more than 40% of Americans are not hitting their minimum protein requirements. Why would normal people, not involved in bodybuilding or competitive sports, need that much protein? This is an important question and it deserves a thorough answer. Protein is essential for numerous bodily functions beyond just muscle building. It plays a role in maintaining healthy skin, hair, and nails, producing enzymes and hormones, and supporting the immune system. Ensuring adequate and high-quality protein intake is crucial for overall health and well-being, regardless of one's level of physical activity.

Conclusion

Understanding protein quality and ensuring an adequate intake of essential amino acids is vital for everyone, especially as dietary trends shift towards more plant-based options. While it is entirely possible to meet protein requirements on a vegetarian or vegan diet, it requires careful planning and a variety of protein sources. By being mindful of the types of protein consumed and how they are combined, individuals can achieve their nutritional goals and maintain optimal health.

Source: What I’ve Learned YouTube Channel

Video Duration: 14 minutes 12 seconds

• 00:00 - Why is protein not protein?

• 1:26 - People don’t get enough “utilizable” protein

• 3:12 - Different proteins, different amino acids.

• 4:17 - Plant Based Film “The Game Changers”

• 4:58 - You probably need more protein than you think.

• 6:16 - Even athletes can miss their protein target

• 7:34 - Why 18g of protein is not 18g of protein.

• 9:12 - The amino acid for building muscle

• 9:56 - Kids need high quality protein

• 11:39 - Why is this topic even important?

Creator notes:

At 3:00, I say a study "found that children not eating meat, a high quality protein, were 3cm shorter...," but I should have said "children not eating animal sourced foods."

Vegetarians did not suffer the same detriments to height or bone mineral density as vegans. (Hence, onscreen you see that I only highlighted " vegans were shorter..." ) I tried to soften

my words and phrase this in a way that didn't sound like an attack on vegans, but by using the phrasing "not eating meat," I unfortunately included vegetarians as well. Pardon the error.

In any case, this result shouldn't be that surprising considering as discussed at 6:52, milk and eggs are high quality proteins that vegetarians would be consuming.