- Ever wonder why Vegans have trouble gaining muscle?
- Ever wonder why nuts are not a great source of protein?
My Protein Quality Tool rates the protein quality in plain english for over 5000 foods! All protein is not created equally. The essential amino acid profile, the digestibility, and the macros of the nuts all factor in to determine how much you actually have to eat to get the equievelent of 30g high quality protein like that from isolated whey, eggs, or chicken breast.
Lets look at the example of peanuts, they have a *lot* of fat in them. “So what” you say, “its good fat”. None the fat provides a lot of calories, so much so that peanuts are only 11% protein. The next issue is the amino acid profile. Peanuts are lacking in lysine, in fact, peanuts only have 41% as much of lysine as chicken breast does which means you have to eat that much more peanuts to insure that you get sufficient amounts of this essential amino acid. Then there is the digestibility. Not all the protein in nuts can be digested, in fact, the PDCAAS of peanuts is only 0.52 which means you need to double the amount of nuts to get the protein you want. Add up the lysine shortage and the digestibility and you need to consume nearly 5x the protein with nuts than you would for something like nonfat milk or chicken.
To get 30 grams of high quality, usable protein you can either eat 120 calories worth of isolated whey or 5000 calories of peanuts!
Dont get upset, I’m not picking on nuts. I *know* you can combine complimentary foods to make up for the lysine deficiency. This is an educational tool to show things that you need to be aware of when choosing your protein sources.
Please help me this Protein Quality Tool better!
Please use my Protein Quality Tool and give me feedback so I can make it better!
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