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All Vegan Protein is NOT the Same! (And How to Get Enough of Each Type)
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May 3, 2024
If you're a vegan, but you've never heard of a complete protein, you probably should watch this video. Most people focus on getting enough protein, but many of us don't get enough variety in our protein sources, which can lead to a deficiency of one or more amino acids (which can cause health problems). Disclaimer: I'm not a nutritionist, but I do have a biology degree. The information I present here is based on both my education and the research I've done on my own as a vegan. Read this on my blog: https://www.stephsunshine.com/vegan-life/vegan-protein-variety Find me on IG: https://bit.ly/2T0iN0E Or my other channel where I occasionally put out soca mixes: https://bit.ly/2Z2KSIy Links: The 30 Best Vegan Sources of Methionine: https://vegfaqs.com/vegan-food-sources-methionine/ The 30 Best Vegan Sources of Lysine: https://vegfaqs.com/vegan-lysine-food-sources/
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0:00
How do you get enough protein if you're vegan
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You need 60 grams of protein a day. You must get 120 grams of protein every day
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I've been a vegetarian since I was 10, which is long enough to know that if you're vegan or vegetarian
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everybody wants to know where you get your protein from. I talk to other vegans and they're always asking where can I get more protein
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Everything is focused on how much protein we're getting. It's true that some plant-based foods have a lot less protein than meat or milk or whatever
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So we do need to be more mindful of how much total protein we're getting
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But what I don't hear anybody discussing is what kind of protein we're getting
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And it's actually really important because not all protein is the same
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So the term protein is kind of thrown around out there as just a nutrient that we need
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but I think most people don't really understand what a protein actually is
1:09
I mean, people think about protein as something you need to build muscle, and protein is used
1:16
for muscles, but it's also used for so many other things. So, for example, the protein keratin, you probably have heard of, it's in your hair, it's also
1:27
in your skin and your nails. Your skin also has collagen and elastin, which you've probably
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heard of as well. Those are both proteins, and they're used to give your skin its elasticity
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and useful look. Proteins are also in our organs. They're in our bones. They help us see
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Antibodies are a type of protein, so they're helpful in our immune response for getting rid of
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things that shouldn't be in our body like viruses and bacteria. Protein is a string of smaller units called amino acids
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So the amino acids is basically the building block of a protein, just like letters are the building block of a word
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There are 20 total amino acids that our body needs to build protein
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When these amino acids get chained together in a specific sequence, it creates a protein
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So when we get protein from food, it's in the form of whatever preconstructed protein that plant or animals
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used in its body. As humans, we can't use that protein in its current form. So our
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digestive system breaks the protein down into its building blocks or the amino acids. Then
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the body sends those amino acids to the liver and it starts producing these proteins
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that are used for your hair, skin, nails, eyes, immune system, etc., etc. All the
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information that's needed to build each protein that we produce is stored in
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in our DNA. So each of those proteins require a certain number and a certain sequence of amino acids So it just like following a recipe Because of that just getting enough protein is not enough We need to make sure that we getting enough of each amino acid
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So, for example, let's say you want to bake a cake, okay. But instead of saying I need flour and I need sugar, et cetera, et cetera
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I just say I need ingredients. And my significant other brings me tomatoes and milk
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I'm not going to be able to make a cake with that. So that's what happens when we just eat protein
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Particularly as vegans, we need to be more specific than that. Because if we run out of a specific type of amino acid
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then we are not going to be able to build any of the proteins that require that amino acid
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And that could affect anything from your hair to your immune system. So I said that affects vegans more
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Here's why. 20 amino acids that we need, our body can produce 11 of them. We do not need to get them
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from food. But the other nine, we do need to get from our food. At one point in time, humans could
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produce all 20, but as these other nine became very plentiful in our diets, we essentially
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lost that ability to produce those nine ourselves. So the nine amino acids that we cannot produce
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are referred to as essential amino acids. Those are histidine, isolucine, leucine, lysine, methyanine, phenylalanine, threanine
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triptophan, and valine. So when a food contains all nine of those amino acids in decent quantities, it's called a complete protein
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And pretty much all animal sources of protein are complete proteins, but most vegan proteins are not
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So as vegans, even if we're getting enough total protein, we need to make sure that there's a variety in our protein sources
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So that we're getting enough of each amino acid. There are a few
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Plant complete proteins Kinoa hemp seeds chia seeds soy amaranth buckwheat Spiralina and nutritional yeast
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So adding those into your diet can be helpful wherever you're able to incorporate them
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But since the bulk of the protein that we're eating is probably going to be from incomprehensive
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protein sources we need to be aware of which amino acids we might be missing so we can eat
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more foods with those specific amino acids. I see a lot of vegans getting all of their protein from a single source like beans and
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unfortunately when that happens you're going to be deficient in a specific amino acid
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So if you're only eating beans you're going to be deficient in methionine
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So to make up for that, you need to eat foods that are rich in methanine, such as rice
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nuts, seeds. So actually the traditional rice and beans, when you eat it together, it's a complete protein
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You don necessarily have to eat these foods with different amino acids at the same time though You just need to make sure that you getting enough of each in a day So how do we need to be eating to make sure that we getting enough of each amino acid The best thing that we can do is to combine different protein types
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Vegan protein is generally broken up into four sources. There's vegetables, legumes, which are beans, lentils, peas, peanuts, and there's nuts and seeds and grains
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Each one of these categories has its own weakness or deficiency in a specific amino acid
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So, for example, vegetables and legumes tend to be low in methyion
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So if you were getting most of your protein from vegetables and beans, for example
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then you would want to add more grains like bread, rice, pasta, or nuts and seeds into your diet
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Grains are low in lysine and threanine, and nuts and seeds are also low in lysine
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So if you're getting most of your protein from those sources, then you want to add more vegetables and specifically legumes into your diet because vegetables tend to not have as high of a protein content
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So if you're just balancing your diet that way, you should be good. But if you really want to go further and see if you're deficient in anything particular, there are a couple of
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couple different ways you can do that. The easiest is probably just to get a blood test. The blood
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test can tell you if you're deficient in any specific amino acid and then you can just do some
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research to find out which foods contain a lot of that amino acid so that you can start incorporating
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that into your diet. I actually found a blog that lists the 30 best foods for several specific
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amino acids. So I'll put a link to that in the description if you want to check that out
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if there's a specific amino acid that you need more of. If you can't get a blood test or you
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don't want to, you could also track your food throughout the day, let's say for a week
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and you can check to see how much of each amino acid that you're getting, and if it's
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sufficient for the recommended daily allowance, there are a lot of different sources online
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where you can find the recommended daily allowance for each amino acid. And you can find
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may vary so I would look at a couple different sources to get an idea of where you should be
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There are also apps where you could just input the food that you ate and it will give you all
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the nutrition data for it. However, I would say that these apps are only as good as the data
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that's in them. I tried an app called chronometer and I immediately noticed as soon as I put
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the first food in for the morning that the nutrition data was wrong. So, it's a
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It might be faster, but it also might not be accurate. So if you want to track your food
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I think the best way is to just write down everything you eat and the amount that you ate
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and check the protein content of whatever you ate. Then split everything into two columns
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You have the vegetables and legumes on this side and you have the seeds and nuts and grains on the other side because these two broad categories complement each other so whatever you low in over here you gonna get over here so you want to try to have some of each so it the afternoon right now
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I track my food for breakfast and lunch so you can see I put the vegetables and
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legumes here and the grains nuts and seeds here and I don't know if you can see
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these numbers here but if you add this up there's 23 grams on this side and
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seven grams on this side although I did put chia seeds on this side over here and it is a
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complete protein so it could kind of go half and half but either way I am getting a lot of my
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proteins today from grains nuts and seeds and not enough from the vegetables and legumes. I did
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eat a lot of vegetables but vegetables don't necessarily have a lot of protein so that tells
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me that tonight I should probably have some beans or lentils for dinner to get more on
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this side over here. It might seem a little daunting to have to pay that much attention to
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what you're eating every day. But once you do this for a couple weeks, you're going to be
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able to do most of it in your head. You're going to have an awareness of which category your
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foods are falling into and you're just going to know when you need to eat more of one or the
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other. Once you start making those small changes to the way you eat, it's going to become a habit
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and it'll be easy. So if you're tracking your proteins and you're finding it hard to make these changes to your diet right away
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you can use a protein powder or something like that to supplement. This is one that I have from Whole Foods
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but you also need to check the amino acid profile, which is on the label here. This one has 1795 milligrams of lysine, which is almost a
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for an entire day for me. The threanine is more moderate, 860, so it's probably a little less
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than half of what I need. The methanine is much lower. It's 271 milligrams, and that's a much smaller
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percentage of what I need. However, I get plenty of my protein from grains and nuts and seeds
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so I get plenty of methyanine, and it's not really a problem. But this protein powder is probably
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not good for someone who gets most of their protein from beans and vegetables
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All right, that's all for me. Hopefully now you have a little bit better understanding of vegan protein and how to make
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sure you stay healthy on a vegan diet. Obviously, this is just one part of the whole nutritional picture as a vegan, but it was
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one part that I feel is really overlooked. If you want to see more like this, please hit subscribe and I will see you
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See you next time. Bye
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