Where Do You Get Your Protein On A Plant Base Diet? by Brenda Davis, R.D.

and then people always ask the question can we get enough protein from plants and it’s it’s I don’t know anybody that becomes a vegetarian it’s the first question they get asked where do you get your protein and I love this cartoon by Dan Pizarro it says it’s this little rodent here asking this huge muscular gorilla no meat at all are you sure you’re getting enough protein and and the point being here that the largest strongest most muscular land mammals on the planet are vegetarians they’re you know elephants and giraffes and hippopotamuses and these huge gorillas and they manage to build these huge muscles without any eating any meat and probably people can too and we look at some of the vegan athletes just go to vegan bodybuilding calm it’s unbelievable you see these huge muscles that are you know completely a hundred percent vegan and and it just makes sense and and so how much protein do we actually need well the RDA for adults is about 46 grams a day for women about 56 for men or about point eight grams per kilogram body weight children need more athletes and possibly seniors may need as much as 25 percent more in Australia the recommendations for people seventy plus are 25 percent higher than they are for younger adults why because our digests the digestibility is reduced as we get older we’re not able to absorb as many of the amino acids we need so and people that are eating whole food plant-based diet because of the fiber and the reduced digestibility of whole plant foods slightly we increase about 10 protein recommended protein intakes by about 10% so that would you know bring us up to about 50 grams for women and about 60 grams or so for men or a little bit more than that it’s still not a lot especially when you look at how much protein is in foods so you look at you know soy beans tofu so the soy foods are the veggie meats you’re get about fifteen to thirty grams of protein per serving that’s about the same as you get from a serving of meat from lentils and and other legumes you get about 14 to 18 grams of protein per cup from hemp seeds pumpkin seeds camel spelt wheat amaranth quinoa you get about 8 to 13 grams of protein per serving or per cup of cooked grains 1/4 cup of seeds and that’s about the same as you get from two eggs or a cup of milk or an ounce of cheese it’s not much different and then you get some from pretty much every other plant food you’re eating as well but then people say ah but even if you can get enough protein isn’t plant protein inferior to animal protein and the answer is this no all essential amino acids are what we call indispensable amino acids are actually made by plant it makes no sense to think we get can’t get them from plants it’s where they come from you know animals have all of these amino acids in their muscle tissue they got it at some point along the food chain from plants it’s where they come from so we can get plenty of essential amino acids from plants providing we consume a variety of plant foods over the course of the day including some protein rich choices like legumes and seeds and so forth and sufficient calories are eaten and for most people getting sufficient calories is not a huge problem

step 5 is to fine tune our fat so we want to limit quantity to some extent and really focus on quality we want to limit saturated fat the Dietary Guidelines for Americans say less than 10 percent of calories but the American Heart Association the American College of Cardiology guidelines for cardiovascular disease risk reduction are 5 to 6 percent of calories and you know the percent of Americans that get less than 7% of calories from saturated fat about 5% and guess what the average vegan gets about 4 to 7 percent how many vegans are there America about 5% of the population so it’s the vegans who are actually on target period and 5 to 6% of calories means less than 16 grams on a 2,000 calorie diet so less than 16 grams well you get you know 22 from a couple slices of meat lovers Pizza you got 18 from a double cheeseburger 15 from a 6 ounce steak you know 9 from just 1 ounce of cheese 8 from a cup of milk and you compare that to the amounts of saturated fat in plant foods you know they’re the only one that that that’s high at all is really coconut at an ounce of coconut at 7 grams but look at a half an avocado or an ounce of nuts or seeds that we’re looking at somewhere between you know half a gram and and and 2 grams for most of these foods we want to avoid trans fatty acids and in 2005 the FDA set a three-year time limit for the removal of trans fats and processed foods we’re there it’s 2018 it’s been three years so this won’t be much of a problem I think in in fairly short order although 10% of trans does come from animal products as you probably know