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What would be the best way for a vegan to get adequate protein?
The best vegan diet I can come up with would probably revolve around potato’s, rice and fruit smoothies/ fruit juice with added sugary stuff in combination with some vitamin/ mineral supplements.
However, I doubt that is gonna be enough protein.
Would it be a good idea for a vegan to add a plant based protein powder to their smoothies or something? I was looking at potato/ chickpea protein isolate. The amino acid profile seems pretty good for those, however I’m not sure how good protein isolate is. Any ideas/ suggestions?
PS I’m just trying to figure this out because I’m interested, no practical application yet.
Was talking to a mostly fruitarian vegan recently. His diet had 5x grams of protein on average. Coming from fruit and rice and some veggies. He said he gained 15 kilo’s of muscle in one year, and he is muscular and very lean.
He showed me some graphs of his diet. Apparently he got like 11g of potassium and only 0.2g of sodium on average. He didn’t seem to think that was a bad ratio and he though peeing clear ten times a day was super duper. However, he reported feeling warm, relaxed and energetic all the time while before he was often cold. He’s eating like that for two years now. Though that was a bit strange. He does sleep 10-12 hours a day.
Anyway, back on topic, hearing this I think perhaps vegans don’t really need protein supplementation. Of course, more protein might have some hormonal benefits or something.
I use a protein powder called PureGreen protein that combines yellow pea protein, alfalfa protein, rice protein and spirulina for a balanced amino acid profile. I use it mostly on the go so that I have some protein in every meal.
Reading a bit about it I found this article. It’s about protein and has a strong raw vegan bias but it is intelligently written.
http://www.all-creatures.org/cb/a-protein.html
I was especially wondering about what they say about cooked proteins. Is there any validity to it. Well, obviously it is not such a big issue.
But is it in theory true that uncooked proteins are better that cooked? Not talking about uncooked food vs cooked food, just the protein.I doubt the dude gained 15kg of muscle in a year. That’s over 30lbs, and unless he was an absolute beginner and had exceptional response/recovery/nutrient partitioning, and maybe was going through a growth spurt, those sorts of gains are almost impossible absent enhancements (steroids or other PEDs).
Another possibility is that he had previous trained to that weight, lost it, and then regained it quickly due to muscle memory.
That said, I think a quality rice protein supplement like Garden of Life’s raw protein would be a good option for a vegan trying to put on muscle. In a hyper-caloric diet, protein needs go way down, as the body uses the protein very efficiently in caloric abundance. IN a hypocaloric diet, protein seems much more necessary for lean mass retention.
Here’s a post from Matt about how much protein one needs, that might be of some help.
I’ve looked through older fb pics of him. His gain looks more like 15 pounds instead of kilo’s.
Any idea about the cooked protein thing from that article? Is there any validity to it?
15lbs of lean gains for a total novice on a good program with good nutrition is conceivable, though it would be on the high end.
Not sure about cooked versus raw proteins. My instinct screams to be skeptical, but who knows? I’m not particularly motivated to investigate further, though. If you do, feel free to report back any insight.
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