How do vegans get their protein?

[Pathogenic]

Originally Posted by ThatBJJGuy

Vegans are annoying!

Eh, it's a mixed bag. Just like every dieting group, there are always closed-minded people, and moderates willing to listen. Most are the latter, but the former are an extremely vocal group. Thankfully, not a lot of angry vegan zealots visit the forum.

[Kgeorge]

I decided to become vegan 80% carb, 10% prot 10% fat. It is actually a problem, what recent studies show is the minimal amount of protein is healthiest, that minimal amount seems to be about 10% and actually much more doesn't help. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/he...ass.html?_r=1&
This study shows the irrelevant effects of greater than 15% protein in the diet and the detrimental effects of eating just 5%.
Why you shouldn't eat more protein is that sugar from fruits is a better and more efficient energy source than protein which consuming more of it just burns it as fuel anyway.

I actually haven't made the calculation for how much protein rich foods I need so I'll do it now. Right now I am eating mainly dates and bananas, it gets me nowhere near 10% protein so first I'll add up what I get by eating bananas and dates all day
I want 1 g of carb for every kg of body weight and I weigh 70kg
So 700g of carb, 70g of protein, 70g of fat
I get 660g of carb and 20g of protein and 2 gram fat from bananas and dates
So now I can just eat some peanut butter which fits quite nice at 8g of fat and 5g of protein and 3g carb per tablespoon
so 10 tablespoons of peanut butter and I have a diet with all the essential macro nutrients.
Totaling 690g of carb 70 g of protein 82grams of fat, close enough for me, a 3600 calorie diet. Weight management will never be an issue. If I wanted to gain weight I would increase my protein intake to 105g.

[Lochlan]

Originally Posted by Kgeorge

I decided to become vegan 80% carb, 10% prot 10% fat. It is actually a problem, what recent studies show is the minimal amount of protein is healthiest, that minimal amount seems to be about 10% and actually much more doesn't help. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/he...ass.html?_r=1&
This study shows the irrelevant effects of greater than 15% protein in the diet and the detrimental effects of eating just 5%.
Why you shouldn't eat more protein is that sugar from fruits is a better and more efficient energy source than protein which consuming more of it just burns it as fuel anyway.

I actually haven't made the calculation for how much protein rich foods I need so I'll do it now. Right now I am eating mainly dates and bananas, it gets me nowhere near 10% protein so first I'll add up what I get by eating bananas and dates all day
I want 1 g of carb for every kg of body weight and I weigh 70kg
So 700g of carb, 70g of protein, 70g of fat
I get 660g of carb and 20g of protein and 2 gram fat from bananas and dates
So now I can just eat some peanut butter which fits quite nice at 8g of fat and 5g of protein and 3g carb per tablespoon
so 10 tablespoons of peanut butter and I have a diet with all the essential macro nutrients.
Totaling 690g of carb 70 g of protein 82grams of fat, close enough for me, a 3600 calorie diet.

You are basing your consumption habits on a study of 25 volunteers?

[Kgeorge]

Originally Posted by Lochlan

You are basing your consumption habits on a study of 25 volunteers?

There are more studies like it but yeah 25 volunteers all showing correlated effects is pretty conclusive imo. Not that I wanted to eat like this because of this study, its just what showed me what I really need for protein so I can actually know the minimum amount that I need to not lose lean weight.

[MightySparrow]

I'm not a vegan but it's easy enough to get the proteins you need from vegan food.

The trick is to combine veggies and stuff in the right way so that you get all the amino acids the body needs to build muscle. Remember, "full-worth" protein with all the essential amino acids included are only found in animal food plus some very few vegetables such as soy beans. But if you combine several vegetable food sources, such as kidney beans plus rice for example, you'll get all the stuff you need.

The main problem in my opinion seems to be that it's hard to bulk up on vegan food, as it's typically rather low in energy. But that's of course a different issue.

[golvmopp]

Originally Posted by MightySparrow

I'm not a vegan but it's easy enough to get the proteins you need from vegan food.

The trick is to combine veggies and stuff in the right way so that you get all the amino acids the body needs to build muscle. Remember, "full-worth" protein with all the essential amino acids included are only found in animal food plus some very few vegetables such as soy beans. But if you combine several vegetable food sources, such as kidney beans plus rice for example, you'll get all the stuff you need.

The main problem in my opinion seems to be that it's hard to bulk up on vegan food, as it's typically rather low in energy. But that's of course a different issue.

You got any concise links I can send to my girlfriend's way concerning aminoacid-combining?

[MightySparrow]

Originally Posted by golvmopp

You got any concise links I can send to my girlfriend's way concerning aminoacid-combining?

Tried to google some good links for you but the most informative one I found was actually Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining

There will be much more resources out there if you google around a bit.

Interestingly, this Wikipedia entry has it that you might actually not need to care that much about combining amino acids. The same researcher who popularized this idea seems to have changed her mind. So I guess it may be even easier than I thought to live a healthy life as a vegan.

[Nozza]

Originally Posted by Kgeorge

There are more studies like it but yeah 25 volunteers all showing correlated effects is pretty conclusive imo. Not that I wanted to eat like this because of this study, its just what showed me what I really need for protein so I can actually know the minimum amount that I need to not lose lean weight.

A study of 25 people is not conclusive. Not by a long shot.

I think you're right that you can get away with eating a lot less protein than many suggest though.

[Nozza]

Originally Posted by Cayenne

People really underestimate vegetables. By calorie most veggies actually contain more protein than meat. Also people don't know that heat kills roughly half the protein in meat, so if your pack of meat says 20 grams of protein, it's actually 10 after cooking.

Eg. you'll get more protein from 300 calories of broccoli than from 300 calories of meat. The only problem is managing to eat the massive amount of broccoli. Good thing juicers were invented.

Heat "kills" 1/2 the protein in meat? Are you sure? I really don't think that is at all true. In fact cooking can improve the availability of proteins to a certain extent.

Also "By calorie, most veggies contain more protein than meat".

Ok so looking at broccoli. 100g is 31cals and 3.7g of protein. So that is 0.119g of protein per calorie.. Chicken breast is 116 cals and 21.8g which is 0.1879g per calore. Chicken contains over one and half times as much per calorie. My cals show the opposite of what you say.

Also the volume of veg to get the protein is much higher. You'd need to eat 2.7KG of brocolli to get 100g of protein! And then there is the problem that the protein in such veg is not complete. So you have to eat more calories, a much larger volume and even then you don't get complete protein.

BTW I actually picked the figures which gave broccoli the highest amount of protein. Most other sources said on 3g of protein.

[Drastic]

Buckwheat - whole protein.