So, Where do Vegans Get their Protein? A Guide to Being a Modern Barbarian
As a caring and sensitive, but also furiously raging Vegan Barbarian, there are few things (other than the needless suffering of animals) as infuriating as the question “Where do you get your protein?”
Rage! You think. Unleash the fury. Show these Bastards the truth of Vegan Power. Stick it to them, beat their smug, ignorant faces in with the ease of obtaining protein on a vegan diet, and amaze them with how nutritionally savvy vegans really are. You decide, brimming with pride and confidence.
Deep breath. The calm before the storm. The quiet before the unveiling of true power.
“Uhhh….like, vegetables and stuff.”
Yeah, you showed them.
Nine Amino Acids for Mortal Men, doomed to die.
Protein is a macro-nutrient that every person needs to be a person. Otherwise, you will die, and be a dead person, and dead people don’t need Protein. Protein is made out of amino acids. These come in 21 funky-fresh flavours, nine of which your body can’t produce and are only obtainable from outside sources, usually by stuffing them in your face. The Nine are called the *nazgul* essential amino acids, and are the most important for you to be aware of.
Here they are, for the chemically curious:
1. Histidine (His)
2. Isoleucine (Ile)
3. Leucine (Leu)
4. Lysine (Lys)
5. Methionine (Met)
6. Phenylalanine (Phe)
7. Threonine (Thr)
8. Tryptophan (Trp)
9. Valine (Val)
When a Protein source has all of these bad boys, we call them a “Complete Protein”. Meat is a complete protein, being literally a chunk of muscle from an animal, and animals have relatively similar requirements for protein needs. One of the big criticisms of Veganism is that many Plant sources of Proteins are often incomplete, meaning they lack one or many of the above proteins. Haters will often ignore the fact that many aren’t. A big battle rages on how big a deal this is, but the consensus seems to be that as long as you get them all in decent amounts throughout the day, it’s not big whoop if you don’t get them all in at once. Having said that, i’ts really not that hard to cook a meal that has them all in. Generally the vegan staple of Grains and Legumes (Rice and Beans, bitch) has them all in generous amounts.
There is one pesky essential amino acid we should watch out for, and that is Lysine. This guy is a little trickier to fit into your diet, and so if you feel like you should track any of them, he’s your boy. He can be found in all complete proteins (hint; soy is one of the highest Lysine sources available, meat or no) and in seeds, nuts and pulses, (that’s like, all the beans. All of them. Even peas and lentils, which aren’t even beans, the sneaky bastards.) so don’t be overly worried if you consume these daily (and you should.)
The rest are either produced by the body, or easily obtainable with sufficient protein consumption on a vegan diet. Just make sure to get enough protein and variation so as to hit them all up.
Why should you care? Because protein absorption is limited by these little buggers. Sure you could be eating copious amounts of protein, but the amount of it absorbed is limited to the Amino Acid you consume the least relative amount of. So if you don’t eat your legumes, don’t get your Lysine, you’re crippling your protein intake, and therefore your awesome. Same goes for all the others, although Lysine is the usual suspect, followed by Methionine and Cysteine. How can you get all these in one tasty meal?
Low in Lysine
- Most cereal grains
- Fruits and vegetables
- Seitan (technically a grain, keep reading)
High in Lysine
- Most animal products: meat, fish, eggs, milk (boo)
- Legumes: most beans, peas and lentils
- Nuts: cashews, peanuts, pistachios
- Seeds: chia, cottonseed, pumpkin, squash
- The rest of the grains Amaranth, Buckwheat and Quinoa (who are complete all by themselves)
- Soy (yes it’s a bean, but its also totally contented and complete so is extra special)
Lysine is generally lower in grains, and Methionine and Cysteine are lower in Legumes. Make like a Vegan Alchemist and mix them together.We call these “Complimentary Proteins,” because when they come together they become Complete. ❤
Starting with the Bottom Line
For a normal, non-athlete person, a vegan diet easily provides sufficient protein. Many vegan foods have small amounts of protein in amongst the carbs and fibre, and this usually accumulates over the day to get them the meagre amount they need. The British standard of Reference Nutrition Intakes (RNI) for protein are estimated at 0.75g per Kilo of body weight. So a 70 kilo avarage Joe or Jane will need around 52.5 grams of protein per day. This is not the recommended amount, but is an average of the needs of 97.5% of the population. Many will likely need less. Some (likely yourself) will need considerably more.
Kicking Ass takes Protein.
Things change when you add sport and fitness into the formula. Sure, you’re moving more and, as you already know from this article, your calorific needs have also gone up. But it turns out, so has your protein needs, and disproportionately so.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine both advise athletes consume anywhere between 1.2 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day depending on the type of training you do. Generally, more endurance based athletes, whilst still requiring higher amounts than not-awesome people, need less than strength sports athletes. This is still way, way less than some of the crazy gym bro recommendations you see around 3 or 4 grams per Kilo of body weight. Don’t do that, even if you could. Which you can’t, because guess what? Getting sufficient protein on a vegan diet is Hard.
But not as hard as you might think.
There is, unfortunately, some truth in the question “where do you get you pro- *Axe swings* *a sound suspiciously like a body falling* *silence.*
Killing people who ask that question is Vegan, right? Probably not. Oops.
Yes, getting sufficient Protein on a vegan diet can be difficult. There are reasons for this. Primary is the sorry fact that most of the most common Vegan protein sources don’t even have protein as the primary Macro-nutrient. Most have a huge amount of carbs, with the protein making up less than 20%. Meat eaters, unfortunately, have many options that far outweigh this. Or so they would have you believe.
But here’s the real truth.
Lay that sweet Truth down.
A typical Carnist diet usually has meat or animal products at the centre of most meal times. It’s the thing that the meal is based around. It’s the thing in the sauce. It’s the thing inside the thing that’s also the thing. Anyone wanting to dispute this should try ordering a Vegan meal in any normal restaurant. Nothing on the menu doesn’t contain animal products, and those there are the protein sources. Oh the Vegan Rage at trying to order something that isn’t a salad. Which is precisely the problem. Whilst Carnist meals are centred around Protein sources, common Vegan meals, like the above mentioned token Vegan salad on every menu ever, are typically not.
This isn’t how it has to be. Make protein the centre of your plate. And make it taste good.
There are many Vegan high protein sources, ones that can compete with meat sources for protein content. The problem is, they usually aren’t the easiest things to find. But once you find them, oh boy, oh boy. You’ve made it. They are versatile and once you have a supplier, you don’t need much variation.
Soy products have made a big scene in Europe and America, and for good reason. Whilst tasting like scared rubber in the hands of someone unfamiliar with cooking it, the taste is so mild and underwhelming that you can make it taste like whatever you want. Spices are your friend, young vegan, never forget that.
Meat eaters are like Salt Bae. Make sprinkling some salt on a slab of meat look like an art, and you’re a “master of flavour.”
Vegan Cooks are like Alchemists, you cant just throw some beans or tofu on a plate, you need to understand what spices and flavours you can combine to make that dish special. In the end, this will make you a better chef.
But hey, I’m not writing a blog called “The Vegan Alchemist” (though I really should, that sounds amazing.) Barbarians don’t want to mix fancy things. They want it now, and they want it tasty. Well, fear not my aggressive friends, I have your answer here:
Why the Christians got it wrong, Hail Seitan!
But here’s the downright dirty, tasty truth. Seitan exists.
No, not the pointy horned one, that’s Satan. Hey, I’m not judging. No one said Barbarian’s need to be literate, did they? No, now ask the person reading this to you to explain the joke.
No Seitan, glorious, meat-like Seitan, is what happens when you take the Protein out of Wheat. Yes, its also called “Vital Wheat Gluten” and it is good.
So one of the best and most commonly eaten protein sources in the world is chicken. It’s lean, it’s tasty and people slaughter millions of chickens a day to get that protein. There’s a reason people go nuts for chicken. But let’s compare it with our new best friend and the true saviour of mankind/all the animals/the world: Seitan.
- 100 grams of Chicken has 151 calories with 31 grams of protein. That’s 134 calories of protein. 82% of the calories in chicken are protein, with trace (read no) amounts of dietary fibre.
- 100 grams of Seitan (Wheat Gluten) has 370 calories with 75 grams of protein. that’s 300 calories of protein. 80% of the calories in wheat gluten are protein, with trace amounts of dietary fibre.
So not only is the difference in terms of Protein% between the two so small as to barely matter, or that Seitan does not involve the needless suffering of animals, or that Seitan is super easy to cook and prepare (it usually even comes pre-cooked.)
You only require a half the volume of Seitan to get the same amount of protein as chicken. That’s pretty good going for a Vegan protein. More room for veggies, carbs, fats, whatever else you need. So it’s all looking good for Seitan right?
Hold your Humanely-Treated Horses.
Whew, what a roller-coaster of an article. It’s ok, you can take a lie down if you want. I understand.
But there are some hard truths to discuss.
First we looked at the amino acid contents of certain foods and how many vegan proteins are considered “incomplete.” This is often misconstrued to mean “inferior” but really it just means you have to get more variation in your diet than a meat eater would. No biggy, I hear you say, and that is well.
There is one more problem though, and it’s a big one. This is the place where getting sufficient protein can start to get hard. Bio-availability.
Bio-availability is “the proportion of a substance which enters the circulation when introduced into the body and so is able to have an active effect.”
According to the Protein Efficiency Study PER, Vegan protein sources have low bio availability when compared with animal based sources. With the bio availability index ranging from 0–160, everything 79 or over is meat. This is the one you see quoted everywhere as evidence for the futility of a Vegan diet, and while there is clearly basis in truth for this, it’s now considered dated.
The new standard used is the Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score PDCAAS, which, along with having a catchy name, is widely considered more accurate than the PER test. This places soy on the same level as most forms of animal proteins. Which is clearly a big step up and also really good news. The downside is that many professionals see the PDCAAS as newfangled and in need of revision and adjustments.
There are many other methods, and here is a link here comparing five of them. Unfortunately, in none of them does Seitan come out looking like a shiner, however Soy looks like a pretty reliable source. But is Soy the angel we briefly though Seitan was?
The Big Soy Fight,
One last thing on Vegan Proteins. Soy gets a real bad rep nowadays. Apparently it turns you into a girl, and not the good kind. Nope, not the strong super-woman that we know and love, but a real pathetic sissy-girl. The kind who cries over not having bacon rather than at how fucking awesome baby kittens are. Goddamn I’m tearing up. Those damn beautiful kittens
The rumour goes like this: soy contains “Isoflavones,” which are a type of flavone (surprise) that has a chemical similarity to oestrogen, and fits a few of the oestrogen receptor types. This has lead to the idea that eating soy will increase your oestrogen levels, or stimulate oestrogen receptors, and cause you to grow big (bigger) boobies. But not the good kind of boobies….
Ok, I’ll stop.
The reality is largely inconclusive as to whether or not these Iso-flavours have any effect on oestrogen, or if they actually even function in any way like oestrogen in the body. Furthermore, the concept of tiny fluctuations in testosterone and oestrogen has been distorted by the common use of one drug: Anabolic steroids.
Most people who know anything about anything worth knowing know that Steroids work by increasing testosterone levels, and therefore that higher testosterone = more gains. Testosterone is the man hormone, and therefore the woman hormone must make you weak and pathetic. See the issue? This is an assumption and the evidence is largely contradictory between recent studies, which say it does not effect strength, and studies conducted in the 80s and 90s, which claim it does. So the end result is inconclusive, or maybe even that oestrogen does not have a negative affect on sports performance, as more and more modern studies agree with this point of view.
Furthermore, steroids increases testosterone production to an huge degree, a 500mg dose can increase it beyond 10x, and this extreme increase in testosterone can result in 5%-20% in strength and muscle gain. That is at most an increase of 2% per doubling of testosterone. Thats a huge increase in testosterone for a small increase in performance. (Obviously this difference is significant for professional athletes where 2% can be win or lose, but the point is that it requires an absolutely huge increase in testosterone to cause this)
So, should you not eat soy because there’s a small chance that the isoflavones might increase oestrogen levels, which in turn will very likely don’t have an affect on sports performance? And the quantities will be so small that even if it was to have an affect on sports performance it would be never be significant enough to notice.
Don’t be a dick, eat soy.
What does it all mean, damn it?
So, to summarise:
- Make sure you get enough protein. (Strength athletes in particular.) Try and eat a little more than you need, to compensate for Bio-availability.
- Don’t worry about Bio-availability though. Diet is a ball-park thing. It’s all averages.
- Make sure you get enough Lysine.
- Eat soy. It won’t make you a sissy girl.
And my final advice. Take a protein supplement. It makes the whole thing a lot simpler.
Get some Vegan Protein Powder. Don’t be a Druid.
Look, you’re not the Vegan Druid. Don’t be that guy. That’s the guy in the vegan party who turns up at the fight only to sit down so he can drink his organic, non-GMO fermented agave and coconut oil that was pissed on by a free-range Tibetan witch-doctor, which his astrologer’s homeopathist told him would definitely harm all the enemies on the field of battle with bad karma, although it might take their entire lives to do so, and then once he has finished drinking that, he sticks a crystal egg up an edifice to keep the bad vibes away. (that last part isn’t even a joke.)
No, you’re the Vegan Barbarian. You see enemies that need slaying. You have an axe of solid steel in your hand, and you get to the task. You have a job to do, and cold reason is your friend. You don’t buy into bull-shit gimmicks or fancy looking nothings.
You will hear those hippy-dippy Vegan Druids talking about how protein supplements are “unnatural,” and that somehow makes them bad for you, as if arbitrarily deciding how natural things are actually means anything. Horrible, painful, disfiguring diseases are as “natural” as it is possible to be, and the cures are most often not. Lifting heavy weights, running for miles and miles, throwing things and generally pushing athletic performance is not natural. Does that make it bad? No, it does not.
An argument might be that you don’t need that much protein, but as we have seen in this article, it’s probably (read; definitely) not true. Bio-availability is sadly a big factor, and drinking a protein shake is a guaranteed way to get a big chunk of your protein needs ticked off so you can worry less about it and just focus on being god-damn-cool-as-fuck.
Get yourself a highly Bio-Available Protein with a Complete Amino Acid profile. The best option for this is one concentrated from Rice and legume protein. You know that bit about rice being super bio-available? Yeah. And you know how we looked at the combination of grains and beans being the best way to get a full amino acid profile? Yup. Now imagine you isolated and extracted the protein into a handy, long storage food. That’s a quality vegan protein.
My favourite also has hemp in it, which throws in some healthy, needed fats, some that are especially difficult to find on a vegan diet.
It’s also one of the cheapest around, but any complete amino acid protein will do.
Check it out here:
Sources
https://www.biprousa.com/images/pdf/ProteinQualityWeb.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Corrected_Amino_Acid_Score
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905294/
https://www.nutribodyprotein.com/protein-types.php
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11075748
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1807-55092014000200339
Originally published at theveganbarbarian.com on March 22, 2018.
