Alright hello everyone perhaps some of you are looking to change your eating lifestyle to a more plant-based Whole Foods type of a diet. Perhaps maybe some of you are looking to incorporate more plant-based foods in your existing diet. Regardless when talking about a plant-based diet the question of protein always comes up.
Especially when talking about building muscle and what some people do to alleviate that concern is that they will supplement with protein powder. When I was participating in a vegan challenge, I was looking for a supplement product that I can use. What I want to do is I want to share with you how I went about making that decision in hopes that I can provide you with some useful information.
So what I decided to do is through a supplement review by comparing two different plant-based protein supplements. The first one being big a protein now this is something that is found basically everywhere. It’s usually the first choice for first-timers that are transitioning to a plant-based protein. After doing a little bit more research and after expanding my search for a protein supplement, I came across this company called Pro-Mix and decided to try their plant-based protein supplement.
Actually I think is much better and I like a lot better than the big protein and I’ll explain to you why. So as you know from looking at some of my other reviews is that I always check the protein yield of a protein supplement to find out how much actual real protein is within the supplement. So let’s compare the two. Here’s how I check the protein yield of a protein supplement.
Let’s look at viga protein first you’ll notice that the serving size is 30 grams for one scoop out of those 30 grams. I want to find out how much of that is actual protein. So what I do is take the amount of protein which in this case is 20 grams and I multiply that by a hundred which equals 2,000. Now I take that and I divided by the amount of gram for serving which in this case is 30 grams. The end result ends up being approximately 67%. So basically what that means that out of every scoop that you get from this product 67% of that is actually counted as protein.
The rest can be whatever they add to the product. Now that may not necessarily be a bad thing it is when you start adding things in like artificial fillers and just junk that basically does absolutely nothing for your health. Let’s take a closer look at what else they added to this product. Although I don’t see anything like artificial sweeteners or fillers and they stayed on their label that they if that this product contains 20 grams of different sources of plant-based proteins.
They also state that it contains two servings of greens. What I don’t like is that these ingredients are actually proprietary blends. So now let’s take a closer look at pro mix. Alright so now if we use the same mathematical equation by dividing the protein amount by the serving size, we get a protein yield of approximately 86%. Now that’s about a 19% increase when compared to the viga protein and I think that the reason is quite an evident look at the ingredients.
You’ve only got two different types of plant-based proteins and you have some added b12 which according to the label will give you 200 % of your daily value with every scoop. It helps keep our nerves and it helps keep our blood cells healthy it also helps make our DNA. So it’s a very important vitamin here’s the thing though when you’re switching over to a plant-based diet. You’re gonna have a lot of people giving you objections one of them is you know where you’re gonna get your protein from and I think that we are kind of like already solving that issue.
Besides if you think that vegans the people like vegans don’t get enough protein then maybe they ought to talk to Torre Washington which is one of my favourite vegan bodybuilders. But anyway the other objection that some people may come up with is that you’re not gonna get enough b12 in your diet. You know what that is actually a very simple problem to fix all you need to do is just supplement with a b12 vitamin pill.
You know you take a multivitamin every day anyway so just taking another extra b12 is going to solve your problem. Especially if you’re taking like let’s say a protein supplement like this one that we’re talking about that has added b12. You already solved that issue but anyway now let’s talk about actually what kind of plant-based protein is best for building muscle.
A couple of things that we have to look at when considering the type of protein that we’re going to use number one is the digestibility of the protein. How well it’s digested in the body and plus we want to look at the amino acid profile. So let’s take a look all right so let me clear by what I mean by that in order for our bodies to use protein. It needs to be broken down into amino acids and that’s how our body goes ahead and builds muscle repairs muscle tissue. In some cases, it will also provide energy when a portion of food supplies all the essential amino acids that a body needs in the appropriate amounts.
Obviously it’s called a complete protein. Unfortunately, many plant-based foods are incomplete proteins either because they lack certain essential amino acids or they have them in very low ratios. So what vegans and vegetarians do to solve that problem is that they combine foods to create complete proteins and they combine foods all day long which will give them the complete protein that they need.
By the end of the day, they don’t need to form a complete protein in one sitting. It could be in the course of a day so for example when you combine rice and beans you get a complete protein when you combine lentils and bread you get a complete protein tortilla with beans hummus made from chickpeas and sesame paste with bread bean soup with whole-grain crackers.
The combination of these foods creates complete proteins. Now, why do I go into explaining all of that well in the context of this article? When I was looking for the best vegan protein powder UK brand, I had one of two options the first option was to just buy a soy protein. Because soy protein will provide you with a complete source of protein.
However, I’m not a fan of soy simply because there are some health concerns that I have about it. So the other option I had was to find another protein supplement. A plant-based protein supplement that combines two or more plant-based protein sources in order for me to get the complete protein that I was looking for. Now here’s where I get all analytical on you. But I think some people will actually find this information useful.
There’s a method of evaluating the quality of a protein that’s based on the amino acid requirement that we need. The way that we digest it is called a protein digestibility corrected amino acids core or the podcasts now this system is not perfect. But it can serve as a useful guide to determine the quality of protein in certain foods. Now if we scroll down and we look at this table. Here it’s no surprise that the foods that come from animal products such as eggs and whey protein are considered top-ranked quality protein. They are at 100% which means that consuming these foods will give you a complete protein.
It’s interesting to see however that soy protein is also at 100%. Now some other plant-based foods such as pea protein are at 89 %, Sacha Inchi powder at 87% you have hemp seeds here at 66 % and if you scroll further down you have rice at about 50 %. Now probably one of the reasons why people it’s low in methionine. Now that’s an amino acid that’s important in the growth of new blood vessels. However, rice protein is high in methionine which is one of the reasons why you probably will find P protein and rice protein combined in a plant-based protein supplement.
Now you see how you can actually combine different plant-based protein sources to improve its amino acid profile. But let me just tell you if you’re gonna sit there and start looking up the amino acid profile of a bunch of different plant-based foods; you’re gonna drive yourself nuts. If you want to get more specific to your personal needs here’s something that you can also do which I’ve done myself. Let’s take a look at the recommended daily intake of essential amino acids and how you can actually figure that out for your own person.
The Best Plant Protein Vegan Powders & Amino Acids
Now for the sake of time, I’m only gonna concentrate on branch chain amino acids which are the primary amino acids associated with muscle growth. I’ll take the UK recommended daily intake and multiply that by my weight. Now I’m about a hundred and fifty pounds which translates to about 68 kilograms that equal out to about 2900 milligrams of leucine 1300 milligrams of isoleucine and about 1600 milligrams of valine.
Now, remember all of this is basically just a guide. If it shouldn’t be taken literally if you have any questions you really should be talking to your doctor to get a little bit more specific about what’s right for you. Here’s another little thing that I do that might be useful to you. Now we know that whey protein is a top quality protein and so what I did is I looked at a bunch of different ways protein powders. I took an average of their branched-chain amino acid profile. So what I do is I compare the amino acid profile of a plant-based protein.
I’m looking to purchase and then I compared it to whey protein and I see how it stacks up. So as you can see pro-mix stacks are pretty well the whey protein as opposed to vegan which especially in the case of leucine doesn’t compare as well and as you know out of all the branched-chain amino acids leucine is a prime motivator for muscle growth.
I hope that I was able to provide you with some useful information. Now some people may be wondering am i a vegan in my vegetarian like where do I stand and I don’t consider myself a vegan or vegetarian. I did take a vegan challenge I did that for about two weeks and I’ll be honest with you I’ve never felt better in my life. So, as a result, I have changed a lot in my diet that incorporates a lot more plant-based foods. Do I see myself making the transition to a fully plant-based diet? I think so but I think it’s going to be a long transition for me. So we’ll see there’s still a lot that I have to learn.
I will conclude by saying this now some vegan protein supplements in the UK will work for some people. Plus good diet and nutrition works for all people all of the time. every time.
Vegan Protein Blog 