Here’s Three Ways To Get The Most Value Out Of Your Protein Sources
Use this technique to get the most nutrient value from your foods
Most people need to eat more protein -especially women.
Vegans and vegetarians might have a hard time getting enough protein too.
Older individuals need more protein than our younger counterparts — but we all need to get in a decent amount.
Protein is important since it provides energy and gives us the fuel necessary for growth and repair.
If you want to build and grow muscle, this has already been drummed into your brain repeatedly.
Now, I’m all for a plant-based lifestyle — but it’s sometimes a hit-and-miss to get the necessary protein intake daily.
You may only want to go with some of our plant-based foods — but even swapping from meat to vegan alternatives can leave you needing more nutrient value.
The battle stops most people from heading towards a predominantly plant-based diet and did stop me for a long time.
I have proven that you can get enough protein from plants and heal your gut simultaneously.
When you heal your gut, your body starts to absorb nutrients, and you won’t have deficiencies.
That’s been my observation — but I did that by eating ‘complete protein.’
So, what’s this concept of complete protein, you may be thinking?
There are 20 amino acids, 11 of which the body can happily produce on its own. But that leaves a total of nine, which we have to eat in some form.
Essential amino acids are histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine threonine, tryptophan and valine.
A complete source of protein features all of these amino acids, and an incomplete protein only has a few.
Incomplete proteins aren’t bad or something you need to worry about.
This is a very informative way to ensure you’re aiming for the right nutrient profile every day.
It’s also great to understand if you are getting all the amino necessary to get the best out of your protein sources.
Sometimes vegans or vegetarians need to ‘layer’ foods to get the nine essentials quotas.
Here are some great vegan complete sources you should aim to eat regularly
- Help seeds
- buckwheat
- nutritional yeast
- tofu
- tempeh
- miso
- quinoa
- spirulina
- amaranth
For those who want to know what animal protein contains all essential amino acids, here they are
- dairy
- eggs
- pork
- beef
- fish
Here are some samples of incomplete protein sources
- seeds like pumpkin and sunflower
- whole grains like oats and wholewheat bread
- nuts of all kinds
Whilst these need to be combined with something (such as dairy or a form of plant protein in the list above), they are still very important to keep in your diet.
It would help if you ate them with others.
How do you combine your sources?
People who don’t want to try supplementing animal protein with plant-based alternatives probably don’t need to worry.
But for those who want to get the most out of your plant-based foods, you should combine different sources of complete and incomplete protein.
Below will help get you moving in the right direction.
One: Combine beans and legumes with nuts and seeds
Try adding walnuts, pumpkin seeds and hummus with your beans. If you are having lentil soup, add walnuts on top.
Two: Add nuts or seeds to your whole-grains
That could be a peanut butter sandwich on whole-grain bread or sourdough.
Another option is eating oatmeal with nut butter or making protein balls with raw nuts and oats.
When it comes to pasta, add pine nuts or homemade walnut pesto. You can add your herb alternatives.
Three: Beans and legumes need a bit of whole-grain love
Pair your legumes with rice (my ultimate favourite combination!), add rice to peas, rice with a salad and add some chickpeas, pitta and hummus.
These delicious food combinations can help make all your plant-based meals a complete source of protein and eliminate any nutritional challenges that could derive from the lack of animal protein.
It’s always the combination of foods that will give you the best nutritional profile. But avoid getting too caught up in becoming obsessed with these. Use your intuition and combine a few alternatives that hit the spot with your taste buds.
You can’t go wrong when you eat wholesome and natural foods.
Combining my foods as a complete protein is how I’ve maintained good health and continued building my muscle mass.
It did take a bit of tweaking, but in the end, it all served me in many ways.
Now, I get to heal and nourish my gut and stay away from animal protein which didn’t bring me the health I was aiming for.
So, next time you are stuck on keeping yourself full and getting the best nutrients from your food, start combining and notice the difference it makes.
What’s your best food combo?
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