Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Animal vs Plant Proteins: which is better?

     As a health professional proteins and there source seems to be a Hot topic of conversation! I would not say I am a nutrition specialist by any means but I learn new information about foodstuffs everyday. After some brief research on the topic I have yet to find a 100% answer to this question, as if there are any of those in life. I do know however that we Need Proteins and our animal proteins of course are going to be our source of "complete proteins," meaning they have all of our amino acids. When consuming plant proteins we must combine, or find complementary proteins to obtain all of the amino acids that we need. Simply said our lean meats are "easiest" for the untrained to assure we can reach our full protein potential. Problems that we find with our meats, mostly red, is that they tend to come with fats which according to USDA Americans are recommended to try and reduce there amount of saturated fats. By using plants as our source of proteins we increase our amount of Veggies taken in.... which from the majority of all food logs I analyse is lacking in almost all diets, would help us get in our 4-6 servings a day.
     How much protein do I need? not a simple question to answer however we can come up with an approximate answer with a simple equation. .8grams of protein for every kg of body weight per day.
     kg: weight in pounds divided by 2.2
     ex: man weighs 190Ibs
               190/2.2 = 86.36kg          86.63 * .8 = about 69g a day
However for a gentleman who is trying to put on lean weight or is endurance athlete may need a little bit more. Those men might take in (.9g) instead. Now the body can only use so much protein in the "muscle building" realm, consumption of protein other than this are taken in as extra calories and or thrown away. Now over consumption of protein is another beast, just know that fiber should be taken in with those diets in order to balance out the excessive protein intake.

No comments:

Post a Comment