What Vegan proteins do you eat?

[Still_Waters]

Try Tempeh.

[PinkFlower]

Hi Jesse, for protein I like to eat hemp seeds (yay!), tofu and lentils. I also add spirulina to my smoothies.

[Miss Hepburn]

I spent prob a decade not knowing you had to combine a bean with a grain to make a complete protein.
Then I saw 3 friends after 45 years did not know that.
They were having all sorts of beans, lentils, tempeh, whatever and only veggies with them.
They were weak, circles under their eyes and catching every cold that lasted for months, btw...overly sensitive to the cold.
As I had been decades ago.
Took awhile to convince them how many grams daily they needed and to at the least got a vegan protein powder.
They thanked me months later doing a smoothie a day with the powder.

All a person needs for a complete protein is a bean burrito, btw!
A whole country lives on them....but not rice alone and not beans alone.
Together...

[PinkFlower]

Hi Miss Hepburn, I agree! Since I added the protein powder I feel much better. Do you know a good brand? I find that sometimes the taste is not so good...

[Gem]

I basic issue is fitting the right amount of protein into the right amount of calories, and if the protein source is high in carbs, then a higher protein diet is a high carb diet, and the carb calories typically exceed the number of calories before the optimal protein amount is reached. Nuts are very calorie dense due to high fat content, so if a 1/4 cup is 200 calories and 6 g protein, achieving 100g protein (average female), means 3,300 calories, which would be a 1500 cal per day excess for an average woman.

Just saying, it's not just getting protein as such. It's fitting that protein into your body-weight-maintenance calories, which for vegans is not easy to do because their protein sources are either high in carbs (legumes) and/or high in fat (nuts).

Not only that, but the bio-availability of protein from plant sources is low (compared to animal derived protein), and the amino acid profile isn't as good. Both these factors together means vegans need need significantly more protein than a meat-eater does to get the same protein nutritionally.

Because of this, protein supplements are generally beneficial to vegans because it's probably the only way to get optimal protein without blowing out on calories.

The last concern is, the vegan diet foods are typically low in calorie density, which means the volume of food needed to reach calorie balance is too much to eat. Hence vegans tend to be underweight because their bodies shed fat and muscle in order to reach calorie balance.

Thus vegans have various obstacles reaching their optimal protein, and other nutritional needs, so we can advocate a protein supplement more generally, whereas an omnivore can easily get all their protein from food, and we can't generally say a protein supplement would be beneficial.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by PinkFlower

Hi Miss Hepburn, I agree! Since I added the protein powder I feel much better.
Do you know a good brand? I find that sometimes the taste is not so good...

It would depend on where you live the Netherlands or Arizona?
Kidding...I've never had a brand that didn't taste just fine in a smoothie.

[Altair]

There's many different flavours of protein(whey) powder. I went with vanilla for a while. One cup is already close to 30g protein. It is crazy.