Vegan Protein | Pairing

I've never heard that phrase "incomplete protein".

The idea about incomplete protein has been debunked for a for years now. There's no need to worry about complete proteins on a vegan or vegetarian diet. Eat what you want without worry

AnnPT77 wrote: »

cuteangelkitten wrote: »

The idea about incomplete protein has been debunked for a for years now. There's no need to worry about complete proteins on a vegan or vegetarian diet. Eat what you want without worry

False. We still need complete protein, we just have a longer timespan to get the essential amino acids than was previously believed.

The answer to the OP is impractical to calculate.

In theory, as I understand it, you'll benefit from any of the protein grams that are complemented to the point of having all the essential amino acids in the proper proportions. To put it another way, there's probably some essential amino acid that's underrepresented in the total, so is the limiting factor in total benefit.

In practice, because the timing is broad, and individual instances of specific foods differ in amino acid makeup in small ways, trying to pin this down numerically is a fool's errand.

Practical: Learn some of the generalizations about complementarity, eat some complete proteins (there are plant sources if you don't do dairy/eggs), mix up your protein sources a good bit within and across days (don't over-rely on just a few types or worse just a few individual foods), consider meals/dishes from long-history vegetarian cultures as time-tested guides, set your protein gram goal toward the high side of reasonable as insurance.

I've been vegetarian for 45+ years now. I'm not physically depleted at age 63. You'll be fine, too, using common sense, practical strategies.

^^ This is one of the best explanations of this subject that I've seen on the MFP forums.

@shubox1956 , to answer your specific question directly and precisely would require knowing which grain and which legume, plus someone who was willing to look up the essential amino acid profiles of that grain and that legume, and compared the combined profile of 10 g of protein from each to the profile of a "perfect" protein source in which all essential amino acids are in perfect ratios so that none of them limits the ability of your body to make maximum use of the others. (Eggs and milk are the "perfect" proteins in that sense. Meat actually falls a little short, with about 10% of the amino acids "wasted" if your only source of protein was meat.)

Without knowing which specific grain and legume we're talking about, and being unwilling to do the legwork for you even if you told me, I can say that 10 g of protein from a grain and 10 g of protein from a bean would definitely be more than 10 g of complete protein, with the odd exception that if the grain were quinoa or the legume were soy, which are already complete proteins. If you had 10 g of protein from quinoa and 10 g of protein from some legume that had a non-complete protein, the quinoa wouldn't need any help from the legume, and likely couldn't offer the legume much help, so it would seem like you would still have only about 10 g of complete protein. The same thing with 10 g of protein from soybeans and 10 g of non-complete protein from a grain -- you would still only have about 10 g of complete protein.

Of course, if you had 10 g of protein from soy beans and 10 g of protein from quinoa, you'd have 20 g of complete protein, but that wouldn't be as a result of complementary proteins. It would be a result of the fact that the quinoa and soybeans were complete proteins to begin with.

If both the legume and the grain are incomplete proteins, the point where you land between 10 g and 20 g of complete protein in your scenario would depend on how perfectly complementary the given grain and bean are.


But as @AnnPT77 said, trying to calculate this is impractical and unnecessary. Eat a variety of foods of different types, including the meat or fish you are still eating up to twice a week, dairy and eggs if you are eating those, legumes, grains, nuts, seeds, and vegetables.