===============================================
Ivan's Newsletter
May 15, 2006 -- Issue 006
===============================================

Hi,

This issue includes...

1) "Questions and Answers"
Should I count the protein from vegetable sources?

2) "Visit My Newsletter Archives"

3) "Tell Me What You Think!"

4) Recommend this Article to a Friend

===============================================
1) Should I count the protein from vegetable sources?
===============================================

Q. Hi Ivan, My name is Tiago. I have a question
regarding protein. When on a bulking or cutting diet and,
for example, 30% of your calories come from protein,
does that mean ONLY complete sources or do you count
protein from grains/veggies into your ratios?

A. Good question. I know of many people who ask
themselves the same thing. They don’t know whether
they should take in consideration the proteins, coming from
plant sources (vegetable proteins) or they should count
only the animal proteins.

First, let’s see which are the vegetable and which are
the animal proteins.

Vegetable proteins are the ones that come from grains,
nuts and seeds, and legumes. By the way legumes come
with the highest protein content of all veggie proteins.
Think soy. Yes, soy is a bean ;-)

Vegetable proteins however lack one or more of the
so-called essential amino acids (mainly lysine, methionine
and tryptophan). Essential means that you should always
provide them with your food as your body cannot
manufacture them.

So, that makes the veggie proteins incomplete sources.
With other words the body can’t do too much with veggie
proteins IF they come by themselves (that is a hint).
The reason is the body has to take the missing amino acids
from somewhere else to make up for the incompleteness
of the protein.

On the other hand animal proteins are complete proteins.
They have all the essential amino acids. You know which
ones re animal proteins but here is a short list again –
poultry, fish, beef, dairy, eggs.

Remember the hint above? Okay. By combining vegetable
proteins from different groups you can make up for the
missing amino acids. Here is how to combine them.

Grains and legumes complement each other.
Example: rice and beans make for a complete protein.

Grains and nuts and seeds will make for a complete
protein as well. Example: whole wheat bread with
sesame seeds.

Legumes and nuts and seeds is another possible
combination. Example: humus (or hummus).
That is garbanzo beans and sesame paste.

However, if you have any animal source of protein present
in your meal it should perfectly complement the incomplete
vegetable protein that goes with it. Example: chicken
and rice.

So, to answer your question if you are a vegetarian then
you should combine vegetable proteins from different groups.

If you are not a vegetarian then you should be eating
animal source of protein with each meal any way.
That is you should always take in consideration the protein
that comes from your grains, legumes, seeds and nuts,
or a combination of all of them if they go along with
animal protein.

But if you are going to eat any vegetable protein
just by itself then don’t bother counting it.

-Ivan

===============================================
Copyright 2006 by IvanNikolov.com
All rights reserved.
===============================================