“Vegans Are Protein Deficient!” (RESPONSE)

Protein deficiency claims in vegans 0:00

If you're automatically protein deficient when you cut out animal protein as Dave claims, then how have I survived as a vegan for nearly 14 years? And gained muscle as vegan. But anecdotes aside, because that's not our MO here, we also have published reviews like this that failed to identify any good evidence of protein deficiency

Plant vs animal protein and muscle gains 0:24

in vegans and vegetarians in western populations. And we also have trials in which people on plant-based or omnivorous diets eat the same amount of protein while resistance training and get the SAME results. If there was truly this deficit in plant protein, then surely we would see less muscle and strength gains in those on the plant based diet, but that's not the case. It's not okay to say 100 grams of beef or whey or something is the same as 100g of gluten or soy protein or whatever other protein, pea protein that you think is food.

They don't do the thing in the body. If you were to eat that many peas, you'd throw up. So you can't that so you industrially process them, but you still need probably twice as much pea as animal protein because it doesn't absorb as well.

Digestibility of pea protein 0:58

So he suggests that you only absorb about half of the protein from plant sources, including even isolated pea protein, but he's just wrong again. When measured in humans, the true ilial digestibility of pea proteins is 91.5%, which is only a few percent short of even highly digestible animal proteins. And as I've already discussed, both plant and animal protein lead to similar muscle and strength gains, so who cares about these minuscule differences in measures of digestibility? But even if it did matter, it would mean just consuming a few extra grams of plant protein.

So let's not make a big deal about it.