Question
Sally Foulke
How can I increase protein with a plant based diet?
Answer
Fantastic question and so a couple of things, you know a plant-based diet. Is sufficient in protein they did a study and I have this slide that I love to put up for people that ask the question. Well, where do I get my protein? And the study looked at 500 calories of plants from peas and tomatoes spinach and peas Tomatoes spinach and it looked at animal products which contain beef pork some chicken and milk and they compared these 500 calories and the 500 calories of plants have 33 grams of protein. properties of animals had 34 minutes approach and so the point was that, you know, eating 500 equal calories of plants or animals you and when we look at the protein content of all plants, they all have some level of protein and if you're consuming enough calories from a whole food plant-based diet, you will obtain a sufficient amount of protein. In your diet and so you'll never be protein deficient. If you're looking to increase protein some things that can be helpful some really good protein sources in a plant-based diet are beans lentils and chickpeas anywhere from 15 18 to 20 grams of protein per cup at a mommy soybeans or an excellent source of protein. And if you're looking to increase the protein content, those can be a terrific Source we should all be consuming a small amount of medicine seeds every day. They've been shown to not only reduce the risk of cardiac disease, but they lengthen the telomeres actually make your yourselves younger over time. So that handful of nuts and seeds is a good source of protein every day broccoli kale. Have excellent source of protein. And so you're getting protein every time you consume those for athletes. Sometimes I'll add in some Hep protein and additional Source if they need some extra protein, but you know, a well-balanced whole food plant-based diet with beans and lentils chickpeas and lots of leafy green vegetables will never be deficient in protein. And in fact, you know a good way to convince yourself of this is to keep track of how much you consume in a day and then just go to a food calculator online and plug in that consumption of each of those breakfast lunch and dinner components and you'll see that you'll get enough protein, you know, a woman should get on average around 40 grams of protein in a day and a male 50 to 60 on average and certainly those numbers can go up based upon activity levels muscle mass and you know Sports So but when they look at the nitrogen studies those are safe levels of protein consumption. In America today, the average person is actually consuming, you know between 100 and 120 grams of protein. So well in excess of what they need and that actually comes with some detrimental effects of body. It makes the body inflamed. It disrupts the microbiome. It's an acid load on the body as we talked about earlier in the body pulls calcium out of the bones as a buffer for those acids and in that way. It becomes I has a negative effect on the body long term. So a plant-based diet, you will never eat too much protein. You'll get exactly what you need. And it comes packaged with all those beautiful phytochemicals antioxidants minerals and vitamins and essential fiber that you just don't get from an animal-based diet. And so the question I always ask people is how do you want your protein packaged, you know knowing that you'll never be deficient in protein and that's if you're eating enough calories from plant-based diet, you will get the protein that you need. The real question is how do you want your protein packaged? Do you want to packaged with saturated fat with new 5gc, which is inflammatory with in animal products heme iron, which is pro-oxidant inflammatory. So she with heart disease and diabetes and animal products saturated fats. Or do you want it in Plants where your protein comes with tons of phytochemicals, which reduce inflammation turn on bone-building cells fight cancer antioxidants vitamins minerals and lots of fiber and so I I prefer to get my protein from the plant-based sources. So that's a great question Sally. It's one of the classic questions. It's really important to understand because there are so many people that just don't believe you can get enough protein from a plant-based diet. There's a great movie that should be out in the next month. It's called The Game Changers. It's produced by James Cameron and it looks at all of these world-class athletes and it shows that these even some of these huge strong men or plant-based and they get more than enough protein from their plant-based meals. So thank you Sally important question and one of the classic myths about eating a plant-based diet.
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