Stolen comment:
Obvious animal-industrial complex propaganda. Plant based proteins have way higher values than shown here (eg. boiled chickpeas have 15g, most tofus have 20g+ etc., just search any one of them up). The list also ignores staple, high-protein foods of this type (like beans and seeds), while including very low-protein foods that nobody thinks of as a source of protein (brocolli and avocado, really?), making the comparison seem less favorable.
Staging your meals around complete proteins is also completely unnecessary as long as your diet is even somewhat varied. Your body doesn’t need to get every amino acid at the same time to be able to make proteins.
Pretty sure it kinda does, maybe not the same meal but within a day or so.
Your body doesn’t have a way to store incomplete proteins for later construction when the missing essential aminos arrive. Any aminos from proteins that can’t be used to build needed proteins will be turned into glucose, and if you don’t need the glucose turned into fat for energy storage.
Think of proteins like long words you have to spell by eating the right letters. If you don’t have the letters to spell a word it can’t be spelled. Your body has the ability to create some letters but some must be eaten. If you don’t eat the needed letters your body will make do by eating itself (normal autophagy), which is fine on occasion for periods, but your body needs complete proteins.
Adding: You’re right about a varied diet being easy enough for most to get the aminos they need. Many vegan/vegetarian dishes are oriented around complete proteins, eat these common dishes, the thinking about complete proteins was done for you long ago.
Just to check, did a quick search on usda.
- egg - 10g
- chicken breast - 22.5g
- canned chickpea - 7g
- random tofu brand - 9.4g
Values aren’t off that much, tho meat protein value seems to be overstated. It’s still likely propaganda, since they’re not calorie-wise protein which gives better outlook for balaced diet.
Why include avocado and brown rice over protein rich foods like tempeh or seitan?
What is this sorting?
Absolutely terrible way to compare foods. The fact that many veg proteins are incomplete means they only have some of the amino acids we need, and must be paired with other foods to get a complete set. Generally that’s “rice and beans” kinda combos. Though some plants have complete proteins
Also there are obvious downsides to many of the foods on the right side, like high cholesterol/saturated fats that will kill you from heart disease, and red meat being linked to diabetes/cancer
I think people are upset with the foods included for comparison when they should be upset with metric being used to compare them. Protein per 100g tells me protein to weight but what I really care about is protein to total calorie count per 100g. That tells me if the food is efficient in delivering me protein and even that should be coupled with calorie per gram or volume per gram or something to show how much of the food can I eat.
The graphic makes almonds look amazing, for instance, but you get a handful of almond for 100g and also a fourth of your daily caloric intake at 550 kcal. Which means they’re not exactly an efficient protein source. Where as tofu is rather efficient at only 80 kcal per 100g.
tofu is mostly water. If you want to compare anything by mass you need to remove the water
What? Surely that’s not how nutrition labels are made. If I look at the label for almonds and I look at the label for tofu and they both list 100g of X has Y protein in it - surely they’re comparable. So what is your point? Are you suggesting I need to dehydrate tofu to determine it’s real nutrition? I don’t know if that’s practical or meaningful in anyway. I guess you’re suggesting that if we cook out the water certain foods like tofu get even more macro nutritionally dense?
In the US nutrition labels are per serving not per 100g. A serving of tofu might weigh 123 grams while a serving of almonds is 20 grams. Because the tofu is full of water. You can’t easily compare nutrition content for foods based on their weight.
