High protein plant based diets for muscle growth and recovery
As long as your plant based or vegan diet is high in protein, it can be just as effective for muscle gain and recovery as a mixed diet. The key factor is that you need to eat enough plant protein overall spread out regularly throughout each meal to achieve at least 1.6g.kg.
Because plant-based protein foods have lower muscle protein stimulus rates after exercise when compared to animal proteins like whey or egg, it has often been assumed that a plant based diet may be less effective for muscle growth, maintenance or recovery.
Not so!
As long as a vegan diet contains high amount of plant protein consumed regularly, there is no difference to a protein matched omnivorous diet for muscle strength, maintenance or gain.
The key point is to consume enough plant protein - at least 1.6g per kg body mass.
What are the benefits or eating more plant protein?
This study found that there was NO DIFFERENCE in muscle strength or gain between those following a plant-based diet versus those who had a mixed diet eating animal protein - AS LONG as they were eating enough protein.
A plant based diet requires MORE protein than you might need on a mixed diet to get enough leucine, but as long as you achieve 1.6g.kg that it’s just as effective.
Eating more protein can help with weight management and feelings of fullness too, so it’s a winner all round no matter what source you use.
What is 1.6g.kg plant protein?
If you weigh 60kg for example, 1.6g per kg of body weight means that you would need to eat approximately 96g of protein a day (at least).
A meal should ideally contain at least 20g of protein, but due to reduced digestibility from plant-based proteins, it’s better to consume 30-40g protein per meal and evenly spread this throughout the day.
The challenge with plant based protein whole foods
While I am always a fan of using a food first approach, it can be a challenge to meet this target if protein is coming solely from whole food sources.
Why?
Because most whole plant based protein foods either contain a lot of fats or carbohydrates, so in order to get over 20g of protein a serve, the overall energy content can increase quite quickly because of that.
For example take peanut butter, baked beans and tofu and the amounts required to achieve 20g of protein:
Plant protein in peanut butter
Every time I see someone recommending people eat peanut butter for protein it makes me wince.. because to achieve 20g of protein you need to eat over 500kcal of peanut butter!
This is because peanut butter has twice as much fat than it does protein, and at 9kcal per gram of fat the calories quickly add up.
Plant protein in baked beans
Beans are a great source of protein, but you do need to eat a LOT of them to reach 20g of protein. A whole cans worth when it comes to baked beans!
This is because the carbohydrate content can be 2-3x greater than the protein content, meaning that you rapidly bump up your carb intake in the process.
Plant protein in tofu
From a protein perspective, tofu is one of the best choices to add a good amount of plant protein to your diet without adding lots of extra fats or carbohydrates in the process.
To achieve 20g of protein from tofu you need to eat the whole 250g block per meal!
Use a variety of plant based protein food sources
Habitually the vegan group were eating less than 60g of plant-base protein from whole foods, which is on the low side and something I see regularly in practice with my own clients
To achieve 1.6g.kg of plant protein, the people following a vegan diet supplemented with 58g of soy isolate protein (2x 30g serves/day), versus the mixed diet group who supplemented an average 41g whey isolate protein powder.
I often find that supplementation with a plant protein powder is required on an exclusively plant-based or vegan diet to meet these amounts.
All these factors help explain why when you follow a plant-based diet, nutrition planning and using a variety of food sources to meet your protein needs is important.
Read my plant-based protein foods post to learn more about what foods you can add into your plant based diet for a protein boost!
Gemma
REFERENCE: Hevia-Larraín, V. et al. (2021) High-Protein Plant-Based Diet Versus a Protein-Matched Omnivorous Diet to Support Resistance Training Adaptations: A Comparison Between Habitual Vegans and Omnivores. Sports Med. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-021-01434-9
Gemma Sampson RD APD
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