The Ultimate Guide! Also Contains The List Of The Best Protein Foods To Grow Your Muscles
In this guide we will analyze the most recent studies and research to understand and comprehend together how proteins, but above all amino acids (you will understand later what I am talking about) make muscles grow to answer the question we asked ourselves, do muscles grow more with animal or vegetable proteins?
Let's make things clear right away, today we are going to understand together what the anabolic response of the muscles is when you eat vegetable proteins, which translated means: which proteins are the best at a dietary level both for protein intake and for essential amino acid intake.
Essential amino acids are called this way because they are necessary for our life (and therefore also for muscle growth), but our body is not able to synthesize them in sufficient quantities and therefore we must take them through food.
We can already say that vegetable proteins are arousing strong interest both from a clinical perspective and from common users who often prefer them in the paths of increasing or maintaining muscle mass.
Do plant proteins have the same anabolic effect on muscle growth as animal proteins?
Recent studies and research have shown that ingesting plant-based proteins in soy and wheat results in a lower response from our muscles than various animal-based protein sources.
Is animal protein still superior?
The apparently lower anabolic properties of plant protein sources can be attributed to 2 well-defined reasons:
- Lower digestibility
- Lack of some essential amino acids
Added to these two reasons, always in relation to amino acids, is a lower content of leucine in most vegetable protein sources, which translates, for our goal of increasing muscle mass, into a reduction of the anabolic effect derived from their ingestion.
Given this picture, you may be thinking that there are not many doubts about which proteins to choose, but I ask you not to jump to conclusions and continue reading to understand if: do muscles grow more with animal or vegetable proteins?
Muscle Growth With Plant Protein: A Paradigm Shift
Despite the lower anabolic properties of vegetable proteins compared to animal proteins, we can apply various strategies to increase these properties and, consequently, the growth of our muscles, putting at least on "paper", animal and vegetable proteins on the same level. These strategies are three:
- Fortification of plant-based protein sources with amino acids
- select various plant sources to improve amino acid profiles
- Consuming greater amounts of plant-based protein sources
However, the effectiveness of these strategies, especially the second and third, on postprandial muscle protein synthesis (i.e. immediately after meals) remains to be studied and tested. However, do not worry as soon as there is news we will immediately update this section with new discoveries or scientific studies.
Why is the peak of essential amino acids after a meal so important?
The answer, although simple, is not obvious: the increase in concentrations of essential amino acids (EAA) postprandially modulates our protein synthesis rates within our muscles, causing them to increase.
In this situation, if we ingest a lower content of essential amino acids or if there is a specific lack of some of them (such as leucine, lysine and/or methionine), a lower anabolic capacity can occur and this, as we said before, is much more common when we eat proteins of vegetable origin.
What influences postprandial availability of essential amino acids?
The availability of essential amino acids in our body after a meal is regulated by a series of physiological processes, among the most important we can mention:
- Protein digestion
- The interpersonal capacity of each of us to absorb them
- The intestinal microbiota, that is, the billions of good bacteria that contribute to our intestinal functionality
- The composition of amino acids
- The content of essential amino acids
- The presence or absence of anti-nutritional factors, that is, substances present in foods that interfere with the absorption of essential nutrients for our body
Let's face it, animal proteins generally contain more essential amino acids
In the graph below, we find the essential amino acid (EAA) composition of various animal and plant protein sources compared to human skeletal muscle protein.
Specifically, the composition of the following foods was analyzed:
- Oats
- Lupine
- Wheat
- Hemp
- Algae
- Soy
- Brown rice
- Peas
- Corn
- Potatoes
- Milk
- Whey
- Calcium caseinate
- Casein
- Egg
The result of this comparison was what we already expected, that is, the content of essential amino acids in plant proteins such as oats (21%), lupine (21%) and wheat (22%) was lower than in proteins of animal origin (whey 43%, milk 39%, casein 34% and eggs 32%) and human muscle proteins (38%).
Amino acids and leucine: their content varies greatly in vegetable proteins
Now let's tackle another point of our comparison that will help us answer our initial question: Do muscles grow more with animal or vegetable proteins?
Let's look at the amino acid profile of the protein sources we analyzed earlier (in case you hadn't already understood, amino acids are the "tipping point" to answer the question we asked ourselves today). In the case of vegetable proteins, the leucine content has a very wide variation and in some cases the content is higher than that of animal proteins.
Going into more detail, the leucine content in animal proteins varies from 7% (in eggs) to 9% (in milk), that of human muscle stands at 7.6%, while the most incredible figure is that of vegetable proteins which varies from 5.1% (in hemp) up to 13.5% (in corn).
The opposite case concerns methionine and lysine, whose content is typically lower in all plant protein sources compared to animal and muscle protein sources.
We can say, finally, with absolute certainty that there are great differences in the content and composition of essential amino acids contained in plant proteins.
So choose your plant-based protein sources very carefully, taking into account the amino acid ratio and not just the protein content.
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Buy NowEssential amino acids are primarily responsible for the growth of our muscles.
You understood correctly, we have spent a lot of time understanding the amino acid composition of the protein sources we ingest precisely for this reason, because essential amino acids are the main ones responsible for the growth of our muscles.
In fact, there is a relationship between the dose of essential amino acids that we ingest and the stimulation of protein synthesis that we activate, so to promote the growth of our muscles or prevent their loss, it is important that we consider the content of essential amino acids of the food protein source that we eat.
Now we come to the reason why you came this far, why you are reading this article, the question that has been tormenting us since the beginning, we are ready to answer:
Do muscles grow more with animal or plant proteins?
The answer is that animal protein sources are not always the most effective (compared to plant-based ones), although we have observed that the average essential amino acid content of plant proteins is generally lower than that of animal origin and human skeletal muscle, some plant proteins have a higher essential amino acid content than others.
Specifically, soy, brown rice, peas, corn and potato proteins have a content of essential amino acids that meet the requirements recommended by: WHO, FAO and UNU.
Furthermore, the content of essential amino acids in potato proteins (37%) is in fact higher than in casein (34%) and egg (32%).
In conclusion then, some plant proteins can provide sufficient essential amino acids to allow a robust postprandial stimulation of muscle protein synthesis and therefore growth of our muscles.
Our advice is to choose the protein sources you ingest also paying attention to their essential amino acid content, because they are “essential” for growing your muscles.
Sources:
- J Nutr. 2015 Sep;145(9):1981-91. doi: 10.3945/jn.114.204305. Epub 2015 Jul 29 .
- Amino Acids. 2018; 50(12): 1685–1695. doi: 10.1007/s00726-018-2640-5
