CategoryNutrition

Essential Amino Acid Profiles for All Nuts [Data]

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Nuts are one of the best bulking foods due to their high caloric content. There’s also a decent amount of protein in nuts, making them a great snack. While you want to be mindful of the omega 3 to 6 fat ratio of nuts, you also want to make sure you’re eating other protein sources that compensate for any low amounts of individual amino acids in nuts. As long as you’re eating the...

Lentils vs Meat (Chicken/Beef): Protein and Nutrition

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Key takeaways: Even though lentils are a great plant-based protein source, most common meats have 2-3 times more protein per calorie. Meat is typically a complete protein, while lentils are not quite complete since they are low in the amino acid methionine. Lentils have significantly more vitamins and minerals overall. Lentils have a lower environmental impact than all meat sources, and...

Pinto Beans vs Kidney Beans: Comparing Nutrition and Taste

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Pinto beans and kidney beans are both easy to find in can or dry form. But I’ve often wondered which one is best in terms of taste or nutrition (protein, calories, fiber, etc.), so I decided to find the answers and make a clear summary here. As it turns out, there’s not a huge difference between them, but there are some small ones that may affect the one you choose to eat sometimes...

Does Tofu (Soy) Have Estrogen or Raise Estrogen? [Study Summary]

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Tofu is a great food to help get enough protein as a vegan (or as a non-vegan as well). But  as we’ve all heard, there are some scary claims about it. Ask most guys about eating tofu, and they’ll either say, “doesn’t tofu have estrogen” or “won’t that raise your estrogen levels?” Most people who say that have never read a study on the topic. My goal with this post is to go over...

How Long Does Fiber Stay In Your System?

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This was a question that peaked my curiosity, so I dug into the research. Most of the studies around digestion kinematics focus on ruminants (typically cows), which isn’t too useful for us. Luckily, I found one study that looked at the digestion speed of fiber in chimpanzees and humans. Study Summary: Fiber Transit Time in Humans What they did: They fed 24 adult males various types of...

6 Hardest Nutrients to Get on a Vegan Diet [Data-Backed]

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Going vegan is a huge change when it comes to the nutrition you’ll be getting. This is good in a lot of ways. It becomes much easier to get most nutrients. But, there are a few vitamins and minerals that are harder to get enough of on a vegan diet. You need to pay extra attention to these, at least until you’re sure that you’re getting enough of them. The 6 Hardest Nutrients for...

Tempeh vs Seitan vs Tofu: (Taste + Nutrition Data)

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Whether you’re vegan or just looking to eat more plant-based foods, tempeh, seitan, and tofu are among the best plant-based sources of protein. This post will look at 2 main things: taste and nutrition (mainly protein content and quality). Obviously taste is subjective, but I’ll go over the texture to expect, and which recipes each work best in. For the nutrition, we’ll compare...

Essential Amino Acid Profiles for All Common Beans

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Beans are an awesome source of nutrition whether you’re vegan or not. But…they aren’t perfect. You shouldn’t rely on them for all your protein needs, because as we’ll see, beans are deficient in certain types of amino acids. Using detailed data from the USDA’s food database, I extracted the amount of each essential amino acid in the most common beans. First, we’ll look at them altogether to...

The Top 30 Vegan Valine Food Sources

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Valine is one of the most important amino acids to athletes. It’s one of the 3 branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), important for building and repairing muscle cells, along with leucine and isoleucine. Here’s a list of the top vegan sources of leucine, and here’s the list for isoleucine. How Much Valine Do You Need? There’s no set recommended daily amount to aim for with valine, but...

Chickpeas vs Chicken: Protein and Nutrition Comparison

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Chickpeas, Chicken…. They sound similar, and are both known as good sources of protein. Chicken is one of, if not the, most popular source of animal protein, while chickpeas are one of the most popular plant-based sources of protein. So which one’s best? I’ll break down the differences in protein and amino acid profiles, plus the nutritional value of each. Do...