Is Protein What You've Been Missing?
Food is Fuel. Is protein the high octane additive your body has been missing?
It feels like everywhere they are saying higher protein to meet your health/fitness goals. Are all proteins the same? How much do you need? I've got more questions then answers. Let's start with the basics:
Why protein?
1. Build. Protein is an important building block of bones, muscles, cartilage and skin. In fact, your hair and nails are comprised mostly of protein.
2. Repair. Your body uses it to build and repair tissue.
3. Oxygenate. Red blood cells contain a protein compound that carries oxygen throughout the body. This helps supply your entire body with the nutrients it needs.
4. Digest. About half the dietary protein that you consume each day goes into making enzymes, which aids in digesting food, and making new cells and body chemicals.
5. Regulate. Protein plays an important role in hormone regulation, especially during the transformation and development of cells during puberty.
Protein quality measures:
We look at PDCAA value: protein digestibility corrected amino acid score. This is, in essence, the bio-availability of a protein source. 1 is the highest score you can get.
When it comes to food sources, those with the highest scores are animal based, egg based, or milk based proteins that have the highest scores. For example, casein (milk) protein and egg white protein both have a score of 1. This means, those who are vegan or vegetarian struggle to find protein sources with a high PDCAA score. Not to mention, often it is very difficult to find a clean animal-based protein food source. And they can be expensive!
On the flip-side, many plant-based proteins sources, while they can be clean, have a lower PDCAA score.
For example, soy protein isolate has a score of 0.92, pea protein concentrate is 0.73.
Juice plus complete is the only plant based protein drink mix we know of that has a score of 1. So you get both – the benefits of plant based, animal-free protein without sacrificing the PDCAA score. Win-win!
Already have a protein powder you love? Check the PDCAA score to be sure you're getting all the goodness you can!