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Comment by acconrad | Hacker News Reader

Pea protein is incredibly chalky and earthy. It's a tough one to stomach. The other thing that people don't realize is that peas are incredibly high in iron. So much so that you actually need to watch your intake or you'll get way too much iron. As an example, 1 scoop of pea protein powder, roughly 20-25g of protein, will also provide 40% of your RDA of iron. An 8oz ribeye steak (something people generally think is very high in iron) only has 20% of your RDA of iron with 40g of protein.

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> scoop [...] g [...] oz

Argh! Don't mix your units, or you'll crash into the surface of Mars [1]. Let's convert that to SI-based values:

    8 oz = 227 g
    RDA of iron = varies; 8 mg for adult males,
                         18 mg for adult females before menopause
    1 scoop = who knows, maybe 30 g?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

That sounds like a criticism of whatever your particular product is (sounds like a raw flour to me) and not of "pea protein" per se, which is neither chalky nor earthy and has no iron inherently.

I mean, ground up soy beans are probably mealy too. Tofu certainly isn't. I don't know exactly what the products being discussed in the linked article are, but if they're targetted at meat replacement products they're rather more likely to be on the tofu end of the spectrum than the supplement you bought.

"...and has no iron inherently."

According to the nutritional labels 1 cup of peas has 11% of your RDA of iron. Take away the water weight and I can see that being a problem in large servings.

presumably the process of creating protein powder from peas removes most of the iron, along with other nutrients.

Several results in a quick search would refute that.

Sticking to a single brand[1] shows it's significantly high in iron. It's the only brand I recognized, but several other brands have similar nutritional content.

[1]https://www.bobsredmill.com/pea-protein-powder.html#nutritio...

"peas" and "pea protein" are not the same thing, though.

Pea protein appears to be cleaned, hulled, and milled peas with the starch and fiber removed.

That's a flour, and applies to the Bob's Red Mill product you linked elsewhere. Food industry products are very often significantly processed. Again, think tofu, not soybean flour. Your soyburgers don't taste at all like edamame, either.

I'm not sure how large you think the servings are likely to get, but a quick look indicates 1 cup of cooked and drained peas has 35% DV of dietary fiber. Before you eat yourself into some kind of iron-related jeopardy your digestive tract is going to raise some warnings of its own, I think.

Serving Size: 1/4 cup (27g) has 35% of RDA of Iron.

I'm not the OP, just gave it a quick search. That's for pea protein. Further down-thread absorption is brought into play, which is likely why the risk is less than it would appear.

Edited for clarity and formatting.

Also 21g of carbohydrates, most of which will likely not end up in the end product. Peas contain iron, the protein in peas doesn't.

Try some of the products from Ripple Foods. Whatever their process is, it works - taste is very smooth and neutral. The chocolate premix shake is very close to dairy for me.

As far as iron content goes, it looks like the RDA is around 10 mg daily with a tolerable upper limit of 40 mg per dose. It's not clear how much daily intake you need for a person without hemochromatosis to experience negative side effects, but exceeding the RDA by several times doesn't seem like a major problem. Notably, the recommended intake is 1.8x higher for vegetarians vs non-vegetarians.

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-HealthProfessional

The iron comparison is slightly misleading since the steak contains ~40% of heme iron vs. none in the pea protein.

Heme iron is more readily absorbed (20% - 30% absorbed) than non heme iron (5% - 12% absorbed).

Not to mention comparing a dry concentrate to a raw ingredient.

But you can get too much iron, and heme iron is linked to cancer.

I think that perhaps this is the fault of the product you had. The stuff I buy tends to be nice and chewy textured. I don't think the iron is an issue if I'm not eating it daily (which I don't).

Soy products tend to be similar: I've bought some that were seriously disgusting both in taste and texture, but other things are absolutely delicious. A few simply depend on use.

I ate a lot of pure, unflavored isolate and it seemed very mild to me. Slight bean-like flavor, sort of creamy. Pea protein and hot water with salt seemed fine.

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