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Comment by graphe | Hacker News Reader

I would have bred them for more potato protein. It's a very close meat protein substitute by essential amino acids. Might be why it tastes so good. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6245118/

>Of the ten plant-based proteins included in the current analysis, potato protein is the only protein source containing the WHO/FAO/UNU requirements for all essential amino acids. Thus, when consuming potato protein as the only dietary protein source at the recommended adult protein intake level of 0.66 g/kg/day, sufficient amounts of all essential amino acids should be consumed. It remains to be investigated whether the ingestion of a single meal-like amount of potato protein has the capacity to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.

Anyone know about vegan protein profiles and best ones now?

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1. Soy, brown rice, pea, corn, and potato all hit their EAA/total protein cut-off.

2. I don't see how amino acid % of total protein is a useful way to gauge a food's protein especially in this context. Wouldn't you want to look at protein per calorie or EAA per calorie?

For example the paper's chart might make you think that you should eat potatoes and corn if you want to maximize plant-based protein, but that's not the case at all.

- 500 calories of potatoes boiled: 10g protein (650g of food)

- 500 calories of rib-eye steak: 54g protein (200g of food)

- 500 calories of soy chunks (TVP): 75g protein (btw hits all EAA objectives for the day) (150g of food)

- 500 calories of wheat gluten (seitan): 101g protein (135g of food)

Potatoes are dense in other nutrients and a great part of a healthy diet, but you definitely wouldn't use potatoes as a "meat protein substitute". Even broccoli is 3x as protein dense as potatoes.

On the other hand, seitan, tofu, and TVP are the trifecta of plant-based protein that can actually substitute for meat.

> Wouldn't you want to look at protein per calorie or EAA per calorie?

PDCAAS is a reasonable standard to use, pro-rated against total calories.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Correc...

One problem with PDCAAS is that it's based on the limiting EAA in a food, but everyone interprets it as a general bioavailability ratio when it's not.

A food with 1000x the EAAs per calorie of every other food, but 0 of one EAA would score below the other foods even though you could get the day's worth of EAA on 1/1000 the calories + one serving of an additional food that can give you the missing EAA (i.e. eat more than one food every day).

Don't compare whole potato, it should be to potato protein extract.

If you were just talking about min-maxing protein extracts for a protein powder or something, I wouldn't have commented.

But your comment on the EAA/totalProtein ratio (when potatoes are very low in protein) possibly being responsible for why potatoes taste good made me chime in for clarification.

I supplement protein, filtered for vegan because my body doesn't like whey, and Pea protein is pretty solid. It's a "complete" protein and doesn't require any complicated processing steps, just drying, pulverizing, and a centrifuge step to spin out the fiber.

Are you sure that's all they do? Peas aren't even close to 100% protein, so you'd be eating a very high-carb powder if that were the case.

Yep, here's an article [1] describing the process. Here's some youtube video I found showing the various steps [2].

They don't have to use any chemical solutions more exotic than water and air. I bungled the explanation with "centrifuge", it's more complicated than that, but the fiber content is removed in that step.

[1]: https://gogood.co.nz/blogs/news/how-is-pea-protein-manufactu...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbX_w0ZIunM

Hence the "spinning out the fiber" bit. Likewise, whey protein is a byproduct of cheesemaking where fat gets separated from milk, otherwise it'd be a very high-fat powder.

I'm assuming that's the point of the centrifuge?

I skimmed the article but it seems to contradict itself:

> Soy, brown rice, pea, corn, and potato protein have essential amino acid contents that meet the requirements as recommended by the WHO/FAO/UNU (WHO/FAO/UNU Expert Consultation 2007) (Fig. 2).

Not quite vegan, but I like cricket protein.

Cricket protein is still insanely expensive though.

Cricket protein can trigger shellfish allergies, fyi.

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