For (potential) vegans that are depressed at the sight of the protein/kcal table. Here’s a screenshot of a similar table I put together last year (for myself—UK based). I like sharing this with gym bros that scoff at veganism for lean protein reasons.
Beware that it has a small number of duplicates as I was also tracking prices from different suppliers to compare.
Most of the things on this list have one or two ingredients if that’s something you care about.
mix vital wheat gluten with some nutritional yeast (if I have any) and a bit of soy sauce
add water until it comes together in a dough that I can fold in on itself until there are no more crumbs/flour
rest for 15 min
rip out (table tennis ball sized) pieces, pull them long, knot them
boil the knots in vegetable broth (maybe 10-15 min)
then cut into slices
I make these in bulk and find that the slices freeze well. I find that they work best in curries (Thai and Indian style) and chillies (especially if you cook them in a pressure cooker with all the beans and spices).
I also just snack on them on their own, but that’s maybe an acquired taste, like raw tofu or tempeh. (I also sometimes make my own tempeh. It’s quite fun! Making tofu turned out to have a really low yield, so I stopped doing that.)
These will turn out quite chewy. Some people don’t love that. To make them less dense, I have in the past added baking powder which makes them puff up when boiling—you’ll need a big pot for that!
Currently working on seitan sausage recipes, but not happy with any of those yet. If anyone has recommendations, please let me know!
Does this take bioavailability into account? IIUC, humans can’t absorb 100% of plant based proteins, while we can absorb nearly 100% of animal-based proteins. The upshot is that your spreadsheet isn’t tracking the actual amount of protein human bodies will absorb
Yes, this table does not include data on this. I don’t have columns for values related to that. It’s a lot of work to track these numbers down and for many foods they are just not available.
When people online talk about the “bioavailability” of protein sources, they seem to mean one (or both) of two things:
One is the digestibility. So how much of the amino acids end up absorbed your body. That number is ~90%+ for most soy products (that I have found numbers for) as well as vital wheat gluten.
The other thing that people talk about is the amino acid profile. As one would expect, an animal muscle has the amino acids that one needs to build animal muscle, in about the right relative amounts.
Soy also has all essential amino acids, the profile is just a bit different. But none is particularly low or missing.
Vital wheat gluten is low in lysine. So I wouldn’t recommend relying only on seitan for protein. But if there is a bit of soy or some beans in your diet, I wouldn’t worry about it. (It’s also easy and cheap to supplement but that’s probably usually not necessary.)
Protein quality scores like PDCAAS and DIAAS try to account for both. That’s why, on its own, vital wheat gluten ends up with a poor score. But soy products tend to still score highly.
Basically, I am not worried about it and have personally been building muscle without problem on a vegan diet with lots of soy and some seitan. But you are right that accounting for this would probably change the table ordering a little.
For (potential) vegans that are depressed at the sight of the protein/kcal table. Here’s a screenshot of a similar table I put together last year (for myself—UK based). I like sharing this with gym bros that scoff at veganism for lean protein reasons.
Beware that it has a small number of duplicates as I was also tracking prices from different suppliers to compare.
Most of the things on this list have one or two ingredients if that’s something you care about.
Here are the top picks sorted by protein per kcal and price (based on Feb 2024 prices).
This is why I make my own seitan.
What a great spreadsheet. It gives me wonderful old-school EA vibes.
Do you have a fav seitan recipe?
I’ve made seitan 3 times. 1x failure, 1x fairly good, 1x amazing but really time consuming.
Thank you! My base recipe is just:
mix vital wheat gluten with some nutritional yeast (if I have any) and a bit of soy sauce
add water until it comes together in a dough that I can fold in on itself until there are no more crumbs/flour
rest for 15 min
rip out (table tennis ball sized) pieces, pull them long, knot them
boil the knots in vegetable broth (maybe 10-15 min)
then cut into slices
I make these in bulk and find that the slices freeze well. I find that they work best in curries (Thai and Indian style) and chillies (especially if you cook them in a pressure cooker with all the beans and spices).
I also just snack on them on their own, but that’s maybe an acquired taste, like raw tofu or tempeh. (I also sometimes make my own tempeh. It’s quite fun! Making tofu turned out to have a really low yield, so I stopped doing that.)
These will turn out quite chewy. Some people don’t love that. To make them less dense, I have in the past added baking powder which makes them puff up when boiling—you’ll need a big pot for that!
Currently working on seitan sausage recipes, but not happy with any of those yet. If anyone has recommendations, please let me know!
Does this take bioavailability into account? IIUC, humans can’t absorb 100% of plant based proteins, while we can absorb nearly 100% of animal-based proteins. The upshot is that your spreadsheet isn’t tracking the actual amount of protein human bodies will absorb
Yes, this table does not include data on this. I don’t have columns for values related to that. It’s a lot of work to track these numbers down and for many foods they are just not available.
When people online talk about the “bioavailability” of protein sources, they seem to mean one (or both) of two things:
One is the digestibility. So how much of the amino acids end up absorbed your body. That number is ~90%+ for most soy products (that I have found numbers for) as well as vital wheat gluten.
The other thing that people talk about is the amino acid profile. As one would expect, an animal muscle has the amino acids that one needs to build animal muscle, in about the right relative amounts.
Soy also has all essential amino acids, the profile is just a bit different. But none is particularly low or missing.
Vital wheat gluten is low in lysine. So I wouldn’t recommend relying only on seitan for protein. But if there is a bit of soy or some beans in your diet, I wouldn’t worry about it. (It’s also easy and cheap to supplement but that’s probably usually not necessary.)
Protein quality scores like PDCAAS and DIAAS try to account for both. That’s why, on its own, vital wheat gluten ends up with a poor score. But soy products tend to still score highly.
Basically, I am not worried about it and have personally been building muscle without problem on a vegan diet with lots of soy and some seitan. But you are right that accounting for this would probably change the table ordering a little.
sadly, KoRo no longer delivers to the UK