Can You Get Enough Protein on a Vegan Diet? | Game Changers Debate

So can I just, your concerns with the protein, and just make sure I'm understanding your argument, protein quantity and protein quality. And within protein quality, it would be the amino acid profile and the digestibility. Is that fair? Those are your issues with the protein. Those are the considerations of protein that are important. We're on the same page for what we're discussing, right? So I just don't know where you... And again, not saying that it's not possible to get enough protein quantity and quality and mix of amino acids in if you're really on it. Right. But it's well planned. Just like if any other diet was well planned. I think it's less likely that you'll get protein right on a completely vegan diet without the idea that it is on a diet that contains animal protein. It's more complicated. It's not more complicated. What it is is if you just... Yeah, if you don't know what you're doing and you've been eating in a certain way for 30 years and you suddenly take meat off the plate and you only eat what was left from the plate, you're going to have a problem. Yeah, it's more complicated. Right. Exactly. That's why we put resources on our website. The level of knowledge and understanding about that is pretty low in my experience. Right. No, I agree. And that's why we put... I agree. I agree. I think people need more resources to make better informed decisions about their health, about their exercise, and so on. I agree. What's your position on what he said about protein? Okay, so I'm just quoting you from last time. Now, you really put me through a lot of hours of extra work. Now, it's gone from like 3,000 to like 3,100. Anyway, so there's just so much wrong with what you said that I just had to go into eat every single topic. But anyway, so three ounces of... You said three ounces of 90% lean round beef. Do you think that animal fat is not good for you? Because all of a sudden now, Chris is a... Well, that's not what you're saying. Sorry about protein content. Yeah, but what was the statement in the film? Statement of film. Lean ground beef, meaning that for protein content though. No, no, no, no. The statement in the film was... I think that's the most common... No, it's not actually. If you go to the store and get... No, it's not actually. No, it's not actually not. It's anywhere from grass fed beef, which is what I advocate. Okay. Right. That's generally leaner. Okay, great. But he was specifically talking about protein content. No, I know. That's what we're going to go into. So listen to... Lean ground beef. Okay. So basically what I had said, and I can't remember the exact words that I said, but I pretty much do because I recorded it a number of times. So one cup of cooked lentils or a peanut butter sandwich has about as much protein as three ounces of beef or three large eggs. That was what I said. Okay. I might be off on a word, but that was what I said. Okay. I said about as much protein. Okay. So you go on to say three ounces of 90% lean ground beef. Well, already what you did is you picked leaner beef. But even though you don't advocate for that, you don't think the animal fat is bad. So what you did is you picked the leanest beef. Anyway, you say it has 24 grams of protein. I'm not sure what your source is. But he does advocate for grass fed beef. Grass fed beef is leaner. Okay. So if he's talking about what he does advocate for, that doesn't make sense. It's three ounces of ground lean meat. Okay. But the point is the point in the film was that most people... You weren't saying that. Most people... Yeah, exactly. What you said in the film. Right. So you were saying regular standard American ground beef. It's about as much... It's about what we're trying to point... The point of this thing was not to say this is the best foods to eat. It was just saying like... You're making a comparison. The regular stuff that you eat, like a peanut butter sandwich, people think no protein at all. Right. They think... People think that plants have no protein. The first question you get asked, well, where do you get your protein? So I said, it's got about as much protein. So you say then, oh, and by the way, I'd listened to your 30 minute podcast trying to take down the film, which came out before you came on Joe's podcast. And you said that you... And you sort of backed this up. I don't know... This happened like from one article and it got spread and spread and spread that someone said you need five tablespoons of peanut butter to get the same amount of protein. In what world does someone... And you changed your tune a little bit when you came on the podcast. But when I make a peanut butter sandwich, I use bread, two pieces of bread. How many... You would use two pieces of bread and peanut butter sandwich? I think that's what it's saying. I think by definition, right? It's pretty much okay. Sure. So what you did on your podcast, you admit that a tablespoon of peanut butter is four grams. Right? Mm-hmm. Okay. And what is four times five? Twenty. Right. And then by per USDA, how much is one piece of whole wheat bread? Four or five, depending on the source you look at. I agree. How many pieces of bread? Two. Yeah. Okay. So five grams of protein in bread, the one that I actually have at home is six grams, but let's take USDA. Okay. So five plus five is? 10. Plus 20 from the peanut butter is? 30. Well, even on the leanest beef that you chose, it was 24 grams. Why did you say you needed five tablespoons of peanut butter? And I know how it came about. Because I think what you do is you take other people's work like Denise Minga and all these other people, you read their articles and you take their arguments because some of the stuff that you have on your site is very reflective of people's other arguments on other sites. So there was something that started where people started saying you need five tablespoons of peanut butter. And in the first article, it said, without the bread. Now I don't know why you don't include bread when you make a sandwich because I mean, most people do. It's not just peanut butter. And I almost bought a peanut butter sandwich in here today to show you what two tablespoons of peanut butter looks like or two and a half. Because the one I had, I looked at it and it was surprising. Like when you actually measure a real tablespoon, it's actually not that much peanut butter. And so mine I figured out has about like two and a half tablespoons and two pieces of bread. My bread has like six grams. But so my peanut butter is like 22 grams of protein. Anyway, white bread would be more like two or three grams. But again, like we showed a piece of whole wheat bread on there. We're advocating eating mostly whole foods. That's a whole grain. No one is saying we even said in the film, if we wanted cherry pick, we just try and push plants. We said white sugar and white flour. Bad for you. It was associated with weight gain. Carbohydrates from whole food sources are associated with better lean body mass, lower body fat percentage and everything else. But anyway, so I don't understand your math. What I think you did is you took that article because articles that spread from that article forgot to put the bit in parentheses about without the two pieces of bread. So you take five tablespoons of peanut butter at four grams a piece. That's 20 grams, right? Which is around what pieces? Pieces of bread, 10 grams. So why did 24 grams of your hand-picked lean beef, which you don't even necessarily like, there's no reason that you should be picking that when that's not what we showed in the film. Why are you comparing 24 grams to 30 grams? Why didn't you say four tablespoons of peanut butter? Fair enough? Fair enough. Got it wrong again. Okay. So this is what it's frustrating when I watch the show because like every five minutes I'm hearing something that just factually incorrect. Oh, that's why here. That's why I'm here. Now again, appreciate the both of you. So can we just look at actual the breakdown of all these different things? So again, the peanut butter sandwich is a 22 grams, but that's maybe a little bit more than the other argument was the quality of the protein. We'll get to that, but quantity first. So if you go to bread on slide five, I don't need to do this. You've agreed. You've agreed. Right. Okay. So and lentils, if you want to do slide eight. Oh, no, no, sorry. What you haven't agreed on is I'm going to say two tablespoons of peanut butter and two pieces of bread. Okay. Fair enough. Say for what? I'm just going to say like the comparison roughly. I mean, you can put a bit more food about it. Okay. Three tablespoons. So can you just three and a half tablespoons of peanut butter and two pieces of bread? No, no, no, no. I'm going to show you how I'm going to show you. I'm going to back up what I said in the film. So let's just go through the slides quickly. If that's okay. Five and apologies to all the listeners who don't get to see all my slides. Tell them to go to YouTube. Yeah. Here we go. So this is USDA. So I don't know where you get the numbers from, but I went to the USDA site. Unfortunately, it changed in October. So it's not quite the same as when we were making the film. But anyway, one slice of bread, five grams of protein and you accepted that, right? Okay, good. Peanut butter, two tablespoons, eight grams. You accepted that. You accept that two tablespoons of peanut butter has eight grams. We could have more. I have more, but whatever. Okay, here we go. So you agree that 18 grams of protein for the peanut butter. That's the sandwich we showed in the film, whole wheat bread, peanut butter. Okay, so the next slide. And again, I'm being very conservative on this, like in the amounts. So now we look at lentils, one cup, 17.9 grams of protein. That is USDA again. Would you accept that? Yeah, I haven't looked at this, but. But I mean, it's like, it's like, I know that on the left side, one cup. I accept USDA as this absolutely source. Okay, good. But you accept USDA when it comes to this, but not in terms of the recommendations. We're talking about, yeah, if we're talking about quantity of micro-cov nutrients. Okay, cool. So we're on the same page. Well, this is something that's been clearly measured. This is not something like recommendations. No, okay, sure. So, but we're on the same page. We're taking this as a source. Okay. Okay, so now if we go to slide nine, no, sorry, the one that you just had. The one with the eggs, Jamie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. So three eggs, 18 grams of protein. What do you say so far we've got about as much protein in the peanut butter sandwich with two tablespoons, not the five that you claim. It's less. I mean, 18 is not 24. No, no, no, I'm not saying, I'm getting to the beef. I'm saying so far what I have presented, just the two tablespoons of peanut butter, and it's came to 18. I was really conservative, right? I could have put more peanut butter. I could have had bread that had more. I don't want to name the brand, but you'd admit that you can get bread that's got six grams of protein. Sure. Okay, so I'm being really conservative just to sort of prove a point. But so far we've had a peanut butter sandwich with only two tablespoons of peanut butter, and seriously, try that at home, Joe. Like actually measure it with a measuring. Yeah, well, I talked about it in the podcast. I would probably have about five. Okay, so anyway, I probably would too. Three large eggs. Three large eggs, okay. So the 18 grams. Organic, this is organic ground beef, standard organic ground beef. Three ounces. So three ounces is 17.5 grams. If you want to get into it, you can get into like, because that's per 100 grams, so I can, if you want. What's the fat percentage? 9.2 grams. So it's half fat? No, sorry, it's 9.2 grams per 100 grams. See we had to do the calculation. Oh. But that, but this is the regular organic ground beef. So it's in the neighborhood of 10%. And then to be fair, because I knew you'd bring up a grass-fed beef, so that I found the lowest and the highest. Okay. So go to grass-fed beef, slide 11. Three ounces, this is on the very low end, so this would probably be the fattiest meat, but you wouldn't be against animal fat, right? Not typically, depends on the person and their situation. But we're just talking about protein here anyway. So lowest 14.4 on the highest end. I actually think my number, 18 grams. Okay so peanut butter sandwich, 18 grams, lentils 17.9. Can we round it up? Three eggs, 18 grams. Okay. Three ounces of beef, 18 grams at best. Right when I looked up grass-fed beef. So it's essentially saying exactly what you said. I'm not saying if you go 90% lean, you can have more protein. No doubt. So you can find protein that's got higher. I said about, I was trying to show that dispel the myth that you, you know, plants have no protein and animal foods have all this protein. So I've just shown you there. Now your second point was that the problem with, his second point was the problem with peanut butter sandwich, to get 18 grams of protein, I think this is a fair point. You would have to eat 410 calories. Right? So if you go to slide 15. It was actually the more important point because I'm not necessarily, you know, that may not be a problem for somebody who's training. No, no, no. But I just want to talk about protein. It's the DS score. No, I know. But we just do quantity. Can we finish quantity first? Sure. So can you bring up slide 15? So you'd admit that you can get like a decent amount of protein. Your argument was you can get like percentage. So slide 15, the lentils for 18 grams of protein. Again, if you want to check this calculation and stop at any time, I'm fine. I have had this triple checked. Okay. 18 grams of protein, 231 calories. Okay? Because you like point, I love that people like to point out the beef and then the peanut butter sandwich and try and compare those. Even though we were right on the protein, now you're trying to pick on the calories. So you didn't pick the lentils, which have 231 calories. The next one, slide 16 has- Which is about the same for beef. Which is about 210 calories. Grass fed beef in the first instance, grass fed beef in the first in slide 17, 275 calories. And that was on the one that wasn't so lean. And then 70% lean beef. And I'm just pointing out there's different ranges, 417 calories for 18 grams of protein. Right? So fatty meat, which you don't think the animal fat is bad, right? No. Okay. So it's not an offense. So there's- It depends on the- He's talking about the protein percentage. There was less in my- there was more protein percentage wise in my peanut butter sandwich than there was in the green beef. And then the last- no, not the last one. Yeah, we could have picked something with less calories. So if we picked tempeh, for example, slide 19, 170 calories. So again, would you say- But I think his argument was- No. The argument was the quality of the protein. No, no, no, no. There was two arguments. The part of it was you would have to consume more calories. Okay, but just before- can I just prove it at one point? Yeah. So the first part was you can't- there's nowhere near as much protein. And then there was like, oh, it's based on the calories. So the percentage of protein is good. You would have to have more calories to get the same amount of protein. Which is not true. Which is not true. You don't have to. Okay, so he made a mistake again. That was not a central part of my argument. No, but it was a part of it. It was quantity and quality. Yeah, it was quantity and quality. And the quantity was broken down to two things. You just can't get as much for like- you just can't get as much in that serving. They're totally wrong. You'd have to have five tablespoons of peanut butter. Totally wrong. Agree? Agree that you don't have to have five tablespoons. Right, thank you. Okay, and then you also said that you'd have to have so many calories that you couldn't get it and you were wrong again. Agree? For the peanut butter sandwich or just in general? Just in general from plant foods. We could have picked lentils. Yeah, I agree that you don't need to have 600 calories of lentils to get them as per So can we get slide 20, sweet potato and leek omelet from Chris's site where the protein is coming? So this is from your site, 18 grams of protein, 410 calories. The funny thing is I typed in recipes and I think it was either first or second it came up. All I did was pick the first two high protein recipes from your site because I didn't pick the soup or the salad because that would be unfair. So I picked the first couple. So sweet potato and leek omelet, the protein coming from eggs, 18 grams of protein, 410 calories. Do you have an issue with your own meal? No. So do you have an issue with the peanut butter sandwich having 410 calories? No. Okay, second one. Like I said, that wasn't central to my point. There was a second argument. It was hard to get the same quantity. Which is not, which you just admit that it's not. And quality, the DS score. We'll get to the DS score in a minute and I will show that you were wrong again. So taro and bacon hash, slide 21. 18 grams of protein, 570 calories. If you want to go to your breakfast of champions, which I thought, you know, for athletes, slide 22. And by the way, I took your data. I didn't take USDA. I assumed that you were not lying. So I took the total from the bottom and but I standardized it for 18 grams of protein because we're just comparing everything percentage wise, 688 calories. Do you think that people should not eat that meal? Depends on who you're talking about, but no, it's low protein. It's low protein, right? I don't think that people shouldn't eat it. Is it low protein? We can't rely on that for your protein. So first of all, it's low protein by like most people's standards, but your standards of protein are much higher. So that would be far off. So that would mean to make up for the rest of the day, you would have to have meals that are like almost just protein or maybe they'd have to buy the protein powder from your website in order to make that up. Anyway, so let's move on to now the by the way, slide 23 largest study ever done comparing completely plant based eaters with like study showing plant eaters versus meat. 75 grams a day. That was the average. Aren't you supposed to have one gram per body weight per pound of body weight? No. That's at the upper end for athletes. Okay. So point eight grams is point eight grams. This is this is how much they were actually getting in the largest study ever done comparing plant based eaters. So you can see it's about the same and actually per pound of lean body mass fat free mass. The vegans were getting slightly more because they had better body mass index. They were slightly leaner. But anyway, just want to say it's roughly similar. So your next argument was the athletes need more protein. It's like right. But no, it wasn't an argument because you admitted that I pointed it out in the show. So if you go to slide 20, no, 24, I just want to point and point about the amount that we're actually required. We're going into the amount now. We're still we're in, we're in amount for athletes. Because his point is like, maybe you can get enough to survive, but not to be an athlete. So I'm going to look at I don't think that was his point. I think his point was that he did a different requirement. No, no, no, no, no, no, no for athletes. Yeah, there's a different question. We want to survive. We won't argue on this point. Your point is you need more his recommendations, though. What he does is he pushes them to a really high end that isn't consensus, showing that then trying to make it out that it'd be harder to get, which we've already shown you can get enough protein for, for, you know, of course, an athlete eats more calories, therefore they get more protein as a percentage. So I just wanted to show two positions on this. And then we can see if you again, you don't agree with the consensus of science. So this is the joint position paper of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the dietitians of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine. So this is for athletes. Okay. So just one, I'm going to show you another in a second. Do you want to read it out, Joe? Sure. Because we might get bored of my voice. Current data suggests that dietary protein intake necessary to support metabolic adaptation, repair, remodeling, and for protein turnover generally ranges from 1.2 to 2.0 grams or kilograms per day. Okay. And then the next slide, Jamie, if you could bring up slide 25. I agree with that and have it in my... Yeah, okay. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Okay. So this is protein supplementation beyond a total daily protein intake of 1.2 grams, kilograms per day. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Is the wrong one? Why are we... Where are you reading that? From the big square. Protein supplementation. You said 1.2? No, I said 1.6, didn't I? Oh, okay. No, you said 1.2 to 2 grams. You read the thing from the last thing you read. How did I do that? Did I really do that? That's pretty genius. That doesn't make any sense. Okay. So this is what was in front of me, right? Can you read it again? Yeah. Oh, okay. That's what you heard? You heard 1.6? Oh, maybe. I thought you said 1.2 to 2. No worries. Whatever. So can you just... Protein supplementation beyond a total daily protein intake of 1.6... The squiggle means about. Oh, okay. About 1.6 grams, kilograms a day during RET... That's resistance exercise training. ...provided no further benefit on gains in muscle mass or strength. And these are like really highly... And if you look at the... And I'll... I'm not gonna stick to 1.6. Kilogram, a kilogram is two pounds of body weight. 2.2. 2.2, so we're 1.6 grams, so it's less than 1 gram per... It's 0.727272 grams per pound, if you want to... So you're looking at about three quarters of a gram per pound recommended. Anything over that provided no gains in muscle mass or strength. Yeah, but I wanna clarify. So you can see the two-phase breakpoint analysis on the top right, this chart. Yes. Okay, so you can see that... You can see as the chart goes up and then it flattens out, there was no further gains in fat-free mass, which is the y-axis, after 1.6. However, there's something called a confidence interval, like how confident are they that these findings are correct? And it was a very wide confidence interval, so it actually took it... There was six grams either side, so it was actually up to 2.2 and down as low as one. So it's one to 2.2. The other one, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Academy of Sportsmen is 1.2 to 2. So the widest range is one to 2.2. So you think that this recommendation that's a standard thing that you hear in a gym, one gram per pound of body... It's probably just... No, that's legit. That's legit at the upper end. So 2.2 grams. On the upper end, the 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day is one gram per pound of body weight. So no doubt, and this is what you're talking about certain athletes, like bodybuilders, strength athletes. But the confidence interval means to apply to everybody. Some people could actually build... And this is about optimally building muscle as fast as possible. And some people could do it at one gram, some people might 2.2, but like regularly it looked like 1.6, 1.8. The scientific consensus is that, and you said that you agree with these ranges of the scientific consensus. Yeah, and there's some evidence suggesting that higher amounts may be beneficial. So if you go to... Or Jamie, if you search for examine.com, how much protein do you need? There's an article there, and examine.com is a... Do you know about them? I know who's here. So they're on a panel of scientists, or a group of scientists. A group of scientists, right. Not the American College of Sports Medicine, or... It's Canadian, right? So the Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation Method, which is newer. If you scroll down, Jamie, to the optimal daily protein intake for athletes and similarly active adults, or if you just click on that, you see in that paragraph, IAAO studies and athletes found different numbers because four of the 49 studies in the meta-analysis that had that range, lower range, were conducted in people with resistance training experience. The other 45 were newbies. IAAO studies found different numbers. Female athletes required 1.4 to 1.7. Male endurance, 2.1 to 2.7. Amateur male bodybuilders, so 1.7 to 2.2. But this seems the same. It says the average amount of protein required to maximize lean mass is about 1.6 grams per kilogram. It's the same exact measurement. We don't even need to argue it. It's like totally accepted in the sports world, like whatever. This also says some people need upwards of 2.2 grams per kilogram for those interested in comprehensive breakdown. It provides another link. I don't think we're far off. We're not far off on this. It says regular training, male endurance athletes require 2.1 to 2.7 grams per kilogram, so that's the high range. Yeah, and you did say something about 2.3 to 3.3 in one study you pointed out. That just doesn't actually help you build more muscle mass, but if you're trying to lean out. Also I think some of the studies that you've looked at, like there's one at 2.3. I've actually got it on my computer. I don't have it in my slides, but there's one at 2.1 to 3.3. There's two things about that. One is when you're in a caloric deficit, because of gluconeogenesis, you pull some of the protein and you use some of the energy, so there's less protein, less for building. If you're a bodybuilder cutting for competition trying to get down to like 4% or 5%, then your protein requirements go up above that normal range because you're basically using some of the energy. You're in caloric deficit, so you're using some of it for fuel. That's also the case with those carnivore people and a lot of keto people as well, right? Yeah, and they probably adapt some, because like in normal people, during exercise you can only get 10% of your energy from the oxidation of protein into glucose. Where are we going? But the 2.3 to 3.1, by the way, it's one in caloric deficit and it's two based on fat-free mass qualifications. It's not based on total body weight, which is what all the recommendations are on. So the 2.3 to 3.1 in some of these studies, if you did like, okay, if someone was 15% body fat, it would bring it down. It wouldn't be 2.3 to 3.1 based on fat-free body mass. So if you're 200 pounds and you've got 20% body fat, you only weigh 160 pounds for this calculation. Got it. Anyway, where we are. So you like to talk about the IAAO into these recommendations and if you look at slide 102, you can see that you're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. You're doing a lot of work on the body. Shaven it with the... How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle building implications for daily protein distribution? So upper of C1 of 2.2 grams per kilogrammes a day and cohort of young male bodybuilders, although the method of assessment indicator, a amino acid oxidation technique used in this study has not received universal acceptance for determining optimal protein requirements. So it's in that same range. So I'm not... Yeah, but a couple of things. I'm not trying to point out that your IAAO is off. I'm saying if you want to take your IAAO, the indicator amino acid oxidation index, if you want to use that, then the upper confidence is still 2.2. So the scientific consensus, I just want to make it very clear that you threw out a bunch of these numbers on high protein, making out the vegans couldn't hit that level. First of all, I've shown that foods can get that. I've shown that vegans can get sufficient protein. And I've shown that... I've shown the levels that the scientific consensus on the protein ranges for athletes are not in scientific consensus with these 3.3. But even if they were, there's no reason you couldn't get it on a plant-based diet too. I didn't argue that everyone should be eating 3.3 grams per day. No, but you did argue, you made out that vegans couldn't get enough protein and you were wrong. I didn't say they couldn't get enough. I said that it's less likely that they will get enough. But it's not though. If they eat some of those recipes on your website, they're beginning less. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.