I turned vegan aged as soon as I could as a teen- seventeen years old- before plant based proteins hit supermarket shelves and before I was an athlete. Because of that I learnt to choose any plant based protein, no matter what, to ensure I got enough of my third macronutrient. That was fine because there was only Quorn or beans and pulses. Now there's a lot more and they aren't all as protein heavy as you might wish.
I'm a vegetarian now and eight years later and there's a wealth of options. However, when it comes to "fake-meat" products, quantity does not equal quality. One of my frequent nemeses is jackfruit. Sometimes restaurants try and sneak it is as the veggie option. It's often marketed as a pulled-pork or fish substitute and therefore and as a protein but it's not. It's a very feeble energy source in and of itself lacking in all of the basic macronutrients. Jackfruit has less protein than broccoli, in fact it's more like celery. One egg has 12x the protein of jackfruit. If you're having a jackfruit burger you might as well have a chip butty and get more pleasure and cycling miles out of the double carb hit. I'm not in the business of dieting but I do want to take a greater interest in fuelling myself.
Still, while I was denigrating jackfruit I actually realised that my favourite plant-based choices don't have much protein in either. I've never actually looked at the macronutrient content of meat as I've never wanted to eat it but it's wildly different to plant-based protein substitutes. Sometimes meats are lean and sometimes not but they always have huge amounts of protein (obviously). But plant-based stuff doesn't have to. Fake mean options "chicken-style", "like a burger", one should note, are almost always complete proteins with all the amino acids in (soya or microprotein based) unlike beans and pulses. One should also note that beans are more carbohydrate than they are protein, just like oats and oddly, Quorn sausages.
I looked at chicken breast fillets fresh from the battery farm. 30g per 100g of fillet. I gulped- I usually get excited if a vegetarian option made it to 10g per 100. What was different though was the ratio to fat. Chicken fillets are very lean so for every 30g of protein you also have 2g fat but even quorn mince, marketed by Mo Farah as the lean option, has more than double the fat to protein ratio. There was also minimal carbohydrate in chicken and there can be lots in plant-based protein options.
Heinz baked beans are very low fat but you'd have to eat just over 6x times as much to get to the protein content in 100g of fillet (more than one can!) and you'd have even less fat as well. When you did that though you'd get 12x the carbohydrate.
I'm an endurance cyclist with a smaller muscle mass than my sprinter friends which means carbohydrates come before proteins and so a vegetarian diet is arguably more beneficial. The aim to avoid grinding to a halt in the middle of nowhere and for that you need carbs and then fat. Sports scientists have tested how important protein intake is in relation to muscle mass and more is not always more. However, there's still an emphasis if you want to avoid illness and promote lean muscle building.
I looked at chicken breast fillets fresh from the battery farm. 30g per 100g of fillet. I gulped- I usually get excited if a vegetarian option made it to 10g per 100. What was different though was the ratio to fat. Chicken fillets are very lean so for every 30g of protein you also have 2g fat but even quorn mince, marketed by Mo Farah as the lean option, has more than double the fat to protein ratio. There was also minimal carbohydrate in chicken and there can be lots in plant-based protein options.
Heinz baked beans are very low fat but you'd have to eat just over 6x times as much to get to the protein content in 100g of fillet (more than one can!) and you'd have even less fat as well. When you did that though you'd get 12x the carbohydrate.
I'm an endurance cyclist with a smaller muscle mass than my sprinter friends which means carbohydrates come before proteins and so a vegetarian diet is arguably more beneficial. The aim to avoid grinding to a halt in the middle of nowhere and for that you need carbs and then fat. Sports scientists have tested how important protein intake is in relation to muscle mass and more is not always more. However, there's still an emphasis if you want to avoid illness and promote lean muscle building.
My local is an Aldi and I swear I bought plant-based burgers and sausages off of them that weren't Quorn. Their website isn't forthcoming so I used the Tesco and Sainsbury's ones to compare some plant-based protein options vs. reference foods. I ranked them not on carbohydrate content but on protein alone from most protein on the left to least on the right (death to jackfruit?). I also don't care that this is off the screen- scroll along and be happy (graph skill > IT skill).
In conclusion- your best bets for a "lean meat" substitute are the Quorn originals: mince and chicken style pieces with 2g and 2.6g of fat per 100g of product which also have 4.5g/100 and 1.7g/100 of carbs respectively and ~14g protein. Linda McCartney is packing a punch with the highest protein content in her sausages (18.6g) over twice that of Quorn sausages but she does not sacrifice fat. Also Tivall (which is a Kosher company with factories in Israel and the Czech Republic) are close favourites of mine. They taste very, very good probably due to having the most fat apart from the Linda McCartney sausage roll which has the most fat and double the carbohydrate to its protein content. Quorn sausages rolls have less fat and only 0.8g less protein but grams less fat so there you go...I wonder what the Greggs one is (I don't look at the macronutrients in a Greggs. Treats are treats and oh so sacred).
Oats are low fat option but have over 5x the carbohydrate content compared to protein. Also, you might as well buy low fat/zero fat yoghurt instead of faffing around eating egg whites.
This was written for myself but I thought it might be helpful...
In conclusion- your best bets for a "lean meat" substitute are the Quorn originals: mince and chicken style pieces with 2g and 2.6g of fat per 100g of product which also have 4.5g/100 and 1.7g/100 of carbs respectively and ~14g protein. Linda McCartney is packing a punch with the highest protein content in her sausages (18.6g) over twice that of Quorn sausages but she does not sacrifice fat. Also Tivall (which is a Kosher company with factories in Israel and the Czech Republic) are close favourites of mine. They taste very, very good probably due to having the most fat apart from the Linda McCartney sausage roll which has the most fat and double the carbohydrate to its protein content. Quorn sausages rolls have less fat and only 0.8g less protein but grams less fat so there you go...I wonder what the Greggs one is (I don't look at the macronutrients in a Greggs. Treats are treats and oh so sacred).
Oats are low fat option but have over 5x the carbohydrate content compared to protein. Also, you might as well buy low fat/zero fat yoghurt instead of faffing around eating egg whites.
This was written for myself but I thought it might be helpful...
