How To Decrease Your Protein Intake, But Increase Your Gains

Over the years I have been theorizing to my customers that if one consumes a high quality hydrolyzed protein powder like my Peptopro, Hydrolyzed 520, or Salmbolic 98, then they can consume less. Typically I would tell people to use about half as much as they normally would compare to a whole food protein like whey protein isolate. Even in my protein calculator, I took that into consideration. But the problem is that I never had any scientific research to back up my theory…until now. I found this the other day.

The article describes the testing methodology DIAA (Digestible indispensable amino acid score). The DIAA is the latest and greatest scientific way to score the quality of a protein source. I was doing research on protein powders and at the very end of reading this article the authors concluded this:

...peas may have a high quantity of protein, but with a DIAAS value of approximately 64 it has a low quality. In contrast, milk has both a high quantity of protein and high quality of amino acids with a DIAAS of 122. As a consequence, an individual would have to consume more than twice as much pea protein compared with milk protein to meet the human amino acid requirements.

My theory and suggestion that I have been telling my customers for years have been finally backed up. From reading what the authors stated if one consumes a higher quality protein than less can be used to meet requirements or vice versa if one consumes a lower quality protein than more is needed. I could not find the DIAA value of hydrolyzed whey proteins, Peptopro, or salmon. Therefore technically my theory is still kinda up in the air. But I can say pretty confidently now that if a vegan consumes pea protein for bodybuilding purposes and wants to meet a certain amount of grams per day than they are going to have to consume MORE powder than if they were to drink a whey protein, milk protein, or egg protein. And because I feel that hydrolyzed proteins are higher quality than whole-food proteins, this article provides me with a reference point.

Therefore if you are a hydrolyzed protein powder user you can feel confident that consuming less is OK. However, I ponder this question…if one does consume the same amount of hydrolyzed protein as whole food protein will that, in turn, equate to more muscle? Stay tuned!!

Below is a list of foods and protein powders and their DIAA number. Milk protein concentrate rates the highest at 120/141. Whey protein has a number of 107/133. The DIAA is the most up to date method to determine protein quality. Biological value, PER, and PDCAA are outdated methods. The Muscle Shake I feel would rank the highest as it a combination of native whey, casein, and milk protein (I did not consider hydrolyzed). But since we started selling Muscle Shake and people have been combining it with Peptopro or Hydrolyzed 520, they have been selling excellent gains.

DIAA protein quality methodology