Plant Protein Matches Meat for Muscle Gains

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Yes, it’s possible to get ripped by eating more beans and tofu.

There has been a long-held belief that making gains in the gym requires eating meat or other animal products. Not just bro science, but an idea also backed up some studies. In recent years, however, better-controlled studies have been published, overturning previous assumptions, showing that plant protein can be comparable for putting on muscle even though on a gram-for-gram basis it is often considered lower quality than animal-based protein. An investigation in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise enrolled 40 young adults and then randomized them to either a vegan or omnivore diet that supplied a realistic 1.2 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight. The participants performed three weightlifting sessions over nine days, and importantly, researchers provided all their meals for optimal nutrition control. At the end of the study, muscle biopsies were taken from the subjects, which allowed the investigators to calculate muscle protein synthesis. They found that the two diets offered the same muscle-building potential as the rates of muscle protein synthesis were not statistically different. Historically, one of the main reasons people believed plant protein was inferior was focusing on studies that analyzed the impact of a single meal or a single protein, over just a few hours. Studies such as this that better analyze habitual consumption of a varied vegan or meat-based diet of whole foods – rather than ingestion of just a single meal or getting one’s protein from limited sources – suggest few differences in rates of muscle protein synthesis over time. The trial also looked at whether timing mattered. Some people back-loaded their protein at the end of the day, as many people tend to do with their dinner, while others spaced out their protein intake. Here, too, there was no difference. The take home message is that it does not seem to matter where you get your protein from – plants, meats or both – or when you eat it, as long as you are taking in enough and getting it from varied sources.