They need to eat regular foods that have a regular amount of protein.
Someone trying to eat 2000 calories per day and hit 100 grams of protein (a pretty high target) only needs 5g of protein per 100 calories. That includes things like lentils and beans, sure but it also includes things like peanut butter or broccoli (6g per 100 calories). Things like bread or pasta or most other wheat products (3.5g per 100 calories) are pretty close to begin with.
A peanut butter sandwich has about 8g of protein from the bread and 7g from the peanut butter. That’s 15g of protein for 340 calories.
A slice of cheese pizza has 21g protein for 430 calories.
A can of beans has 25g protein for 420 calories.
A package of firm tofu has 32g protein for 280 calories.
Compare that to things like hot dogs (10g protein per 300 calorie hot dog), 80/20 hamburger (20g protein per 300 calorie serving), or breakfast sausage (11g protein per 270 calories), or bacon (10g protein per 170 calories), and it becomes obvious that trying to get 5g of protein per 100 calories isn’t that much easier with meat compared with dedicated processed high protein foods (whether meat based, dairy based, egg based, or other plant based) of supplements.
For most people, just eating normal is fine. For those of us who lift weights and might want to maintain lower body fat, it takes more work, but even omnivores will tend towards isolated dairy protein rather than eating meat willy nilly.
tomi000@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Funny how you completely left out (sweet)potatoes, paprika, carrots and other vegetables with as low as 2g of protein per 100kcal (which may make up a big portion of a vegans intake) and meat with 15+g per 100kcal.
Wheat products being pretty close to begin with sounds nice but it still means they are too low on protein and those definitely make up a large portion of most peoples calorie intake.
I know people who ate bread and spaghetti bolognese every day during uni, and just leaving out the minced meat would definitely drop them below recommended levels.
I get what you mean though, you probably wont have a deficiency when eating normally (which means diversely, so still paying attention), but I would still say it is way easier to hit the recommended levels with meat, they just dont need to think about it, most people eat way more meat than necessary anyway. Also, spending some time thinking about your eating habits and nutrition intake to get a balanced diet is way healthier than simply supplementing protein, I did not mean that thats what I recommend.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Other than potatoes, those are all low calorie foods that are easy to just ignore when meal planning. You can eat a 2 kg (4.4 lb) bag of bell peppers/paprika, roughly 15-20 peppers, and it’s only 600 calories.
They are definitely more than enough for most people. The example I used, of 5g protein per 100 calories, is a fairly tight example of a bodybuilder on a calorie restricted cut, and probably twice that of a person with more typical needs.
For someone who is physically active and has a higher caloric requirement, like a typical 180 lb (82 kg) athletic man, their maintenance calories are 2800 and their protein needs are around 100g (with health issues possibly showing up below 70g). If they’re actively bodybuilding they might need 150g of protein, but they’re also going to be physically active enough to have a higher calorie budget. And for most people, there’s no muscle building/retention benefit of getting more than 0.8g per pound (or 1.8g per kg) of body weight. Basically, the 5g per 100 calorie budget applies to a pretty narrow category of people who are trying to optimize for something specific rather than just people who want to live their lives.
And even for those vegan bodybuilders, it’s not that hard to just supplement with pea protein, eat some processed proteins (like tofu), not that different from omnivore bodybuilders who use lots of whey/casein protein isolated from dairy products. Or they can go get those protein supplemented pastas and breads and just eat normally.
For a normal 200 lb (91 kg) man who isn’t trying to be a competitive athlete, 80g of protein on 3000 calories is enough to stay healthy. So when budgeting 2.6g of protein per 100 calories, at that point things like potatoes and carrots and bell peppers are already staying ahead of the curve.
Obviously less choice makes things harder. But for people who are actively trying to optimize their diets for body composition, the supplements are useful regardless of whether you eat meat or not.