Plant-based proteins can provide sufficient essential amino acids if total protein intake is high enough, and accompanying carbohydrates are important for metabolic control.

“plant-based proteins have a different composition and they have a composition obviously similar to plants and one can get enough of the essential amino acids if the total caloric load of that protein is high enough and I think that that's important to recognize because right now the American diet is 70% plant-based and we are we seem to be moving more towards a plant-based diet right I mean I know there's sort of a movement toward that you hear about plant-based but so most people are not eating steak and eggs for breakfast we know that well most people when I say a 70% plant-based diet I'm talking about uh refined carbohydrates sugars ref oils and when we think about it so that 70% of um our diet comes from that where 30% comes from animal-based proteins which contain a ton of nutrients like bioavailable zinc and selenium B12 but when it comes to muscle Health one could as long as they are thinking about making sure that the overall protein load is high enough in that plant-based protein for example um one would not choose quinoa as a protein source so quinoa would six cups of quinoa would equal the same as one small chicken breast when it comes to an amino acid profile so I think one has to be aware that plant-based proteins typically have carbohydrates that ride along with them and and that just becomes important for overall metabolic control when we think about total caloric load and total carbohydrates”