I've been doing some reading on the link between diet and cancer and heart disease and have decided that it is definitely healthier to eat a plant based diet, if you are interested read the book "The China Study". The question is, am I going to have to lower my bodybuilding standards to be a vegetarian?
I have been on basically a vegetarian diet since 3/2006 and have found no reduction in muscle mass from eliminating meat/chicken/fish in my diet. When I eat at restaurants which is about twice a week, I allow myself to have meat so some small amount of my protein comes from meat but not any significant amount. I have convinced myself that eliminating meat/chicken/fish from the diet will not limit a bodybuilders progress. Granted, this in no way constitutes a scientific study and I hope that real studies will be done in the future to prove this. Please note my diet is not vegan, I still eat about 180g of protein from whey and other non-meat sources daily.
The real question is, can a bodybuilder build muscle on a vegan diet like the raw food diet or the McDougall diet? Being a vegan bodybuilder is much, much more difficult than being a vegetarian bodybuilder. Check out some photos of vegan bodybuilders and compare that to natural bodybuilders (meat eating) or vegetarian bodybuilders. From what I have seen, its much more difficult for vegan bodybuilders to add muscle.
I really wish someone would do a real scientific study on this with a few hundred male bodybuilders of the same body types in the 21-25 age bracket who are all given the same access to coaching and nutrition experts but with:
- one group 100 bodybuilders getting 2g/lb of protein per day from meat/fish/chicken
- the second group of 100 bodybuilders getting 2g/lb of protein per day from dairy whey
- the third group of 100 bodybuilders getting 2g/lb of protein per day from plant sources (soy, legumes, grains)
The inevitable question is, "how do you get enough protein on a vegan diet?". The first question is how much protein is "enough" for a bodybuilder? I have no idea! The bodybuilding magazines would have you taking at least a 1-2 grams of animal proteins per pound of bodyweight a day. The "raw food diet" advocates would say that you get "enough" from fruits, vegetables and a half cup of nuts. If anyone has seen studies which shed some light on this, please let me know!!!
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere between the two extremes. Anyway, how do you get protein on a vegan diet? Soy certainly high in protein but is not without controversy. Legumes are a great source, I eat a lot of legumes. Many grains are high in protein also, just have to check out their amino acid mix.
The real challenge for vegan bodybuilders is getting the protein they need to build muscles without consuming so many calories that they get fat because the protein density of grains and legumes is low compared to meats. Vegans will probably find themselves having to do more cardio than their meat-eating counterparts to avoid gaining fat. Rice is used by much of the worlds population, gotta be something there.
Another very interesting grain I have started eating is quinoa. The nutritional quality of this crop has been compared to that of dried whole milk by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
The protein quality and quantity in quinoa seed is often superior to those of more common cereal grains. Quinoa is higher in lysine than wheat, and the amino acid content of quinoa seed is considered well-balanced for human and animal nutrition, similar to that of casein. It's available at Whole Foods for $1.79/lb and I have made a tasty version of tabouli using it. Below is the amino acid breakdown of various grains compared to Quinoa.
Amino Acid Content (g/100g protein) | ||||||
Quinoa | Wheat | Soy | Skim Milk | FAO | ||
% | ||||||
| Isoleucine | 4.0 | 3.8 | 4.7 | 5.6 | 4.0 | |
| Leucine | 6.8 | 6.6 | 7.0 | 9.8 | 7.0 | |
| Lysine | 5.1 | 2.5 | 6.3 | 8.2 | 5.5 | |
| Phenylalanine | 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.6 | 4.8 | - | |
| Tyrosine | 3.8 | 3.0 | 3.6 | 5.0 | - | |
| Cystine | 2.4 | 2.2 | 1.4 | 0.9 | - | |
| Methionine | 2.2 | 1.7 | 1.4 | 2.6 | - | |
| Threonine | 3.7 | 2.9 | 3.9 | 4.6 | 4.0 | |
| Tryptophan | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.0 | |
| Valine | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4.9 | 6.9 | 5.0 | |
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