Meat - Is it an indispensable element of every athlete's diet? Best sources of protein.

Stereotypically, people associate athletes with rough workout routines and tons of vitamin supplements. More creative individuals, picture them as "gym junkies," a muscular guy with a bunch of syringes in his training bag, lying just nearby his meal box containing pre-prepared chicken with rice. You can almost be sure that he will open the box in the locker room, making everyone in the gym smell his post-workout meal.

Undoubtedly, meat is an excellent source of highly bioavailable proteins. But is it an indispensable element of every athlete's diet? Why do so many people think so?

Let's start with a brief overview, setting aside more complex definitions that aren't essential to this article.

PROTEINS - complex molecules made of amino acids essential for the organism to function correctly. Proteins will build muscles and play other crucial roles, such as antibodies, enzymes, messengers, and transporters.

AMINO ACIDS - smaller molecules, building proteins, also needed to synthesize hormones and neurotransmitters. We distinguish 21 amino acids, which are divided into 2 groups: essential (9), and non-essential (11)

Essential - amino acids that can't be produced endogenously (in the body) and must be provided with food. To this group belongs:

leucine, isoleucine, valine, lysine, histidine, methionine, threonine, phenylalanine, tryptophan

Non-essential - amino acids that are produced endogenously.

arginine, asparagine, alanine, cysteine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, glycine, proline, glutamine, tyrosine serine

We distinguish two types of proteins:

- complete

- incomplete

Complete proteins - contain all the essential amino acids necessary to build a protein. Providing this kind of protein will give the body all the necessary tools to build up muscles straightaway. To this group, we include meat and fish, egg, cheese, whey protein, milk, soy, or quinoa.

Incomplete proteins - products that don't contain all of the essential amino acids, which makes it necessary to consume some additional sources of complete proteins. To this group belongs: nuts, seeds, legumes, vegetables, and whole grains.

The first conclusion is: meat is an excellent source of complete proteins, but not only the one and only. All essential amino acids may also be provided with dairy products, soy, or quinoa.

HOWEVER, there comes an additional factor - bioavailability

Protein bioavailability - refers to the ability of an organism to absorb and digest a protein. The higher bioavailability, the easier and the more proteins are digested/utilized, which directly refers to the quality of the protein source.

The table above shows how high the bioavailability of certain protein sources is. As we can easily notice, whey protein isolate has the highest bioavailability , and from what we know, it is also a complete protein. Therefore, it makes it the best possible protein source (even better, a hydrolyzed protein, not listed in the table). Moreover, whey concentrate, egg, and other dairy products are also excellent protein sources with high bioavailability. The interesting fact is that beef and chicken meat have only approx. 80 bioavailability index points make it a good source of complex proteins - good, but not the best. Now let's take a look at soy, which is the basis of a vegan diet. Even since it belongs to complex proteins, it is a poor protein source due to its low bioavailability. This forces vegan athletes to consume much more protein to obtain the same effect as, e.g., vegetarians.

Conclusions:

1. Meat is NOT an indispensable element of an athlete's diet. It is a good protein source but worse than e.g., whey concentrate or egg.

2. Dairy products can easily replace meat.

3. Vegan athletes must consume much more proteins to provide the same amount of bioavailable proteins as an athlete that includes meat or dairy products in his diet.