Plant Protein Complementation Is Not An Effective Dietary Strategy For Increasing Post-exercise Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis
Study Details
This semi-crossover study compared beans + rice, carbohydrate alone and lean pork for post-exercise myofibrillar protein synthesis (MPS) in 26 physically active adults 🔍
Participants completed an acute resistance-training session before consuming one of three meals 🏋️
🌱 The complementary plant-protein meal provided 20 g protein, including 7.5 g essential amino acids and 1.6 g leucine, from beans and rice
🥩 The pork meal also provided 20 g protein, with 8.1 g EAAs and 1.5 g leucine
🥤 The carbohydrate condition provided 0 g protein
Key Findings
📈 Over the 5-h recovery period, MPS reached 0.103%/h with pork, compared with 0.056%/h with beans + rice
⬆️ Pork therefore produced an approximately 82% greater MPS response than the complementary plant-protein meal
↔️ Surprisingly, MPS after beans + rice was not different from carbohydrate alone (0.056 vs 0.057%/h)
🧬 This occurred despite the plant meal providing a similar total protein, EAA and leucine content to the pork meal
Conclusion
The findings therefore suggest that simply combining complementary plant proteins to improve amino-acid balance does not necessarily produce an equivalent anabolic response 💡
However, this was an acute study measuring MPS for only 5 h, so the results cannot establish differences in long-term muscle growth or training adaptation ⚠️
The plant meal also contained substantially more energy and carbohydrate than the pork meal 🧐
Matching protein, leucine and essential amino acids on paper may not guarantee an equivalent post-exercise anabolic response from plant based vs animal based protein sources 🚨
Reference
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