Metabolic Evaluation of the Dietary Guidelines’ Ounce Equivalents of Protein Food Sources in Young Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Is egg protein and peanut protein really equivalent?

Well, the USDA's Dietary guidelines for Americans (DGA) seems to think so. The authors of the DGA set "cup and ounce equivalents within each food group with similar nutritional content” but failed to account for protein quality, thus making a "false equivalence" between various dietary protein sources when determining the amounts of food identified as an ounce-equivalent.

Thankfully, a randomized controlled trial has just been published in The Journal of Nutrition that demonstrated:

Consumption of ounce equivalents of animal-based protein resulted in a greater anabolic response than the ounce equivalents of plant-based protein food sources
The improvement in whole-body net protein balance was due to an increase in protein synthesis with all the animal protein sources
The magnitude of the anabolic response was correlated with the EAA content of the protein food source.
The “ounce equivalents” of protein food sources as expressed in the DGAs are not metabolically equivalent in young healthy individuals

As a shift from animal to a more plant-based diet is encouraged in calls for a more environmentally sustainable global food system, guidance on how to achieve adequate protein and amino acid nutrition on a plant-based diet will become even more important. Park et al. makes an important and timely contribution which should inform expert decisions in the setting of future Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Read the full-text here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/nxaa401

Sanghee Park, David D Church, Scott E Schutzler, Gohar Azhar, Il-Young Kim, Arny A Ferrando, Robert R Wolfe, Metabolic Evaluation of the Dietary Guidelines’ Ounce Equivalents of Protein Food Sources in Young Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial, The Journal of Nutrition, 2021;, nxaa401, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/nxaa401