I guess what I'm lamenting is the missed opportunity to highlight that many vegetables e.g. broccoli are an excellent protein source as well as other important nutrients. It gives you additional flexibility when meal planning. There's a common misconception (at least in my circles) that protein => animal protein which isn't always useful for planning a balanced meal.

Broccoli has 2.8g of protein per 100g. Beef has 26g per 100g, and chicken has 27g. If you're trying to get protein, broccoli isn't going to do much, and I think it's good that the government is being honest about that. A chart that listed broccoli as a major source of protein would be misleading. Broccoli is a good source of many nutrients, and the chart calls it out as such, but it is not an effective source of protein.

If you compare protein per kJ instead, broccoli has 0.021g protein per kJ whereas lean beef mince has 0.028g per kJ. Much more similar. Although of course you would need food that is higher density protein as well so you don't have too much volume to eat.

But that is a kind of silly way to compare. Broccoli isn't very filling _and_ it doesn't have very much protein in it. That doesn't change the fact that it lack protein.

The question is if I'm preparing a meal that I want to be filling, healthy, and energizing, how should I do it. Broccoli isn't a good answer to the protein part of that question.

Protein may be associated with satiety, but so is fibre, of which beef has none.

Have fun eating 2kg of broccoli to get 50g of protein.

Normalising by mass is a poor way to assess food's protein content since different foods have greatly different water contents. E.g. beef jerky has much higher protein per 100g than beef largely because it's dried (admittedly, probably also because they use leaner cuts)

Good luck getting Americans eat sufficient broccoli to source their protein without also adding a ton of cheese or fat/sugar based sauces.

> I guess what I'm lamenting is the missed opportunity to highlight that many vegetables e.g. broccoli are an excellent protein source as well as other important nutrients

I can see why you would expect something like that from this administration, but surprisingly the linked webpage seems to be based in fact.

Broccoli are not an excellent protein source from a dietary perspective.

I like broccoli, but you’d have to eat around six pounds of broccoli to cover the recommended daily intake of essential amino acids.

It’s harder to get the target 1-1.6g protein per kg from vegetables, unless you’re consuming beans/pulses which are also high in carbohydrates. Broccoli is not a great protein source, an entire head will give you 10g at most – the average adult would have to eat a dozen+ per day.

Beans and pulses are mostly long chain carbohydrates, which are not a problem.

You have to consume a very large amount of lentils to make up a healthy amount of protein per day. It’s something like 6 cans of chickpeas vs two chicken breasts per day. I believe you also don’t get a complete amino acids panel like you would with meat which is complete on its own.

Indeed, chickpeas don't supply sufficient essential amino acids[1]. But sesame is[2] and goes well with chickpea! See falafel or hummus.

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114512000797

[2]: https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14194079

I mean I have. There are almost no vegetables that are considered amino acid complete though there are (well known) combinations like legumes (beans/lentils) + rice. But this goes back to my original point of needing a lot of beans to get your protein requirement for the day. In places like India where there are a lot of vegetarians, diary products are heavily used to make up the deficit.

> There are almost no vegetables that are considered amino acid complete

This is just blatantly and hilariously false.

They are literally called "essential amino acids".

A plant would not survive if it lacked amino acids which are essential.

It it shocking anyone would deny this obvious and extremely basic fact about biology.

you need to educate yourself better about "basic facts about biology"

they're called essential because humans cannot produce them internally, so we have to consume them (though you could in principle make the same assessment for other animal species, but that's less relevant, unless you're, I don't know, raising cows?)

plants don't eat, but produce organic molecules from raw ingredients (or almost raw, in case of nitrogen), and can produce all amino acids - but in different quantities, so maybe the (parts of) plants you eat don't have all the necessary amino acids.

Now they do produce all the essential amino acids, but in insufficient amounts? Weird how the narrative keeps changing in this thread. A serious lack of scientific knowledge is apparent from people who insist on eating animals. And as always, it is devoid of any backing evidence or credibility other than "trust me, bro, I lift".

From your tone and the fact that you're quoting things nobody in this thread has said, I'm not sure that you are actually interested in hearing any scientific argument. You certainly aren't trying to make one. But I'll try:

The quality of a protein is measured using PDCAAS (Protein digestibility corrected amino acid score). It's a score between 0 and 1 that measures the quality of a protein as a function of digestibility and how well it meets the human amino acid requirements.

It is indeed correct that both lentils and chickpeas (which the original comment you replied to was talking about) have a much lower PDCAAS value of around 0.70. Data on beef varies, but it is generally considered to be a complete protein with a PDCAAS score above 0.90.

Instead of accusing "people who insist on eating animals" of lacking scientific knowledge, it would have been much more helpful to point out that the highest quality proteins on the PDCAAS scale are almost universally vegetarian or vegan: eggs, milk, soy, and mycoprotein all have higher scores than beef, chicken, or pork.

I believe the person you’re responding to is a vegan (from other comments) so the “amino complete” alternative of eggs and dairy you’re suggesting don’t fit the bill of requirements for his arguments either which leaves soy. Mycoprotein has plenty of controversy around it regarding heavy metals and health issues from the fact that it’s highly processed. Soy has a lot of phytoestrogens so it’s not a great candidate to consume large amounts of.

> Soy has a lot of phytoestrogens so it’s not a great candidate to consume large amounts of.

The buffoonery continues. These irrational statements are straight out of the meat industry playbook - of course again lacking in any credible citations. And all you had to do was spend even 5 seconds reading a public encyclopedia to avoid this embarassment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogen#Effects_on_human...

You seem to have a somewhat decent grasp of the facts, but honestly, if you don’t work on your tone, your posts will keep getting downvoted. If you like to yell at scream and call people incompetent, go off to Twitter or some other place that will have you. HN tries to maintain something called tone.

Facts are more important than tone - both greatly offend people who are wrong.

You seem confused. The original claim that plants lack certain amino acids - or that eating them will somehow lead to a protein deficiency - was and is now again thoroughly debunked. The only reason people cling to the notion is to justify their inappropriate diet of animals.