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Dietary Protein Sources – Protein Quality Part 1

Having examined the impact of speed of dietary protein digestion, I want to talk about protein quality.

What is Protein Quality

Quoting directly from The Protein Book:

Protein quality refers, in a general sense, to how well or poorly the body will use a given protein.   More technically, protein quality refers to how well the essential amino acid (EAA) profile of a protein matches the requirements of the body; the digestibility of the protein and bioavailability of the amino acids (AAs) also play a role (1,2).

Essentially, protein quality simply refers to how well or how poorly a given protein is used by the body once it has been digested.  Clearly, any protein that escapes digestion can’t do anything in the body but that doesn’t mean that all of the protein that is digested automatically works the same in the body.

Repeating myself slightly, protein quality has to do with how well a given dietary protein is used by the body for all of the different purposes that protein is used for. … Keep Reading