Plant-based meat vs chicken, which one has better protein absorption?

Recently, as the importance of environmental protection has been emphasized, interest in vegetarianism is rapidly increasing. As a result, more and more people become vegetarians and obtain protein from plant-based meat. Interesting research results related to this have recently been published.

According to a press release published by Medicalnewstoday, the study compared the protein absorption of plant-based meat and chicken and found that plant-based meat was less absorbed during digestion than chicken. This was published in the ‘Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry’.

For the study, the researchers made plant-based chicken meat made from soy concentrate and wheat gluten. It had a protein content of 24.2%. Afterwards, various tests were carried out to model protein absorption during digestion. In these tests, they found that the water solubility of plant meat gradually increased during in vitro digestion, reaching about 8% after gastric digestion and about 14% after intestinal digestion.

However, they found that chicken peptides were more soluble than plant peptides. It was also noted that about 50% of the 110 peptides identified in plant meat remained after the digestion process. On the other hand, among the more than 500 peptides identified in chicken, only 15% of the peptides remained after digestion. This means that chicken is a better source of protein than plant-based meat.

However, one expert on the results of this study said that wheat gluten is not water-soluble and has a harder structure than soy or chicken protein, so it may be difficult to digest. He also pointed out the limitation that it may not be applicable to made plant-based meat.