Want to build muscle? Eat more plants

Summary

Podcast Summary: Life Kit – "Want to Build Muscle? Eat More Plants"

Episode Information

• Title: Want to Build Muscle? Eat More Plants
• Host: Marielle Segarra
• Author/Organization: NPR
• Release Date: June 26, 2025
• Description: In this episode, Marielle Segarra explores the relationship between plant-based diets and muscle building. Joined by NPR Health Correspondent Will Stone, they delve into recent research comparing plant and animal proteins, discuss essential amino acids, and provide practical advice for those looking to build muscle on a plant-based diet.

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Introduction: The Protein Puzzle

[00:17] Marielle Segarra:
"If you don't get enough protein in your diet, you'll struggle to make muscle gains."
Marielle introduces the topic by sharing her personal experience with strength training and the critical role protein plays in muscle development. She highlights the common misconception that only animal proteins can effectively support muscle growth.

Understanding Protein Quality

[03:38] Will Stone:
"Protein quality is based on how digestible the protein is and its amino acid composition."
Will Stone explains the concept of protein quality, emphasizing the importance of essential amino acids—those the body cannot produce and must obtain from diet. He distinguishes between plant and animal proteins, noting that while animal proteins are typically complete, plant proteins can also meet muscle-building needs when combined properly.

Plant vs. Animal Protein: The Traditional View

[04:36] Marielle Segarra:
"Is animal protein more substantial in some way? I feel like that's how it's traditionally been presented, definitely."
Marielle questions the traditional belief that animal proteins are superior for muscle building. Will elaborates on this by discussing amino acid profiles, pointing out that animal proteins naturally contain all essential amino acids in optimal quantities for muscle synthesis.

Recent Research Shifting the Narrative

[07:09] Will Stone:
"We're starting to see that there's no difference when they do these head-to-head comparisons."
Will introduces recent studies that challenge earlier findings favoring animal proteins. He references Nicholas Bird’s study from the University of Illinois, where both vegan and omnivore participants showed no significant difference in muscle growth over nine days with comparable protein intake, highlighting the potential of plant-based diets in supporting muscle development.

Optimal Protein Intake for Muscle Growth

[08:41] Marielle Segarra:
"A widely recognized target. If you really want to, you know, optimize your training gains beyond that, its really diminishing returns doesn't seem necessary."
Discussing protein consumption, Will mentions that the study participants consumed 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, which is 50% higher than the US recommended daily amount of 0.8 grams. He notes that up to 1.6 grams per kilogram can further optimize muscle gains, aligning with recommendations from nutrition experts like Benjamin Wall.

Timing of Protein Consumption

[09:58] Marielle Segarra:
"Did it matter what time of day the participants were eating the protein? Like, especially if they were doing it right before or after a workout, for instance."
Will shares findings that the timing of protein intake—whether spread throughout the day or concentrated in larger meals like dinner—did not significantly impact muscle growth outcomes. This suggests flexibility in meal planning for those on plant-based diets.

Practical Strategies for Plant-Based Muscle Building

[11:42] Will Stone:
"You just want to think a bit about how you can complement these different sources."
Will offers practical advice for individuals pursuing a plant-based diet for muscle building:

• Diverse Protein Sources: Incorporate a variety of plant-based proteins such as beans (18g per cup of cooked lentils), tofu (22g per half-cup), and grains like quinoa (8g per cooked cup).
• Complementary Amino Acids: Combine foods like rice and beans to achieve a complete amino acid profile.
• Protein Supplements: Utilize blended plant-based protein powders (e.g., pea and rice protein) to ensure comprehensive amino acid intake without meticulous tracking.

[13:40] Marielle Segarra:
"You don't need to be very obsessive about it... if you really just think about a well-balanced meal."
Emphasizing balance over precision, Marielle reassures listeners that a thoughtful combination of varied plant foods throughout the day can meet all essential amino acid requirements without the need for detailed accounting.

Conclusion: Embracing Plant-Based Muscle Building

[13:44] Marielle Segarra:
Marielle recaps the key points:

• Protein Sources: Animal proteins are complete, but a diverse plant-based diet can match their muscle-building potential.
• Meal Planning: Combining different plant proteins ensures a full spectrum of essential amino acids.
• Supplementation: Plant-based protein powders can aid in meeting protein needs efficiently.

She encourages listeners to explore further episodes on related topics, such as weightlifting techniques and workout recovery, available on NPR’s Life Kit platform.

Notable Quotes

• Marielle Segarra at [00:17]:
  "You don't have to eat five dozen eggs for breakfast every day like some beefy Disney villain. Gaston."

• Will Stone at [03:38]:
  "Protein quality is based on how digestible the protein is and its amino acid composition."

• Will Stone at [07:09]:
  "We're starting to see that there's no difference when they do these head-to-head comparisons."

• Marielle Segarra at [13:12]:
  "You don't need to be very obsessive about it... if you really just think about a well-balanced meal."

Takeaways

• Complete Proteins: While animal proteins are inherently complete, plant proteins can achieve the same muscle-building efficacy when consumed in a varied and balanced manner.
• Protein Intake: Consuming 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight supports optimal muscle growth, surpassing the standard dietary recommendations.
• Diet Flexibility: Timing of protein intake is flexible, allowing for personalized meal planning without compromising muscle development.
• Cultural Practices: Traditional food pairings, like rice and beans, naturally provide a complete amino acid profile, supporting muscle health on plant-based diets.

For those interested in adopting a plant-based approach to muscle building, this episode provides both scientific insights and practical strategies to achieve desired fitness goals without relying solely on animal proteins.

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Credits:
This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylphie Douglas, with contributions from Beck Harlan (Visuals Editor), Malika Garib (Digital Editor), Megan Keane (Supervising Editor), and Beth Donovan (Executive Producer). The production team also includes Andy Taegle, Claire Marie Schneider, and Margaret Serino, with engineering support from Simon Laszlo Jansen.

Learn More:
Explore additional episodes and resources at npr.org/lifekit, subscribe to the newsletter at npr.org/lifekitnewsletter, or share your feedback at [e-mail].

Transcript

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[Mariel Segarra]

You're listening to Life Kit from npr. Hey, it's Marielle. I've been doing strength training lately. I got a personal trainer and I am doing chest presses with 12 and a half pound weights in each hand. Thank you very much. Please clap. Seriously though, I can already feel myself getting stronger and it feels good to do something that I know has a ton of health benefits. Resistance training can improve our brain function and our cardiovascular health. It can help us live longer. One catch though is if you don't get enough protein in your diet, you'll struggle to make muscle gains. Now maybe you're thinking, but Marielle, I don't want to eat five dozen eggs for breakfast every day like some beefy Disney villain. Gaston. Yeah, I'm talking about Gaston. Well, guess what? You don't have to. Because our understanding of where we need to get protein from is changing. And it seems plants can do the job too. NPR health correspondent Will Stone has been covering this and on this episode of Life Kit, he's going to talk to us about some new research on plant and animal protein. We'll talk about how they're different and how you can get those muscle building essential amino acids from plants too.

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[Mariel Segarra]

All right, Will, if I want to get big, like swole, like jacked, why do I need protein?

[Will Stone]

Yeah, well, if you want to build muscle or maintain muscle, you need to, you know, work those muscles, maybe pick up some weights. And you need protein to actually fuel them. Right. And allow them to grow. And not all sources of protein are exactly the same. Right. So the concept here that researchers like to talk about is protein quality, and that's based on how digestible the protein is and its amino acid composition. So amino acids, if people remember from their bio classes, are the building blocks of our muscles. And there are a handful of these essential amino acids that our body does not make. That means we have to get them from external sources like our diet. Some of these are really important for muscle building. They can even be rate limiting, meaning if we don't have enough of them, it basically stunts our ability to build muscle. And that's a big part of the question here when we think about plant protein versus animal protein.

[Mariel Segarra]

Yeah, what's the difference? Is animal protein more substantial in some way? I feel like that's how it's traditionally been presented, definitely.

[Will Stone]

So meat and plant protein are different, obviously. And if you do this kind of straight up comparison on a gram per gram basis, meat does win out. This is how Nicholas Bird explained it to me. He runs a lab at the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne. If you're eating meat, you're eating basically muscle, right? So that protein mirrors our skeletal muscle in terms of its amino acid composition, meaning animal protein has all of these essential amino acids we were talking about, and it has an abundance of the ones we need for muscle growth.

[Mariel Segarra]

Okay. Whereas with plants, they don't offer all of the essential amino acids.

[Will Stone]

So it's trickier here. You can get all the essential amino acids from plants. It's just that you might have a deficiency or lower levels of certain amino acids in plants compared to meat. An example is the amino acid lysine. Rice is a plant protein, but it's lower in lysine. Another is methionine Beans tend to be lower in methionine. So this was one reason that traditionally plant protein, especially with an all vegan diet, was regarded as inferior. Because if you're trying to build muscle, you need to make sure you get all of these amino acids in abundance for your muscles.

[Mariel Segarra]

Yeah. It feels like you'd have to do some sort of math or accounting with the plants, whereas with the meat it's a little easier. And I guess you're getting all of the amino acids you'd need with every meat source or animal source.

[Will Stone]

Yeah. And this is actually what studies were finding. Right. It wasn't just kind of theoretical. They would bring people into labs, usually young, healthy people, they'd feed them like whey protein or soy protein, and then they would analyze, you know, what happens at their muscles over the next couple hours or a day, and they would find that the muscle protein synthesis, which is just kind of the process of building muscles after eating animal protein, was better than when you compared it to plants. Benjamin Wall is another exercise nutrition researcher. He's at the University of Exeter and here's what he told me. One of the main reasons why people assumed an inferiority of plant versus animal.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Proteins was the studies that were a.

[Will Stone]

Single meal, a single protein over a few hours.

[Mariel Segarra]

Okay, so it sounds like he's saying that plant proteins are not actually inferior. What's changed?

[Will Stone]

Yeah, so basically it wasn't that these earlier studies were necessarily wrong. They just weren't giving a full picture. And now over about the last 10 years or so, there have been a number of studies that have looked at longer periods of time. So not just, you know, someone in a lab for 24 hours maybe, but, you know, looking at people over days or weeks. And they're not just feeding people soy protein. Right. Most people don't just eat soy protein day after day. And that's all they do if they're vegans especially, they're having kind of real meals with mixed sources of plant protein and they're more balanced, hopefully. And some of the newest data supporting this actually comes from a study done by Nicholas Bird at the University of Illinois. Byrd followed healthy young adults over nine days and three weightlifting sessions. Everyone ate the same amount of protein, but some were vegan, others were omnivores. And at the end of the trial, they actually biopsied the muscle tissue to see what was going on and saw the that there was no difference. The muscle building potential and likely based on our data, long term muscle mass gains would be the same.

[Mariel Segarra]

So it sounds like, if you're eating a protein rich vegan diet that includes a diversity of plants, you can see the same muscle gains as someone who's like, gobbling up burgers and rotisserie chickens and stuff.

[Will Stone]

That's right. At least according to this study and a couple other studies, the narrative around, you know, a plant based diet, especially in terms of building muscle, has really shifted and we're starting to see that there's no difference when they do these head to head comparisons.

[Mariel Segarra]

Okay, a couple specifics here. How much protein were the people in the study eating?

[Will Stone]

So in this study from the University of Illinois, people were eating 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Now, the recommended daily amount in the US is 0.8 grams. So this was 50% more than the dietary recommendations. But it's actually pretty reflective of how a lot of Americans, maybe especially younger people, how much protein they're eating day to day. You know, the question of how much protein you need to eat is actually very divisive and lots of different views on this. And it really does depend to some degree on, on your goals. Right. Are you trying to build a lot of muscle your age? What's your activity level? But the researchers I interviewed said, you know, 1.2 grams per kilogram, like this study is a very reasonable target. You can push that up to 1.6 grams. Benjamin Wall said that's a kind of a widely recognized target. If you really want to, you know, optimize your training gains beyond that, it's really diminishing returns doesn't seem necessary.

[Mariel Segarra]

Okay, and did it matter what time of day the participants were eating the protein? Like, especially if they were doing it right before or after a workout, for instance.

[Will Stone]

So actually, the study did try to get at this question primarily thinking about whether you needed to really spread this protein consumption out over the day, you know, with kind of smaller, more frequent meals, or whether you could do what, you know, a lot of people do, which is, you know, tend to backload their protein around dinner time. Right. When you have a bigger meal there too. They did not see any difference in their study. And so basically, if you ate a vegan diet or an omnivore diet, you ate more protein at the end of the day or you spaced it out. It all basically was the same.

[Mariel Segarra]

Okay. Were these findings surprising or controversial in any way? I feel like people get really heated when it comes to protein intake on the Internet.

[Will Stone]

They do. And I even asked Nick Bird about that. I said, you know, are people in your field kind of, you know, pulling their hair out and yelling. And he said, no, actually, we've all been recognizing in the newer data and really seeing that there has been a shift in our understanding. He was a bit surprised. He told me out the results. But he said, you know, maybe 10 years ago this would have seemed really controversial. Nowadays, not so much. Even though there's certainly corners of the Internet that have very strong opinions in one way or the other. And, and you know, one interesting wrinkle was that this study was actually funded by the cattle industry. That's where Nicholas Bird was getting his funding from. So if anyone was looking for something that was not gonna favor vegans, you might think it was the cattle industry. But obviously no, this is what they found and they reported their results.

[Mariel Segarra]

What can people take from this? If they are trying to eat less meat or be vegan and also get swole. Like, what would I want to be eating?

[Will Stone]

Yeah, so some plant based foods that have relatively high protein. You have beans, that's like 18 grams for a cup of cooked lentils. Tofu, 22 grams per half a cup of serving grains like quinoa, you know, 8 grams per cooked cup. Some vegetables have more protein too, but then it gets a little harder. You end up having to eat a lot of vegetables. Ideally, as we talked about earlier, you're really kind of mixing and matching. And you know, some cultures have kind of figured this out, right? I mean, rice and beans, really nice complementary amino acid profile. They both have protein and folks have been doing that, you know, a long, long time. So you just want to think a bit about how you can complement these different sources. Another example are peas. They're a good source of amino acid, leucine, which is actually pretty critical for switching on protein synthesis. But they are low in methionine, so you have to look for that somewhere else, like rice. And an easy way to kind of make sure you're checking all the boxes here is to use, you know, a powder. And you can actually look for a plant protein powder that is a blend. It has a mix of different sources. And that way you get all those amino acids that we've been talking about.

[Mariel Segarra]

Yeah, like how much accounting do you have to do here when you're eating poison plant based foods? Like, can you just make sure you're eating a diversity of plants and it'll probably take care of itself? Or do you really have to be adding up and looking at what amino acids each plant is deficient in?

[Will Stone]

I would say you don't need to be very obsessive about it is the message I got from the researchers that if you really just think about a well balanced meal, which is, you know, recommended, right. In general for whatever your eating pattern is, right. You don't want to just eat one thing over and over again. You'll get all of this over the course of a day if you just are thoughtful and you know, beans, tofu, you know, nuts, I mean, all these things, if you put them together over time, you'll get everything you need.

[Mariel Segarra]

Well, Stone, thank you so much for this.

[Will Stone]

Thank you. It was fun.

[Mariel Segarra]

All right, time for a recap. The protein you'll get from eating a plant is different from the protein you'll get from eating some part of an animal. Animal proteins contain all the essential amino acids that we need to build muscle and in the right quantities, all in one place. Whereas with plants, some of the essential amino acids you need to build muscle might not be as abundant. The good news is researchers are finding that if you eat a wide variety of plant based foods, you can still get all those amino acids and make the same muscle gains as people who eat meat. Some plant based foods that are high in protein are beans, tofu and quinoa. Also, when you pair certain foods together like rice and beans, you get a complimentary amino acid profile. And you can look for a plant based protein powder that's a blend. So maybe it has pea protein and rice protein and chia seeds or beans. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on weightlifting and another on how to recover after a tough workout. You can find [e-mail] LifeKit and if you love Life Kit and you want even more than subscribe to our [e-mail] LifeKitnewsletter Also, if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email [e-mail] this episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylphie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Keane is our supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Taegle, Claire Marie Schneider and Margaret Serino. Engineering support comes from Simon Laszlo Jansen. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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