Pea protein is a vegan protein from yellow peas. Just like all proteins from legumes pea protein is deficient in one of the essential for humans amino acid – methionine.
I use a pea protein that has a PDCAAS (Protein Digestability Corrected Amino Acid Score) of 82% and this is precisely because the methionine is in slightly insuficient qantities in this protein.
There are many ways pea protein could be enhanced to become a near perfect protein source, but not if you are interested in vegan protein sources only.
For example, meat, especially fish are high in methionine. Eggs and milk are great sources, too. But, for vegans the choices remaining are grains.
Now, grains are not all that great for you for too many reasons, and I don’t want to veer off topic here. But, for reasons of making a great sources of vegan protein like pea protein a complete one, we can deffinitely use grain proteins.
So, how do you make pea protein a complete vegan protein by adding which and how much if it grain protein? Simple. To every 100 g of pea protein add 30 g of rice protein (80 percent or higher). Or if you can’t measure, to every 3 parts of pea protein add 1 part rice protein.
This will bring the methionine level back to where it needs to be for the vegan protein blend to have a near perfect PDCAAS score and the reference amino acid profile suggested by FAO/WHO. Voila!