Nutritional Importance and Bioavailability of Plant Proteins in Human System

Abstract

Protein is an essential nutrient which is required by human body to grow, tissue building, repair cells, and to work properly. A ‘complete’ protein has all the nine essential amino acids necessary for dietary needs. Animal proteins like chicken, fish or dairy products have all of the essential amino acids and are known as 'complete' protein (or ideal or high-quality protein). The awareness about food security and the challenge of an ever-growing world population encourage the search for sustainable and environmentally feasible high-nutritional foods, including the exploration of alternative protein sources. It goes toward replacing traditional animal proteins by alternative ones, requiring developing techniques to evaluate and increase their digestibility and bioavailability. The nutritional value of a protein is related to the bioavailability of its constitutive amino acids and depends on the efficiency of their metabolic utilization to meet the amino acid requirements necessary for growth and body protein turnover. To achieve sufficient quantities of certain essential amino acids plant based diets, mainly vegan, must be varied and include portions of different foods to adequate quantities of limiting amino acids. Eating a range of different plant-based proteins across the day will provide a complete amino acid profile to human body as they don’t have complete amino acid sequence.