At the end of the 12-week study, it was a draw. There were no real extra benefits or drawbacks to using either product. Plant-based protein has the same impact on your training as animal protein for the 9-to-5 gym-goer.
LUCY DANZIGER: It must be fun to be an identical twin. You can do things like, eat a diet of animal protein for 12 weeks while your sib only eats plant protein for the same period, and compare who got fatter, who got stronger, and who felt like crap. Turns out that this is exactly what Ross and Hugo Turner did, and you won’t believe which twin won or which protein source was the best for building muscle, increasing endurance, and melting fat.
In a new fitness study with a cohort of two – albeit who share the same DNA, making it a more relevant body of work than if it has just been two strangers on the bus – identical twins pitted plant protein vs animal protein. To be fair they have done this before and in the prior study, plant protein kicked animal’s ass, but in this study, here’s what they discovered…
The study entailed taking protein shakes after their regular workouts, during a 12-week endurance fitness program. Ross took a high-end plant-based shake (Vivolife Perform) while Hugo consumed an animal-based protein shake. To keep the experiment as even as possible they each ate roughly the same calories and foods delivered from a food delivery service. So the key difference between their diets was that Hugo consumed the basic animal protein shake while Ross had the plant-based protein shake after their workouts.
Before the study began, the twins took scans of their bodies to get a baseline of stats such as fat percentage, muscle mass, and weight, so they could track changes throughout the experiment. They also took starting measurements of how much they could bench press, and their ability to rapidly churn out press-ups, pull-ups, deadlifts, and they measured their VO2 max, or amount of oxygen their blood could deliver while working out. “The important thing with all these tests,” Ross explains, “is that we did them together throughout the 12-weeks so we could directly compare our results”…
As the study progressed, the twins noticed that their strength and body composition profiles began changing as their bodies adapted to the training and weight load… At the end of the 12-week study, it was a draw. “There were no real extra benefits or drawbacks to using either product,” Ross says. “Plant-based protein has the same impact on your training as animal protein for the 9-to-5 gym-goer.
Elite athletes have been using plant-based protein products with success because plant protein works and gets similar results as animal protein, but has also been shown to lower inflammation and allow for faster recovery times for athletes who also give up meat and dairy, which have been shown to increase inflammation. SOURCE…
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