Many foods described as "protein" have more fat of carbs when measured in calories. Some come with more unhealthy saturated fat than is ideal, while others add extra fibre.
Full analysis, details, data, and source code: https://www.stisca.com/blog/macronutrientplot/
by stan-k
37 Comments
“vegan mice” i need to go back to bed
What, pray tell, the fuck is “Vegan mince?”
Going from lentils to sugar makes the jump look unrealistic. Really need something like pasta, bread, rice, potatoes
Really highlights why gym bros have the stereotype of eating chicken breast and egg whites
this is exactly why “I eat a lot of protein” often means nothing – people think in foods, not macros & marketing is using it
Pump the brakes bro, RFK is liable to add you to a MAHA hit list for this.
On a more serious note this is a really interesting graphic. Love the color-coded wheels for saturated fat and fibre to show additional nuance/ dimensions.
It does seem a bit biased towards plant proteins though – for a more complete picture it’d be good to go further and show other aspects like polyunsaturated fat content and some indication of amino acid balance (digestibility? quality? Not sure what you’d call it).
Firm tofu seems incorrect. There is nearly double, if not more than double the amount of protein than fat on the nutrition labels I see.
People need to stop referring to foods as parts of them
Maybe don’t refer to foods as a single component at all. Stop oversimplifying and pay more attention to what you are eating
This is just missing context. Most people know the difference between meat and “products that can be a source of protein”
so I should eat a lot of tempeh? I guess? am I reading this right?
Cheese can’t be a single point. There are so many different types of cheeses, all with different fat to protein ratios.
Am I just blind and not seeing shrimp, crab, lobster and other shellfish?
I’m not taking a site that has “can dogs go vegan” in the sidebar as valid. Oh cats as well…
In whole milk, the ratio of protein to fat is usually really close to 1:1 (some sources suggest 0.9).
In correctly done cheese, with no added fat, the ratio should naturally stay around that 1:1 number.
Why is milk considered a protein?
This basically summarizes that people are unaware fat has more than twice the calories per gram of protein and carbs, the later two being equal. 9 for fat, 4 for carbs and protein.
low fat milk would like a word
Given that the source appears to be a vegan activist site, I can only assume they chose the fattiest possible version of every meat product – 20% beef mince, etc.
What is vegan mince? I’ve been vegetarian for 20 years and have never heard of it. Is it like TVP or is it specifically like the Beyond or Gardein ground beef that’s a mix of different foods?
An egg is more protein (6g) than fat (5g). So this is at best a misleading diagram.
Well this is wrong. It put eggs in “mostly fat” eggs are 9-11% fat, while 12-13% is protein.
Most meats are mostly water.
This is interesting, but definitely not a “beautiful” graph from a visualisation point of view.
Despite the repeatedly pointed out fact that for example “cheese” cannot be a singular point, why do we have detailed percentage of fibre and saturated fats, but not proteins per food?
And why are saturated fats and fibre part of the same circle while being completely different metrics, or am I misunderstanding something?
Feels like several things are conflated here.
When you look at this type of visualization, it is natural to think that a full donut would mean a 100% fat, but doesn’t. So we can assume that’s on purpose.
I have to call BS on the “beautiful” part as well, pretty messy visual.
Who describes foods as “proteins”? I mean, yeah, sure, I know the shorthand as in “you should eat more protein”, which means “food relatively high in protein”, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone assume that the entire food is just “the protein”.
“Protein sources”, on the second images – sure, fair, but that conflicts with the headline of this post, which doesn’t seem to consider that something can be a good protein source (as in: a better source of protein than many other foods by volume/mass/cost/calories/availability) without protein being the main macronutrient (especially since the recommended daily intake is not “equal amounts of each”).
I need more info on what vegan mince is. Surely it must be comprised of other foods, no?
If you really want to check out some data on a lot of different foods, even within a singular type, you should check out the periodic table.of food initiative. [PTFI markerlab](http://Explore – Periodic Table of Food Initiative https://share.google/yjiTOSvsyPWow28bc)
As a vegetarian, where should I get my protein then?
People who think whole foods are a single macronutrient are devoid of thought or desperately need to take a nutrition class.
What an awful graph. The three componants are not mutually exclusive, you need 3 actual axis.
I read “vegan mice” and was very confused.
Highlights that everyone needs to be eating a variety of foods everyday
Listing this “by calorie” is somewhat misleading, as fat’s are much more calorie dense than protein or carbs. Particularly for something like Salmon or red meat, they are significantly more protein than fats by weight but are in the fat portion of this triangle.
What is vegan mince made from and how ultra processed is it?
I dropped from 12 to 0 pullups in 1 year and a half without protein…. I feel like a piece of shit too.. terrible:(
I love that you’re breaking down the simplistic view of “foods are either fats, proteins, or carbs.” Almost all foods have all three, and it’s only silly fad diets that demonize one category while putting another on a pedestal.
But I object to the “more is bad” and “more is good” captions on the fiber and saturated fat circles. It breaks the objectivity of the diagram and undermines the de-simplifying of what food is that it accomplishes.
Along similar lines, it seems inaccurate to label the three sections “mostly proteins”, “mostly fats”, and “mostly carbs”. “Mostly” would be the items that are closer to the corners. The items that are closer to the center aren’t mostly one or another.