HUIMAN YANG¹, LAETITIA GUÉRIN-DEREMAUX²*, LEON ZHOU³, AMY FRATUS³, DANIEL WILS², CHARLIE
ZHANG⁴, KELLY ZHANG⁴, LARRY E. MILLER⁵

*Corresponding author

1. Shanghai Daan Centre for Medical Laboratory, 528 Hong Shan Rd, Shanghai, 200126, P.R., China

2. Roquette Frères, Biology and Nutrition Department, Lestrem, 62080, France

3. Roquette America, Inc., 417 Exchange Street, Keokuk, IA 52632 USA

4. Sprim China Ltd., 200 NingHai East Rd, Room 2110, Shanghai, 200021, P.R. China

5. SPRIM, 1 Daniel Burnham Court, Suite 100C, San Francisco, CA, 94109 USA

Abstract

A rat feeding study was conducted to determine the nutritional quality of a novel pea protein using the Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) methodology. 30 weanling male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to one of three diets: protein-free feed (Control), high nitrogen casein feed (Casein), or pea protein. True Digestibility of the protein feeds was 98.0±1.2 percent for Casein and 97.3±1.6 percent for pea protein. The estimated PDCAAS of pea protein was 85 percent for children 3 to 10 years and 93 percent for adults. The pea protein evaluated in this study has a protein quality similar to that of casein, eggs, and soy and much higher than that of common vegetable-based protein sources.

INTRODUCTION

Adequate dietary protein intake in the human diet is vital for promotion of optimal health including weight control (1), bone health (2, 3), cardiovascular health (4), glycemic control (5), and muscle maintenance (6-8). Most research on the physiological effects of dietary protein consumption has focused on protein quantity (e.g. total daily protein consumption, protein consumption in relationship to body weight, or proportion of protein intake relative to other macronutrients). However, there is accumulating evidence that protein quality also plays an integral role in influencing factors such as appetite, energy metabolism, and skeletal muscle protein synthesis (9-11).
The nutritional quality of a protein is determined by the ability of the protein to meet the nitrogen and amino acid demands of an organism. The most widely accepted method for assessing protein quality is the Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) (12). Despite some limitations, the PDCAAS offers a uniform methodology to assess the quality of different proteins. The FAO/WHO report on protein quality evaluation considered this methodology for measur ...