Built on Beans: Plant Protein Builds Muscle

For all the self-proclaimed nutrition experts who pop up the second you say “plant-based,” here’s some bad news:  

Another new study has confirmed that people eating plant-based and animal-based diets build muscle equally well.

No, you didn’t misread that. No, there’s no asterisk saying “but only if you eat chicken.” No, it doesn’t matter if you get your protein from plants. Muscle doesn’t care.

Published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the study followed 40 healthy adults between the ages of 20 and 40. Participants were fed either a plant-based or an animal-based diet, then put through a nine-day weight training and monitoring programme. Their muscles were tracked using heavy water labelling and tissue biopsies — real science, not influencer "bro science."  

The result? No difference in muscle protein synthesis between the two groups.

In other words: you don’t need animal bodies to build your own.

Complete Proteins, Complete Excuses

The researchers made sure that the plant-based meals contained complete proteins, balancing amino acids the same way actual plant-based eaters do when they’re not busy fending off unsolicited advice about bacon. Meanwhile, animal eaters got nearly 70% of their protein from animal sources.

It didn’t matter. The muscles didn’t stage a protest demanding whey powder and steak. They just did what muscles do: grow when challenged.

Protein timing didn’t matter either. Whether the participants spread their protein evenly across meals or crammed it toward the end of the day, muscle synthesis stayed the same.  

All the obsessive micromanaging of protein distribution? Useless. The body knows what it’s doing. It’s the mind that gets confused.

The Belief Gap

Despite all of this, 87% of Americans still believe animal products are necessary for adequate protein. Only 57% think it’s even possible to build muscle on a plant-based diet.  

This isn’t a knowledge gap. It’s a belief gap. A supremacy gap.  

Animal use is so normalised that the average person would rather cling to myths than accept that they never needed to kill anyone to fuel a bicep curl. Imagine still believing that muscles are built on corpses in 2025.

The Old Protein Myth, Dead and Buried

The lead researcher, Professor Nicholas Burd, admitted that even he thought lower "quality" proteins might need careful timing to work properly.  

Spoiler: they don’t.  

Plant proteins are good enough. Always have been.

The idea that plant-based protein is somehow inferior has been kept alive not because of facts, but because of industries profiting from animal use, cultural habits nobody wants to question, and a desperate fear of looking "less manly" without meat.

Turns out compassion is compatible with strength.  

Turns out you can refuse to treat living beings as property and still bench press more than someone who thinks fish and a rice cake is a personality trait.

The Truth Has Muscles Too

This study doesn’t just tear down another excuse.  

It exposes how badly we’ve been lied to about what we need to thrive — and how willing people are to defend those lies to protect their habits.

Building muscle has never required exploitation.  

Using animals has always been a choice. A violent, unnecessary one. The science is in.  

Your muscles don't care if you choose justice.

Only your ego does.