I've been a vegetarian for about 15 years but admittedly ate a pretty poor diet for most of it. I've recently been trying to pay more attention to incorporating more veggies, paying attention to fibre, protein etc.
I realised that my protein levels each day were terribly low and so I'm trying to improve that. I bought both quinoa and couscous from my local supermarket (UK based). I'd heard that quinoa is better in terms of protein and out of interest looked at the packet. Confusingly, the couscous is showing higher in protein at 7.2g per 100g, with quinoa only at 3.5g! And neither of these numbers are anywhere close to the 14g that some Internet research tells me 100g should contain.
Can anyone help shed some light? I've attached photos of the labelling in case I'm missing something super obvious!
Thank you:)
by mikrokosmos0613
5 Comments
Looks like this is nutritional data for cooked products. Raw quinoa and wheat are pretty similar in protein %.
Looking at the cooking directions for the quinoa, that seems like a lot of water; I usually see quinoa instructions with a 2:1 water ratio, not 4:1. So I’m guessing all of the nutrition values are literally being watered down by that?
Why are you even looking at couscous if you want more healthy stuff? Couscous is basically pasta.
Firstly, that’s awesome you’re trying to improve your diet. That’s definitely a great step toward healthy lifestyle.
The protein content in both options looks puzzling but also look at the starch content. Semolina has high starch (sugars) when compared to quinoa. So basically, quinoa offers more protein and less carbs (sugars) overall.
Apart from quinoa, other whole grains that have high protein and low sugar content are – millet, wild rice and amaranth.
I’ve always thought that the benefit of quinoa was that it is a complete protein on its own, so you don’t have to rely on combinations of foods to get all the amino acid types that you need. So it’s more of a quality than a quantity thing.