From Single Foods to Whole Diets: A Critical Framework for Protein Quality Assessment Accounting for Complementarity and Matrix Effects.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Critical review and theoretical framework without new clinical experimental data.
PubMed 42466521 · doi:10.1111/1541-4337.70571
What was done
This critical review synthesized evidence on the limitations of isolated single-food protein quality metrics (PDCAAS and DIAAS), which ignore amino acid complementarity and food-matrix effects. The authors proposed a Whole-Diet Protein Quality (WDPQ) framework that aggregates digestible indispensable amino acids across daily intake and applied it to Mediterranean, DASH, and pregnancy diets.
What was found
Applying the WDPQ framework yielded corrected dietary protein values 18% to 30% higher than conventional single-food summation across the evaluated dietary patterns. The authors also noted that food matrix interactions and processing reduce amino acid bioaccessibility relative to raw ingredients, which single-food metrics fail to capture.
Why it matters
Conventional protein quality metrics may systematically underestimate the nutritional adequacy of mixed and plant-based diets. Shifting to a whole-diet assessment framework could reshape dietary guidelines, food labeling, and evaluations of plant-based dietary transitions.
Limits
The abstract describes a theoretical framework and modeled dietary calculations rather than empirical human intervention data or physiological endpoints. The number of studies synthesized and precise confidence metrics are not reported in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports The Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) is a scoring system used to measure the quality of dietary protein sources.