In this LAB note
Question · Hypothesis · Method · Results · What Failed · What We Learned · What Changed at MOMS
Question
When a MOMS recipe adds a legume or tofu to its protein slot, does it ever replace the animal-protein ingredient — or does it only ever ride along beside it?
Hypothesis
With chickpeas, tofu, and lentils appearing across the catalog, and with Goals like "Light" and "Cool Down & Detox" built around smaller, gentler ingredient loads, we expected at least a handful of the 201 recipes to build the protein slot from legumes or tofu alone, without egg, chicken, or dairy.
Method
Parsed the Protein ingredient field for all 201 recipes in the production recipe database (8 body types, weeks 1-4), splitting each slot's ingredient string into its component ingredients and gram weights. Classified each component as either an animal-protein source (Egg, Egg White, Chicken, Greek Yogurt) or a legume/soy source (Black Beans, Chickpeas, Lentils, Green Lentils, Kidney Beans, Adzuki Beans, Mung Bean, White Beans, Tofu). Compared the presence and relative gram weight of each category across every recipe, then checked the amino-acid-quality question against two published protein-quality analyses (see References).
Results
149 of 201 recipes (74%) include a legume or tofu ingredient in the Protein slot. In all 149, an animal-protein ingredient is also present in the same slot — the rate of a legume-only protein slot in the catalog is 0 out of 201. Where both are present, the animal-protein portion averages 180.4g against 55.7g of legume/tofu, a roughly 3.2-to-1 ratio by weight. Even the single most legume-forward recipe in the whole catalog, Frost & Flow (WAY-W2-COOL-011, Cool Down & Detox), which pairs 115g of Lentils + Tofu against just 30g of Chicken — a 79% legume share, the highest of any recipe — still keeps a full 30g portion of chicken rather than dropping it. Sunrise Surge (EY-W1-ENERGY-001) pairs 225g of Egg + Egg White with 80g of Black Beans (26% legume share); Golden Charge (EY-W1-ENERGY-008) pairs 150g of Egg White with 95g of Chickpeas + Black Beans (39% legume share).
What Failed
The hypothesis that some recipe, somewhere in 201, would be built animal-protein-free did not hold — not once, and not even in Frost & Flow, the recipe that pushes legume weight furthest. We also checked whether "Light" or the detox-oriented Goals were more likely to drop the animal source, since those recipes tend to run smaller ingredient loads overall; they weren't. The presence of a legume in the protein slot predicts nothing about whether the animal-protein ingredient gets dropped, because across this catalog it never does.
What We Learned
In this catalog, a legume or tofu addition functions as a fiber and amino-acid complement to a fixed animal-protein backbone, not a replacement for it — and there is a real nutritional reason formulators may be leaning this way even without a written rule to do so. Cooked chickpeas and black beans carry a Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) around 0.52, limited by tryptophan or by methionine and cysteine (Nosworthy et al., 2017); egg is a complete, high-scoring reference protein. Pairing a limited plant protein with a complete animal one raises the amino acid completeness of the slot, consistent with the long-established finding that plant proteins reach full nutritional value as mixtures rather than as single ingredients (Young & Pellett, 1994). What the data can't tell us is whether MOMS formulators were solving for that consciously, or whether the pattern is simply habit.
What Changed at MOMS
The kitchen team is piloting a small batch of fully plant-based protein-slot formulations — pairing tofu with chickpeas or lentils at gram weights sized to complement each other's limiting amino acids and hit the same ~33g protein target — for the next quarterly recipe refresh, to close the current gap for customers who need a dairy- and egg-free option.
References
Nosworthy MG, Neufeld J, Frohlich P, Young G, Malcolmson L, House JD. "Determination of the Protein Quality of Cooked Canadian Pulses." Food Science & Nutrition. 2017;5(4):896-903. | Young VR, Pellett PL. "Plant Proteins in Relation to Human Protein and Amino Acid Nutrition." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1994;59(5 Suppl):1203S-1212S.
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