PDCAAS

In 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration adopted the Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Scoring (PDCAAS) as the standard by which to evaluate protein quality. It is now the most accepted and widely used method in the scientific community.

 

PDCAAS is based on several factors: the profile of essential amino acids, the digestibility of the protein, and the ability of the protein to supply the essential amino acids in the amounts needed to meet the requirements of growing human beings. The protein quality rankings are determined by comparing the amino acid profile of the specific food protein against a standard amino acid profile.

 

The highest possible score under these guidelines is 1.0. The following are the PDCAAS scores for the main sources of protein:

 

1.0 meat, fish, eggs, dairy, WPC, WPI, soy

0.7 nuts

0.6 pulses and legumes

0.4 wheat and grains

 

When shopping or selecting foods to eat, PDCAAS is easy to use. Simply multiply the PDCAAS by the protein content as displayed on the nutritional information (or food facts) panel. For example, a popular breakfast cereal contains 6.6g protein per serve (before milk). Multiply 6.6 by 0.4 to get the total useable protein: 2.6g.