Nearly a decade ago, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) developed a new index to assess protein quality in foods. The goal, writ large, was to address food security for the world’s most vulnerable populations, creating more accurate tools for food assistance programs seeking to provide balanced nutrition.

Hans H. Stein at the University of Illinois knew he could help.

The new index, known as the digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS), parses out the digestibility of individual amino acids making up proteins. And it relies on pigs, not rats, as the preferred model for humans.

Stein has been evaluating nutrient digestibility, including amino acids, in pigs for 30 years.

«The FAO determined the pig is the preferred model for humans when you evaluate proteins, moving away from the rat, which had been used for the last hundred years. They also recommended human foods should be evaluated exactly the same way as we evaluate feed ingredients for pigs. So, when I saw that I thought, ‘Well, we know how to do this,’» says Stein, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Illinois. «We started doing some research in this area and published the very first paper on DIAAS values for proteins in 2014.»

His team has completed multiple studies since then, including a new one published in the British Journal of Nutrition. In this work, Stein and his co-authors show meat products, including ribeye steak, bologna, beef jerky, and more, score above 100 on the DIAAS chart, meaning their amino acids are highly digestible and complement lower-quality proteins.

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Materials provided by University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Original written by Lauren Quinn. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.