Review: Quorn vs chicken, calories and nutritional values – can it sway a bodybuilding meat lover?

Alright, alright don’t even start with the meat lover puns.

Since my cutting diet came to a conclusion I’ve been spending a lot of time reading, researching and generally pooling together ideas on how I want to construct a healthy, happy relationship with food going forwards. But I as an amateur bodybuilder I also want to make sure I’m getting some good sources of protein in there.

It’s no secret that veganism and vegetarianism is becoming increasingly popular as meat and the meat industry become the next food industry “demon”. So it cropped up in a lot of the information I was investigating and so I thought it only fair to see what possibilities vegetarianism may hold for me. A fair few vegan and vegetarian bodybuilders have also sprung to the limelight recently too, so may be they are on to something!

I have an ongoing life-long love affair with red meat but I also LOVE trying new foods. It dawned on me that to my knowledge I’ve never knowingly had Quorn so it seemed like a good place to start.

Quorn isn’t a new product to market as you no doubt already know, and it comes in many forms; mince, pieces, sausages, burgers so there is plenty to choose from. For the purposes of this review I’ve chosen to give the Quorn pieces a go.

The table below gives a quick comparison of the nutritional values of Quorn and chicken:

From a nutritional perspective it’s definitely not a like-for-like swap but I do think the macro profile means Quorn can be easily slotted in to a diet plan with a bit of jiggling around.

You can get slightly more volume for your calories with Quorn than with chicken. As a short arss my maintenance calories are low so more volume is definitely a good thing for me!

Taste, texture, smell and verdict!

Quorn is a fungus based product grown from fermentation – which let’s be honest doesn’t make it sound glamorous nor appetising!

However, I find the texture OK, it feels like a mushroom or aubergine texture to me, it’s not quite meaty – but it does have some firmness to it.

The smell is faint, I personally find it doesn’t smell of much at all. As someone who works in an office I feel like this might be marginally more acceptable the popping open a Tupperware of cooked chicken – which quite frankly smells awful and we know it!

The taste is relatively bland, which I also think is a good thing. I feel like this product most likely works best with sauce and seasonings as opposed to a stand alone part of a meal though.

Verdict

I may incorporate Quorn in to some of meals, out of convenience as much as anything, and as a change from sourcing my protein purely from meats.

So yes, I would use again, but I’m definitely not swearing off meat any time soon!

Amy-Kate x