First, let’s talk about complete proteins. Proteins are made out of amino acids. You can think of it like legos. When you eat proteins, your body breaks it down into individual legos again, giving you the building blocks to do whatever you need(okay this is a major simplification don’t get mad at me science people).

But just like how you can’t make a lego car without lego wheels, so, too, does your body need all of the essential amino acids to keep building muscle and giving you energy! While there are 20 amino acids, there’s 9 that our body can’t make. And thing is...

Wheat makes great ramen. Wheat does not make complete protein.

Specifically, wheat is low in L-lysine, one of the essential amino acids your body can't make itself. So we needed something high in lysine to fill that gap.

We tested everything: Amaranth, buckwheat, various legume powders, protein isolates. All things that, if you go on nutrition blogs, say are "high in lysine."

The results?

• Amaranth: Like eating noodles made of sand
• Buckwheat: Actually worked okay, but a little gritty, and reduces the chew we worked so hard on
• Plant protein*: Chalky, grassy, gritty-- all the worst parts combined. Except, we did end up using a certain type of pea protein in our Pro+, but that’s a story for another day
• Soybean Flour: Allergen, also the fats shorten gluten strands(ever wonder why butter/margarine is called ‘shortening’?)

We tested a LOT of other things too... Then we found quinoa.

Quinoa is a unique plant. It’s one of the very few plant proteins in the world that’s a complete protein on its own, containing all the essential amino acids, including plenty of lysine. But here's what nobody talks about: quinoa has its own structural matrix that actually works with wheat.

Better yet, the texture of quinoa flour is very similar to regular wheat flour, so there weren’t any issues in blending it, or grittiness!

When you combine wheat and quinoa proteins, the amino acid profile becomes more bioavailable than either protein alone. It's called protein complementation - the amino acids work together to improve absorption and utilization.

Most alternative flours fight against gluten formation. Quinoa cooperates. Its proteins complement wheat's proteins instead of competing with them.

So Quinoa has:

All 9 essential amino acids ✓
High lysine content (fixes wheat's gap) ✓
Good Fiber source ✓
Doesn’t make noodles gritty ✓

But it did have one problem... Something called saponins.

They’re the bitter, herbal flavor in quinoa that a lot of people don’t like. Not great for noodles. But turns out... they’re also more heat sensitive... so if you pre-cook the flour a bit, through heat treating, then it gets rid of that flavor!

...mostly, anyway. The other problem with heat treating is that it, well, cooks the quinoa proteins, making them not work as well to help bind the noodle together. Still, it worked well enough, so we started our first versions with these.

But then, we found something: Canada.

See, there’s a lot of different kinds of quinoa out there. We’d primarily been using a south american varietal, well known for its nutty flavor, umami, but also containing a stronger herbal flavor. Because we wanted a more neutral flavor in our noodle, this actually went against what we wanted, but it was what we’d been recommended, as it was the “best quality.”

Turns out... quality is subjective.

Canada has its own quinoa growing, and is generally considered not as good in quality. See, reason for that is... it’s more neutral tasting... a little starchier... and the color is light...

...

Or, in other words, everything we were looking for.

But the story’s not quite done there. Even with quinoa's lysine content, we added extra L-lysine to fill out the gaps in amino acid profiles that wheat was lacking in to make extra sure the amino acid profile was truly complete. No gaps, no "close enough."

Bonus: Quinoa also brings a bunch of fiber!

Most brands add quinoa because it sounds healthy. We add quinoa because it makes sense for our noodle design.Except... the high protein actually caused a completely different problem. One that we had to rely on corn fiber to solve.