I've been investigating recommended protein intake recently and counting calories to lose some weight, and it's amazing how little protein most people get compared to what is now recommended.
Here's examine.com on the recommended amounts: https://examine.com/nutrition/how-much-protein-do-you-need/. I'm of fairly healthy weight, active and have been losing some weight, so I should be getting 2.2-3.3 g/kg according to that. I have two protein shakes a day and build every meal around as much protein as possible while still having it resemble normal food, and I'm achieving an average of about 2.2g/kg, i.e. just at the lower end of where I should be. Particularly when trying to lose weight, getting the amount of protein required in the calories allowed is really tough. It's easier when maintaining weight or trying to gain weight since the protein requirements are similar but you have more calories to play with.
I'm 46, so soon I'll be in the 50+ group which the examine.com article says is when you start needing more protein in a single dose. For me that's about 36g per meal - about 6 eggs, for example.
Counting calories is a bit of a pain to get started with, but isn't too bad once you're going since most people tend to repeat meals frequently. But it's been really illuminating - I thought I ate well previously, but I was a long way from where I needed to be. It's pretty geeky but has been really interesting. I've realised that it's essentially impossible to eat the way I should do eating food I don't prepare myself - nothing has anywhere near enough protein. Data driven health FTW.
The German society for nutrition recommends 0.8g of protein per kg of body weight for normal weighted, adult people. I cannot imagine that three or four times that amount would be required for a healthy life even if your are more physically active than the average. Also, please do not forget that vegetables contain some protein too.
The examine.com article discusses this - 0.8g is also the RDA in the US. The RDA is considered a bare minimum:
This is considered to be the minimal amount of protein a healthy adult must consume daily to prevent muscle wasting when total caloric intake is sufficient.
According to recent studies, however, the RDA for protein may not be sufficient for healthy young men, older men, or older women. These studies point to 1.2 g/kg as the minimum intake before the body starts downregulating important non-essential processes, from immune function to muscle protein synthesis. Even a reanalysis of the data used to establish the RDA suggests the minimum intake should be at least 1.0 g/kg.
They cite a study there where they shut subjects in a metabolic ward for 8 weeks and fed them a 40% caloric surplus. Those subjects eating near the RDA for protein lost muscle mass, i.e. it's not even sufficient to maintain lean weight when overeating.
> There is normally no advantage to consuming more than 0.82g/lb (1.8g/kg) of protein per day to preserve or build muscle for natural trainees. This already includes a mark-up, since most research finds no more benefits after 0.64g/lb.
Yeah, 3.3g/kg is really high, and I don't see how you could get there without living on shakes. From that examine.com article:
Eating more than 2.6 g/kg (1.18 g/lb) is probably not going to lead to greater muscle gains, but it can minimize fat gains when “bulking” — i.e., when eating above maintenance in order to gain (muscle) weight.
IMO while protein is needed for muscle building, recommendations like 3.3g/kg (I've even seen recommendations of 4.4g/kg) come from a "more is always better" mentality, along with a pop culture obsession with protein.
Personally, a simple flat 100g seems both a reasonable & attainable goal for most regular people building muscle without requiring exceptional diets (here I fall back on naturalism- I cannot believe that exceptional diets are required to get fit). You can easily hit that number with 1/4-1/3lb of meat a day plus whole grains and vegetables.
Since higher protein intakes seem to have no negative effects in healthy people, one may want to err toward the higher amounts.
I haven't seen anything over 3.3g/kg recommended anywhere, and most people seem to recommend 1.4-2g/kg as a good baseline amount. The ISSN recommends this (see here: http://stevenlow.org/issn-position-statements-protein-and-ex...), however the ISSN does recommend higher amounts when losing weight:
Higher protein intakes (2.3–3.1 g/kg/d) may be needed to maximize the retention of lean body mass in resistance-trained subjects during hypocaloric periods.
Of course, none of this is required to get fit - you don't need to do the optimal thing to get a basic result. But you'll definitely gain lean mass faster if you do follow this. Those recommendations for weight gain (say 2g/kg with a caloric surplus) is easy to achieve with no supplementation and normal food, at least for an omnivore - vegans may have to work harder to get there.
IIRC, for healthy kidneys this amount should not be an issue, slightly more per lb shouldn't be either.
I'm not sure what weight training communities you refer to, but in bodybuilding and strength circles amounts that high and higher aren't often considered "way overkill".
Anywhere between 0.75-1.25g/lb is where I shoot for, depending on my goals. But I have gone higher than 2g/lb for extended periods of time in the past
You are correct. The whole “beware of protein” narrative is completely wrong-headed. People here would likely be astounded by how much protein strength athletes eat with nothing but positive health effects.
It's really more like a balance narrative. Hit reasonable ratios of protein, fats, and carbs.
High protein, low fat, low carb, low protein, high carb, high fat- collectively we've tried them all through one fad or another.
Currently IMO we're in a blowback period where we are seeing high carb is not panning out and many people are still afraid of fat, so protein is the next savior in line.
Might be worth getting a urine sample and check how much protein there is. More than likely you are urinating most of that protein out through out the day.
That being said, since fecal losses of protein and short-chain peptides tend to smell incredibly bad one can use a 'sniff-test' after bowel movements to assess if protein is being lost in the feces and thus not taken up by either the intestines or the muscle.
For a while I really tried to eat as much protein as I could, to see whether I could make the higher end of the recommendations. After a certain point, I could immediately tell I was failing the sniff test, and so could my family :-). At the amount I'm eating, I'm not.
>Select ingredients among those discussed in this book that your ancestors would have eaten.
Oh, so its one of those "we aren't willing to drive knowledge and health forward like other scientific resources online unless we shill you a product" sites. Sprinkle in a good dose of holistic wackadoodle and bam trendy product pitch.
Also this fun little excerpt..
>Although clear links have not been proved yet, it is possible that consumption of the wrong foods based on ancestry could be associated with many autoimmune disorders, including Crohn’s disease, colitis, and type 1 diabetes.
Here's examine.com on the recommended amounts: https://examine.com/nutrition/how-much-protein-do-you-need/. I'm of fairly healthy weight, active and have been losing some weight, so I should be getting 2.2-3.3 g/kg according to that. I have two protein shakes a day and build every meal around as much protein as possible while still having it resemble normal food, and I'm achieving an average of about 2.2g/kg, i.e. just at the lower end of where I should be. Particularly when trying to lose weight, getting the amount of protein required in the calories allowed is really tough. It's easier when maintaining weight or trying to gain weight since the protein requirements are similar but you have more calories to play with.
I'm 46, so soon I'll be in the 50+ group which the examine.com article says is when you start needing more protein in a single dose. For me that's about 36g per meal - about 6 eggs, for example.
Counting calories is a bit of a pain to get started with, but isn't too bad once you're going since most people tend to repeat meals frequently. But it's been really illuminating - I thought I ate well previously, but I was a long way from where I needed to be. It's pretty geeky but has been really interesting. I've realised that it's essentially impossible to eat the way I should do eating food I don't prepare myself - nothing has anywhere near enough protein. Data driven health FTW.