Comment by nftu
4 hours ago
It's funny that protein everything is taking off just as more data seems to come out that you really don't need as much protein as previously thought, even for vigorous weightlifting (~0.82g/lb of lean body mass seems to be a sufficient number), which isn't really all that hard to get from regular old high protein food. There's no good reason to infuse it in everything. I've been lifting for many years now, and have not noticed a difference from when I used to follow the old 1g/lb of body weight rule.
source: https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein...
Most folks (at least in North America) get no where near the recommended level. It's silly to have protein infused junk food, but a shake or protein powder make it a lot easier to get to the right level than remembering to have 3 hard boiled eggs.
So true, and as a person ages it becomes even more important to keep getting good protein but most don't.
Is 30g of protein from a shake truly equivalent to 30g of protein from 100g of chicken breast?
In 2026, you can't get a straight answer to this question, because anything protein related is SEO-optimized blogspam (thanks Google).
Animal protein is considered to be better than plant protein for lean muscle mass. So it depends if the shake is say whey or soy.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7926405/#sec5-nutri...
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From what I've read, both are good sources of usable protein but animal protein is considered higher quality because it includes more essential micronutrients that are delivered more effectively through the digestion process. Basically it's what your body has evolved to process best. Protein drinks do give quick protein for recovery, etc.
I won't call it common sense, but humans with highly limited technology lived and reproduced to build sophisticated civilizations in almost every biome on the planet.
Our biology is immensely adaptable, so anyone declaring you absolutely need some finely decided very specific thing in order to be "be healthy" should be treated skeptically.
With regards to protein specifically: your body doesn't trade in proteins as inputs, it trades in amino acids which cracked off the protein chains you eat. Everything else is just trying to keep the crowd of gut bacteria from making you feel uncomfortable.
That article doesn't say 0.82g/lb of *lean body mass*:
> There is normally no advantage to consuming more protein than 0.82g/lb (1.8g/kg) of *total bodyweight* per day
And there are other analyses out there recommending closer to 1g/lb of total bodyweight, and this analysis is much more convincing: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/protein-science/
>regular old high protein food
You don't need to eat "high protein food" to get adequate protein.
Let's say an 80 kg moderately active man needs to eat 2600 kcal/day to maintain body weight. According to current guidelines, that man needs about 0.8g/kg of protein per day, or 64 grams per day.
White bread has about 2.6 grams of protein per 77 kcal.
https://tools.myfooddata.com/nutrition-facts/174924/wt1
You have: 2600 kcal / (77 kcal / 2.6 grams)
You want: grams
* 87.792208
/ 0.011390533
That works out to about 88 grams of protein per day eating nothing except white bread.
It's difficult to not get enough protein unless you're eating too few calories overall.
Now look up the amino acid profile of protein in white bread, though.
> According to current guidelines, that man needs about 0.8g/kg of protein per day
O.8g/kg was set as the target to avoid protein deficiency, not as any measure of optimal. Current guidelines are 50-100% higher. Optimal for muscle growth is higher still according to many studies.
If you are trying to hit the bro-science 1g/lb of body weight, that’s a lot of protein and most will likely have trouble hitting it without supplements (or eating mass amounts of meat).
Of course most people proteinmaxxing are not actually growing any muscle but eating protein fortified Doritos makes them feel like they are doing something healthy.
And somehow all the people I've met mentioning figures from papers (be it 1g, 1.4g or whatever) always seem to skip the "lean" part of "lean body mass" part, which is again a decent difference.
That’s because a lot of guidance and studies focus on total body mass and not lean.
Whether that’s the right approach or not is debatable. It’s certainly easier to target 1g/lb of total body mass than .82g/lb of lean body mass. (But certainly it’s easier to eat enough protein to hit .82g/lb lean body mass.)
In the imperial vs metric conversation, the protein debate has my favorite use of units: 1 gram per pound.
It's very mnemonic though and typical of the units for the respective components in the US.
I laugh every time, but also, Americans know their weight in lbs but nutritional panels are in metric. It’s sensible nonsense.
Isn't age also a factor?
What's "regular old high protein food"? Do you mean something like meat every meal? When I recorded my meals I found my protein intake to be quite low (I don't eat meat. I eat fish but not every day.).
Age is a factor and goals are a factor, the 1g/lb number is for optimal gains from bodybuilding not the minimum you need to just be alive or healthy
and yeah people who say that protein is easy to get assume that you're eating meat with every meal
on a vegetarian diet you get it from random sources, bread has a little, cheese has a little, it all adds up to the point where you're basically fine especially if you try to include a main protein/meat replacement in every meal (tofu, seitan, chickpeas) but I'm just not a big person and the amount of food I'd need to eat to reach the optimal grams/lb would be too much without supplementation
The recommended minimum is 1.2 g/kg (0.55g/lb)
As I understand it you need more protein as you get older.
I'm curious how, historically, people have fared, as meat has not been as available as it is now (though this has probably varied considerably over time)
Historically older people lose a lot of muscle mass, which also means they gain weight and lose mobility, some even needing assistance doing basic things like walking or getting out of their chair.
Getting enough protein and exercising is crucial as you age, and it's something a lot of people have historically not understood, since as your metabolism slows, you get less hungry right when your protein needs are increasing.
All the people on GLP-1 drugs are told to make sure they get enough protein. My dad, who is on one of them, was saying his friend (also on one) was saying he felt it was like a cheat code for being able to eat pasta... so I think a lot of people are eating the same old stuff, but just feeling less guilty about it.
They still want to eat Doritos, and now they can buy the protein Doritos and act like they are following the doctor's orders, even though that's not in the spirit of what the doctor was saying. There are also a lot of products that change little to nothing, but still slap a "Protein" label on the front of the box.
We saw similar things with "low carb" versions of everything during the Atkin's craze. Before that we saw everything made into "low fat" in the 80s, which we're still suffering from. It's likely a big reason why we as a society have a need for weight loss drugs in the first place.
0.82g/lb is a lot of protein. That's basically what what bro science was saying for years (2g per kg) and it's not easy to hit if you count quality protein that's bioavailable so I don't know what the point is here.
For averge Joe to hit 0.82g/lb he would need to eat 600g of lean beef every day. Or 33 eggs.
... also Menno Henselmans while he does a lot of great work that outweights everything he posts tons pseudo-scientific where's often clear he just did a basic Google Scholar search. Plus he seems too eaeger to "debunk" but often barely even understands deficiencies of many of the studies he references. A lot of people take his website for some holy grail of "scientific bodybuilding" because he's trying too hard to market it that way and he's been wrong many times and built arguments on foundations he barely understands.
Examine.com for example has different figures and it's a website where studies are reviewed by actual PHDs and graded by their strength not just simple Google Scholar search.
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/
600g of lean beef is how much protein ?
about 150g
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Your priors on what normal amount of protein amounts to is way off of the general public, at least as of 5 years ago.
Wasn't that always bro science ? From what I remember when I looked into it most people couldn't digest more than approximately 1.7g of protein for every kg of body weight. At the very upper end. And that's just digestion - not even actual use - and it had to be spread out across the day.
This is definitely not true. You can live off almost entirely protein and digest it just fine.
I would not want to do that but there’s no practical upper limit on how much protein a healthy person can digest.