Comment by scosman
3 hours ago
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...
I would hardly draw that conclusion from this paper. It's a meta analysis of a handful of studies with fairly low sample sizes, and it wasn't immediately clear that there was any controlling factor wrt amount consumed. There are also a lot of statements pointing out there was no statistically significant difference for various metrics...
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.