We are kind of in this protein craze right now where all these foods have protein added. But is the protein craze worth the hype? Or is it just another nutrition fad?
It’s complicated, nutritionists say. Protein is a necessary part of any balanced diet. But it is also possible to take in too much. And there is no one-size-fits-all answer to how much protein you might need in your own meal plan—the answer depends on variables like your age, gender, and activity level.
What’s more, the science of protein is constantly in flux. If you talk to a hundred authorities, you’re going to get a multiplicity of answers. It’s evolving.
Why do we need protein?
Protein is a really important component of a proper diet. Protein plays a crucial role to our physiology. Protein-rich foods provide amino acids that the body uses to build and repair tissues, power your immune system, and even help regulate your hormones. Protein also helps you build muscle and fills you up at meals.
Protein doesn’t do its work in isolation, though. Nutritionists say that if you get plenty of protein but skimp on other sources of nutrition, your body will simply burn the protein instead of putting it to work doing all those other useful things.
How much protein do you actually need?
Different people need different amounts of protein. The question of just how much protein a person needs in their diet is “one requiring a bit of nuance. The recommended daily allowance is based on your body weight: About 0.36 grams for every pound that you weigh. That’s about 54 grams of protein a day for a 150-pound person. (A quarter-pound hamburger can contain roughly 20 grams of protein.)
It’s not just your weight that determines how much you need. Gender, health status, activity level, and age all play roles too. You have to look at the whole picture of where the person is. Adult men, who often have larger bodies with more muscle mass, typically need roughly 56 grams of protein a day, while women need just 46 grams—unless they’re breastfeeding, in which case the number shoots up to 71 grams a day. (The American Pregnancy Association recommends as much as 100 grams a day for pregnant women.)
Older adults also need additional protein in combination with a good exercise regimen. As one gets older—as you move from your 20s to your 90s—every single year you’re going to lose 3 to 8 percent of your muscle mass. Your muscle mass is going to determine your ability to maintain independent functioning. Some researchers, then, recommend that people over 65 get as much as 83 grams a day.
Athletes, of course, are going to want and need protein more than most people to build and repair muscle tissue that’s key to their careers. It’s all about good nutrition, and it’s about performance.
Is it possible to get too much protein?
Among athletes and other active people, though, there is often a myth that “the more protein, the better, and nothing else is as important. But athletes, like everybody else, have their limits on how much protein is actually useful. Two grams per kilogram of body weight is more than enough. Any more than that is just not going to help them in any way.
In fact, there can be harm in consuming protein. That’s especially true when it comes to supplements that so many athletes are fond of using. They’re packed full of nitrogen, a key component of the amino acids that serve as the building blocks of protein. However, getting too much nitrogen can put a strain on the body.
Whether you get an excess amount of nitrogen from having too much protein from a food—or more likely from a supplement—that nitrogen has to be metabolized, it has to be broken down, and then the excess is excreted out. And it places a big burden on your kidneys when you have an excess amount of nitrogen.”
That can be a particular problem for people with or at risk of diabetes, which already takes a toll on kidney function.
What are the best sources of protein?
Another reason supplements might not be necessary. Protein is in every food group except fruit. Whole foods are generally healthier than packaged products you can buy off the shelf, even if you’re looking to increase your protein intake. If you’re taking it just as a supplement—just protein, or just amino acids—you’re only going to get that nutrient. But nutrients “work together as a team.” It’s important to get protein as part of a broader mix.
The benefits of variety include the types of protein sources. Meat is an obvious source of protein, but thankfully we can find protein in a multitude of plant-based sources, including lentils, tempeh, tofu, and beans.
Variety is the best. Beans are an amazing powerhouse. But not all protein sources are alike. Animal proteins are “complete” in that they contain all nine essential amino acids, while most plant proteins often have some—but not all—of those aminos. Soy and quinoa are complete proteins; beans are incomplete and should be combined with other sources.
That means it can be more work to get the proper amount of protein from a plant-based diet. You really have to make an effort if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, to choose foods and portions to meet those protein goals. It’s not just the types of protein, but the amounts. While that hamburger might have 20 grams of protein, a half-cup of black beans has just seven.
So how do you figure out what you need?
One thing that annoys nutrition experts? All the bad information out there, often comes from influencers with a lot of enthusiasm but not as much of a scientific background. People providing nutrition information often give harmful information, even though they have good intentions.
If you’re looking for guidance on how much protein to get, or how best to shape your overall diet, experts point to reputable online resources like the federal government’s MyPlate website or EatRight from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. And many health insurance plans cover dietician visits. Registered dietitians can really not only help treat disease but also help prevent disease and enhance quality of life just by improving your diet.
Figuring what’s best shouldn’t be too complicated, though. What matters most is that you build a diet that contains a source of healthy fat as well as a wide variety of plants at every meal. Once this is your foundation, you can experiment with the protein content throughout your day. Check in with yourself. How do you feel afterward? How long do you feel full? How does that set the stage for your day? You know you best.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
America Has Entered Late-Stage Protein
This has gone too far.
On a recent Tuesday morning, I was blessed with a miracle in a mini-mart. I had set out to find the protein bar I kept hearing about, only to find a row of empty boxes. But then I spotted the shimmer. Pushed to the back of one carton, gleaming in its gold wrapper, was a single Salted Peanut Butter David Protein Bar. It was mine.
David bars are putty-like rectangles of pure nutritional efficiency: 28 grams of protein stuffed into 150 calories, or roughly the equivalent of eight egg whites cooked without oil. They are booming right now. After all, in this era of protein mania, one must always be optimizing. A Quest bar might get you 20 grams of protein for just under 200 calories, but David—named after Michelangelo’s masterpiece—does more for less. “Humans aren’t perfect,” promises one David tagline, “but David is.” Why, given the possibility of perfection, would you accept eight grams less?
If a food with more protein is better, then it follows that a food with less is worse. After eating my David bar, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit bad about my dinner of brown rice and spicy chickpeas. A cup of Eden Foods organic chickpeas (240 calories) gets you a measly 12 grams. Now that I was living in the world of David, I was newly ambivalent about eating anything that wasn’t chunks of unadulterated protein. I am fueling, I thought, shoving cubes of baked tofu into my mouth. Did you know that green peas have an unusual amount of protein for a vegetable? With unsettling frequency, I began to add frozen peas to my dinners. (They’re not great on cacio e pepe, it turns out.)
I have become quietly obsessed with this one single macronutrient. How could I not be? Everything is protein now: There are protein chips and protein ice creams and cinnamon protein Cheerios. Lemonade is protein, and so is water. Last month, Chipotle introduced a “high protein cup” consisting of four ounces of cubed chicken. Melanie Masarin, the founder and CEO of Ghia, a nonalcoholic-drink brand, recently told me that an investor asked her whether Ghia has plans for a high-protein aperitif. No, but the investor’s logic was obvious: Healthy people, the kind who tend to watch their drinking, only want one thing. This week, the federal government released its latest set of dietary guidelines—including a newly inverted food pyramid. At the top is protein.
In some ways, protein is just the latest all-consuming nutritional fixation. For decades, the goal was to avoid fat, which meant that pretzels were good and peanut butter was bad and fat-free Snackwell’s devil’s-food cookie cakes were a cultural phenomenon. Then Americans rediscovered fat and villainized carbs. But protein is different. Whatever your dreams are, protein seems to be the answer. It supports muscle gain, for those trying to bulk up, but it’s also satiating, which means people trying to lose weight are also advised to eat more protein. It has the power to make you bigger and more jacked, but also smaller and more delicate. People on GLP-1s are supposed to be especially mindful of their protein intake, to prevent muscle loss on extremely low-calorie diets, but so are weight lifters.
It is a nutritional philosophy that encourages not restriction but abundance: as much protein as possible, all the time. You can have your cake and eat it too (as long as it is made with “protein flour”). In a world where the very act of eating feels fraught, layered with a lifetime of rules and fads and judgments about what food is and is not “good,” protein offers absolution: You don’t have to feel bad about this. It has so many grams! What a beautifully straightforward recommendation: Eat more of this one thing that happens to be everywhere, and that frequently tastes good.
The low rattle of protein mania—the protein matchas and protein Pop-Tarts and protein seasonings to sprinkle on your protein chicken cubes—can be as maddening as it is inescapable. Everybody knows that you are supposed to eat a varied diet with many different types of foods that provide many different nutrients. But only protein is endowed with a special kind of redemptive power. Nobody is pretending that tortilla chips are a cornerstone of a balanced diet, but if they’re protein tortilla chips (7 grams), well, then maybe they’re at least fine. This is fantastic news if your goal is to enjoy tortilla chips, but it does have a tendency to recast all food that has not been protein-ified—either by nature or by the addition of whey-protein isolate—as a minor failure. It is depressing to look at a pile of roasted vegetables, arranged elegantly over couscous, and think: I will try harder tomorrow. I know, because I do it.
Protein is supposed to allow people to realize their untapped potential—to make us stronger and sharper. I suspect, though, that I would be stronger and sharper if I could stop ambiently thinking about my protein intake. That the world is now covered in a protein-infused haze provides constant reminders that I am falling short. Lots of protein evangelists will tell you that this is how cavemen ate, and therefore it is good. I think the best part of being a caveman would be not worrying about protein.
As nutritional trends go, there are worse obsessions than protein. Even if there is still significant debate about how much protein one needs, you are unlikely to send yourself into kidney failure because you protein-maxxed too hard. But the fanatical focus on protein as the true answer, the universal key to transforming the body you have into the one you want—7 grams, 28 grams, 11 grams, a chicken smoothie—feels eerily familiar. We counted calories, grams of fat, carbohydrates, trying to distill the messy science of nutrition into one single quantitative metric. Protein, for all its many virtues, is just another thing to count.