A while back I spent a decent amount of time trawling through literature in an attempt to figure out the ground truth for protein intake.
My takeaways were:
- People often conflate "body mass" with "lean body mass". If you have a ton of extra fat on you that does not imply you need to eat more protein to retain/grow muscle mass. Lean muscle mass is the right calculation. For an average individual, this is ~15-20% reduction from body mass.
- Oddly, I saw people often conflating "kg" and "lb". 1kg = 2.2lb.
- There are numerous studies which reference ~1.5g per 1kg as a floor and north of ~2.0g protein as still providing benefit without concern for energy. A quick Google yields:
- When you crunch the numbers, it's really not that challenging to achieve. I'm a 195lb male, average/good fitness level, assume 18% body fat. So, lean mass of ~160lb / ~72.5kg resulting in 145g protein as an upper threshold.
I could reduce the amount of chicken I eat by over half, and skip adding chocolate whey to my yogurt, and still be above the maximum suggested guidelines. I could eliminate eating chicken and whey and still be above the minimum suggested guidelines.
Conversely, if I just ate chicken and whey with Greek yogurt, I would still be above the minimum suggested guidelines without eating a single bit of protein in any of my other foods.
Also, it's possible to swap out the chicken with Tofu/Tempeh if you're vegetarian. Firm Tofu is 17g/protein per 100g, Tempeh is 19g, chicken breast is 31g.
One thing glossed over regularly is that grams of protein is misleading, since a human has essential amino acids requirements that may be absent in some protein sources. I think the slang term for getting all the required amino acids is a "complete protein", which might be a blend of more than one "protein" source, with lentils and certain grains a famous example.
Point is that your chart is very cool, but has a single column tracking grams of protein, and that's too low resolution of information to know if those grams themselves are adequate in represented amino acids.
you could go over recommended grams of protein and be missing types of protein constituents in so doing.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a food that's completely missing a particular amino acid.
Most "incomplete sources of protein" still will get you what you need if you eat enough of it (in practical amounts, not impractical technically true amounts).
That said, if you're eating a sufficiently diverse diet, this shouldn't be a problem. And if you're going out of your way to get sufficient protein, tracking what you eat, etc., this is unlikely to be a problem.
Particularly if you're eating more than enough protein by any measure, lacking particular amino acids is a non-issue.
> That said, if you're eating a sufficiently diverse diet, this shouldn't be a problem.
that's the key...with a diverse diet in adequate quantity.
a counterexample would be a diet of blueberries and a huge bucket of lysine, you'd be starving for other essential amino acids, because their "essential" adjective means our livers can not synthesize them...in this contrived example from blueberries and lysine.
> - When you crunch the numbers, it's really not that challenging to achieve.
I slightly disagree. It is kind of hard to achieve, especially if you're trying to control calories as well (and especially if you're trying to cut).
You're effectively swapping out a lot of otherwise-standard, tasty foods (usually carbs) for lots of food that is more expensive, often harder to come by, and often harder to make taste good on its own. It is much easier (and cheaper!) to eat a "normal" diet.
My takeaways were:
- People often conflate "body mass" with "lean body mass". If you have a ton of extra fat on you that does not imply you need to eat more protein to retain/grow muscle mass. Lean muscle mass is the right calculation. For an average individual, this is ~15-20% reduction from body mass.
- Oddly, I saw people often conflating "kg" and "lb". 1kg = 2.2lb.
- There are numerous studies which reference ~1.5g per 1kg as a floor and north of ~2.0g protein as still providing benefit without concern for energy. A quick Google yields:
- When you crunch the numbers, it's really not that challenging to achieve. I'm a 195lb male, average/good fitness level, assume 18% body fat. So, lean mass of ~160lb / ~72.5kg resulting in 145g protein as an upper threshold.Here's what I ate yesterday: https://i.imgur.com/fVgtvnl.png
I could reduce the amount of chicken I eat by over half, and skip adding chocolate whey to my yogurt, and still be above the maximum suggested guidelines. I could eliminate eating chicken and whey and still be above the minimum suggested guidelines.
Conversely, if I just ate chicken and whey with Greek yogurt, I would still be above the minimum suggested guidelines without eating a single bit of protein in any of my other foods.
Also, it's possible to swap out the chicken with Tofu/Tempeh if you're vegetarian. Firm Tofu is 17g/protein per 100g, Tempeh is 19g, chicken breast is 31g.