Optimal Protein

Life’s Changing Requirements

Before diving into the main topic of this article, emphasis should be put on the understanding that “age” and “chronological age” are only very loosely related. From individual to individual, the rate of aging varies dramatically, as much as a factor of two. One person at 120 years old can be the same age as someone sixty years old. When I refer to aging, I’m not referring to the passing of years, but rather deterioration / loss of function.

The fuel distribution in skeletal muscle under normal healthy conditions should be about 80% fatty acids with 20% carbohydrates. However our typical diet is flipped and provides more carbohydrates than fat. This creates metabolic stress on skeletal muscle.

If the typical person loses 4% lean mass per decade, we lose 100 calories of resting energy expenditure per decade. Thus going from age 30 to age 70 you have lost about 400 calories per day of resting energy expenditure. You must alter your diet or to put it simply you will gain weight.

Once again, I must emphasize that these comments and age references are for the typical person.

A young person can experience rapid muscle loss and bounce back rapidly rebuilding. Muscle loss, due to something that renders someone very sedentary (such as an injury or illness), for an older person can be far more serious as regaining the muscle mass is more difficult.

A 25-year-old will have a fairly robust stimulation of muscle protein synthesis with 15 grams of protein, where to get the same effect in a 65-year-old will require over 30 grams of protein. So, a person typically wants to consume fewer calories and yet needs more protein as they age.

It’s debatable whether humans need to consume any carbohydrates at all, but the RDA is 130 grams per day, whereas the typical person is consuming over 300 grams a day of carbohydrates. We could virtually eliminate diabetes by cutting carbohydrate intake to only one third of typical!

The RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. Thus the “standard” 70 kg male (154 lbs) should be consuming a minimum of 56 grams of protein per day. Emphasis: this is a minimum. The RDA is based off a 25 year old and purely looking at nitrogen balance. It fails to factor in aging and individual amino acid needs.

A young person can be fairly healthy (aka no obvious health issues) consuming only the RDA levels of protein, but an older person needs twice that to maintain the same level of health.

A sixty year old needs twice the amount of methionine and cysteine compared to a twenty five year old to meet their needs for maintaining glutathione levels. For someone with gut health issues more threonine is needed.

Plant protein sources have less essential amino acid content (about 33% vs 50%) compared to animal sources of protein. Plant proteins are also typically bound to fiber and thus less is absorbed. If plants are your primary source of protein then you should consider getting double the amount of protein as you would from animal sources. For example when you look at wheat protein content in something like bread, you are absorbing no more than 50% of that protein.

Protein needs are a U shaped curve. Sedentary people need a fairly high amount of protein, moderately active people have very efficient metabolism and need less protein, then as you push to higher amounts of physical activity, then protein needs increase again.

Protein utilization plateaus out at about 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. There is virtually no benefit from consuming more than that. For a very simple target number, a person should aim to consume about 100 grams of protein (expected to be a mix of animal and plant sources) per day.

If you are looking for results to confirm the benefit of increased protein intake, keep in mind that this takes time, at least four months (16 weeks) should be allowed to observe a difference. If you increase from 1 gram per kilogram to 1.5 grams per kilogram but only observe for ten weeks you probably won’t notice the difference, your study is too short.

Myth debunked: high protein intake does not cause kidney damage (it’s actually the opposite)

Consuming enough protein isn’t easy, consider Donald Layman’s statement:

“Yeah, I'm a protein expert as most people would agree and I find it really challenging to keep my intake at 120 grams per day, you know? It's a real challenge. And I'm a world expert in where to get protein.”

Mr. Layman recommends trying to get 35 to 40 grams of protein for breakfast. Two eggs with a quarter pound of meat should accomplish this.

There is absolutely zero nutritional requirement for grains in a human diet.