Protein: Are You Getting Enough?

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus.

This is the show that pits facts against everyone's favorite macronutrient, protein.

Is it the miracle that so many people say it is?

If you haven't noticed,

protein is having a moment.

Everyone is obsessed with protein.

Protein.

Protein.

Protein.

These days, it's like you can't have enough protein with influencers out there seemingly competing to cram more and more protein down their gullets.

Let me show you what I eat to get about 140 grams of protein.

I've eaten 200 grams of protein every day for the past six years.

I eat 300 grams of protein every single day.

This is the world's biggest protein shit going down.

600 grams of protein right to the goddamn bike shit.

Meanwhile, companies are making it easier for us to shove more protein into our face.

Forget the humble protein bar.

These days, you can get protein cheese puffs, protein granola, protein brownies, protein mac and cheese.

Seriously, it's called muscle mac.

There's even protein water.

So why are we eating all this protein?

Well, over and over again, people will say that munching down protein has two big benefits.

One is for those who want to lose weight.

Protein is the most satiating macronutrient there is.

It means we stay full for longer.

This is the only way that I was able to stop overeating.

The second reason, stronger and stronger muscles.

You know, slam that protein down right after you hit the gym and watch yourself get jacked.

Honestly, when I was eating 38 eggs a day, I was as strong as I ever was.

Your protein intake is more important than actually going to the gym.

Literally, I'll go to the gym and I'll leave a can of chicken chicken in my glove box and I'll eat it after my lift.

So today on the show, we are asking, does protein live up to all this hype?

We're going to find out, one, does it actually help people lose weight?

Two, how much protein do you really need to build muscle?

And three, do you actually need to guzzle it down straight after the gym?

Should we all have a can of chicken in our glove box?

When it comes to protein, there's a lot of 600 grams of protein right to the goddamn bicep.

But then there's science.

Science versus protein is coming up just after the break.

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Welcome back.

Today on the show, protein.

And there's only one meathead that could tell us all the facts about it.

And that is senior producer Rose Rivla.

Hello.

Hi, Wendy.

Yeah, we're here to talk about protein.

So I guess my first question for you is like, do you care about your protein?

Is it something you are like thinking about trying to get it in every day?

Or like, what's, what's your protein deal?

I'm the exact opposite of those people that we just heard from who are like cramming protein in their face.

Like, I don't, I don't track my protein.

I I don't eat protein balls.

Leave it to you to find a way to bring balls into the protein episode.

But, you know, I don't eat like protein shakes.

I don't, I'm not putting cans of chicken in my car.

But having said that,

I also do wonder, like in the deep crevices of my mind, like, am I eating enough protein?

Because, you know,

I actually would like to be stronger.

I would like to build more muscle.

Yeah, I also want to get stronger.

I want to be able to open a really heavy door if I needed to.

Should the need arise.

And you know, Wendy, protein isn't just about muscles and strength.

It's, in fact, it's important for all kinds of things in our body.

It can't really be overstated how essential protein is.

That's because protein is made up of different amino acids.

And our bodies need those amino acids to make everything run, to make hormones, to make neurotransmitters, to build the basic parts of the body.

So our muscle, but also our skin, our bones, our blood.

Okay, okay.

And what does happen if you don't get enough protein?

Well, we know that for certain groups, it can be really dangerous, like for little kids and for older adults, like over 65.

For everyone in between, you know, like you and me,

basically what we know about this, we seem to know from animal studies where scientists put animals on a low-protein diet and watch what happens to them.

And what they see is that this puts animals at risk of getting sick more often and not recovering as well.

And we also see issues with their skin and hair.

So like there's one experiment where researchers fed pigs too little protein and found that they developed sparse hair and their skin got dry, scaly, and cracked.

The authors describe these pigs as looking, quote, unkempt.

Oh gosh.

All right.

Lest I be unkempt.

I don't want that.

Okay.

So obviously it's important to eat enough protein.

Yes.

Okay.

But what is enough protein?

That is the question.

So exactly.

And that's our first question.

There is, of course, an official recommendation.

It's made by the governments of the US and Canada and other countries.

They all pretty much agree on a number.

And I'm going to tell you where this recommendation came from.

Can I just, also, can I just say, I

love, I love this stuff because you know how these numbers just think like the government just has them and and we think they came down from God because they're these objective numbers.

And so, I have always wondered where do they get these numbers from?

Yeah, okay.

No, I like it.

I like it too.

I like it too.

And the best part is the answer is gross.

So, we're in for a real treat today.

Great.

I'm in.

So, the way they work this out is using something called a nitrogen balance study.

I tried to do the sound effect to

keep it fun.

Did it work?

Nitrogen balance study.

Nitrogen.

Nitrogen balance study i don't know why it's spooky um

is it

well it's weird so like the way this technique works is they basically are looking to track the protein that you eat and the protein byproducts that you excrete because like And that byproduct is nitrogen.

So like to understand this, you have to know that protein is like a real slut for nitrogen.

It is just chock full of nitrogen.

and our body uses up a lot of that.

But if it has more than it can use at that moment, your body will just break it down and then you get rid of the excess nitrogen.

Which brings us to our inevitable caca discussion that we seem to have every episode.

We can't avoid it.

Here we are.

So,

Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada, told me that the way it works is that you basically come into the lab, you are fed a certain diet, and then you give them all your droppings, essentially.

And every time that you go to the bathroom and you pee and you poop and everything else, we collect it.

How is it like a special toilet?

It could be a special toilet or you just pee in a jug.

Yeah.

Got it.

Hand it over.

Exactly.

So when you said they get rid of the excess, yeah, we're not just talking about kaka, right?

Oh, if you're there being really thorough, like they have to collect even more than that.

Yeah, give us everything.

If people cut their nails, then we would collect their nail trimmings.

If you had a menstrual period, we would ask you for everything

that was on

a tampon or a pad.

People are like horrified to listen to these things.

Seems like a diva cup would be a good approach.

You know what?

No lived experience, but it sounds like an awesome way of doing things.

Oh, so

everything

that we're excreting could have little bits of nitrogen in it that like could be this signal that we've eaten enough protein.

That's right.

And that's why people like Stuart that do these studies, they need to collect it all and they need to compare it to what that person ate.

Like they'll have a person eat like a low-protein diet for a while and then do all this collection, then like a medium protein diet, then a higher protein diet.

And they're testing all these different diets in people and seeing like at what point do you kind of hit a balance when it comes to what's going in you and what's coming out of you?

Right, right.

Because any excess, once you start peeing, pooping, perioding out your nitrogen, that's a sign you've eaten too much protein.

Or more than you, more than you can use at that moment.

Okay, so what have they uncovered?

So, the most recent recommendations are they come from a meta-analysis that looked at 19 of these studies all together, including 235 people.

These studies were done all over the world, Thailand, Nigeria, Mexico, US.

And so the authors of that meta-analysis came up with this recommendation, which is: drum roll, please.

Drum roll.

0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

Woo!

What was that?

One more time.

0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

Okay, let's break that down.

So

average person in America, how much protein do they need?

The average woman, according to the CDC, weighs 170 pounds.

That would be 62 grams of protein.

So that's like maybe a cup and a half of chopped up chicken breast.

You could get that in three cups of tofu instead.

Okay.

You could eat a full cup of peanut butter.

That would get you there.

Tacky.

I know.

I don't think he would, but he could.

Okay.

According to the CDC, the average man weighs about 200 pounds.

And so he would need 72 grams.

And that's like a cup and three quarters of chopped up chicken or three and a half cups of tofu.

Okay.

Okay.

This feels somewhat doable,

right?

Yeah.

It's not a crazy amount.

So Wendy, I gave you some homework before

our conversation today.

I asked you to track your protein for about a week.

And you sent me a diary of, well, not really diaries.

What year is this?

You sent me a screen screenshots of the tally of grams of protein per day that you had eaten.

Yes.

Okay.

How did I do?

How did I do?

You are supposed to get 46 grams of protein based on your weight every day.

And so right away, I opened up day one of your

protein diary.

Oh, you got 34 grams.

Ooh.

You did not hit the recommended amount.

Okay.

All right.

That's not good.

That's not good.

And like, I don't want to make you feel even worse.

The thing is that a lot of people say that that recommendation is too low, that you actually should be eating even more protein.

Oh,

they're saying I need to be eating even more than the number that I'm already not hitting.

That's right.

Why do they say that?

Why?

I'm like, protein falls deep in it now.

Well, because the studies that I just told you about, those were done in people who were not like running around, lifting weights, or being particularly active.

And research has found that if you are more active, then you do need to eat more protein to maintain your muscles.

So then the question becomes, if you want to build muscle, how much more protein do you need to eat?

Yeah, right.

Because there are people on TikTok that are saying that you need like hundreds of grams a day, which would be around three times over the government guidelines.

But, you know, as Stewart says, TikTok, it's this cesspool of misinformation.

Yeah, so I wanted to know what's real here.

And the best evidence that I could find on this is a meta-analysis done by Stewart and his team.

And so they pulled together a lot of studies that basically asked this question: if you eat over the government guidelines, does it help you get jacked?

I mean, they don't necessarily use the word jacked, but that's kind of the idea.

Okay.

And these are studies where scientists have people work out doing resistance training and eating a lot of extra protein.

And they look to see how much extra muscle can they put on with all this extra protein.

And what they found.

Drum roll.

Are we doing another drum roll?

How much muscle did they get?

Roughly, on average, a quarter of a pound.

of muscle

which stewart's like put this into context it's not a quarter of a pound on your bicep or your deltoid or your pec or whatever.

It's a quarter pound over your whole body.

So like, if you were looking at somebody and I put two athletes side by side and I said, that one has a quarter pound more,

and people would be like, yeah, I can't even detect that.

Like, that's like a quarter pound burger at McDonald's.

Yeah, and imagine that.

Like, you rub that burger all over, like you put little bits and pieces of the burger, like all over your whole body.

And uh, and another thing Stuart found is that there's a limit that people hit.

So like after a certain amount of protein, they kind of max out.

They stop putting on more muscle.

Uh-huh.

And on average, this limit is at 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of their body weight.

Oh, okay.

So double the guidelines.

You're maxing out.

Yes.

So like, that's interesting, right?

Cause this common wisdom online and elsewhere is that you need to eat something like three times the government guidelines to really bulk up.

Yeah.

But the science that we have suggests that that's really too much.

So I'm thinking about this guy on TikTok that eats 300 grams of protein a day.

And, you know, like, even if LeBron James wanted to go on a bulk using this equation, he wouldn't eat that much protein.

So I talked to Stuart about this.

Yeah, like 300 grams of protein, like that, there's no way that that's necessary.

Like, it's certainly not, it's not, it's not giving you more muscle.

Do you think that this guy is just peeing out most of that protein?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Okay.

So what we've learned is that you probably won't see massive gains from like shoveling your face full of protein.

But like, what's the harm here?

Are there risks to like eating a ton of protein?

Yeah, you know, so we looked into that.

And okay, number one, I don't think there's any long-term science on people who are eating bizarre high amounts of protein, like some of these sort of

kind of goofy people on TikTok.

Generally, though,

we do have

science on high protein diets, some studies on people that have like relatively high protein diets and that are on them for some time or eat a lot of protein.

And, you know, we just like don't see any big red flags here.

We do know that like eating extra protein might be a problem for you.

If you're getting it from red meat or processed meat, that's not good for you.

also if you have any kidney problems that can be a problem you don't want to do a high protein diet if that's the case but otherwise a relatively high protein diet seems kind of safe so if you want to go above this recommendation i think most experts would tell you you're not really risking that much by doing that

All right.

Well, I'm definitely not at risk of that.

And I suppose what I've learned is I do need to be a little more careful with my protein intake.

I mean, Wendy, like, honestly, I did something a little sneaky in order to create some narrative tension

the episode and for my structural purposes.

It's not tense enough.

What did you do?

The first day you did not hit your recommended protein goal, but most days you did.

You hit it or you exceeded it.

Oh.

And there were some days where you even were getting close to like athlete amount of protein.

Oh.

There were several days where you got 82 grams of protein.

Do you want to pull up one of those days and like tell me what

you ate?

Athlete levels.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right.

So Saturday, 82.

So general stuff that I ate in no particular order.

Some sourdough bread, some veggie dumplings, Greek yogurt, granola,

croissant, some beans, some eggs, broccoli, chocolate, a bit of cheese.

Got me there.

That wasn't like you were like forcing it down.

No, no, no.

And that was my athlete levels.

Oh, so I didn't need to be

having power.

Even, even if I like really worked out that day, little old maid doesn't need to be sloping down protein smoothies or whatever.

No.

And despite what we hear about people trying so hard to get their protein in, we know from surveys that the average person in the US and Europe is actually already getting more than the recommended amount of protein.

Oh,

okay.

And yeah, and like even, according to a study from the UK, even vegetarians, even vegans are getting more than enough.

Even vegans.

All right.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So that's how much protein you need to eat on average in a day.

Our next question is, does it matter when you eat it?

Plus, do high-protein diets help you lose weight?

Coming up.

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Welcome back today on the show, Protein.

We've just found out that protein is indeed important for building muscles, although you don't need to slam it down, guzzle it, shove it in your face at every moment of every day.

Our next question, though, ropes.

Does it matter when you eat your protein?

Good question.

A lot of people think so.

They think it's very important that you've, you know, got to have your protein shake right after you go to the gym, right?

This idea is the reason that we have all these videos on social media of people sitting in their cars right after they go to the gym and they're all sweaty and they're drinking their protein shake and talking to the camera.

That's right.

And what's the idea?

I've never thought that deeply about it

yeah i mean so stewart actually talked about this a lot because uh you know he's our he's an academic but he's also a bit of a gym rat he said he would take these protein powders that were made from egg or beef to the gym they clumped they didn't mix well and they tasted awful um and you just at the end of your workout like literally you're like

okay and then plug your nose and just pound it back and uh yeah it was disgusting and the the reason Stuart was forcing himself to eat this is that there's like some really interesting science that suggests it might make sense to get our protein in right away after we exercise.

And that's because we know that after we exercise, our muscles are especially sensitive to protein.

And the best way I can describe it is that exercise makes our cells like hungry for protein and they get especially good at gobbling it up.

It's kind of like your cells are like supercharged when it comes to soaking up the little bits of protein that you've eaten.

Oh, cool.

And there's this idea that you've got this kind of small window of time where the cells are supercharged like that.

And, you know, Stuart says his gym buddies would be like.

Yeah.

Like, like, is it, is it 30 minutes?

Is it 60 minutes?

Yeah.

So how long can you wait?

Yeah.

So, so Stuart looked into this too.

He's really all over this topic, honestly.

And also other scientists have looked at, have studied this.

So one cool way that they've tried to answer this question is that they have people come into the lab, they pump them with an IV full of amino acids, which are, you know, the building blocks of proteins.

Yes.

These amino acids are a special isotope form that scientists can actually track later on in like blood and muscle samples.

Oh, so they can like follow the amino acids.

through your body, kind of.

Yeah.

And then they have these people do a workout and then they take samples after the workout at different time points to see like how fast the amino acids are being incorporated into the muscle.

Oh, so they can see how much the cells are like

sucking it up, sucking it up.

And then when that, when the cells, like that rate of slurping, drop off.

Sucking it up.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it turns out from these studies that our muscles are slurping up these amino acids for not just 30 minutes after our workout or 60 minutes after our workout, but for hours after a workout.

Oh.

And it stays elevated for a surprisingly long time.

Like Stuart told me that after a big weightlifting session.

We've got data to indicate that your muscle is responsive or receptive to protein intakes for

up to 48 hours.

Oh, wow, that's great.

So that gobble phase where the muscles are like particularly open to like slurping up new proteins.

That's now lasting two days you have to eat your chicken in a can.

Should be plenty of time for you to get home and like, I don't know, heat up the chicken and like put it on a piece of bread or something.

And so when Stuart looks back at those days where he would bring that gross protein powder he did not like to the gym and force it down the hatch, you know,

he wouldn't do that now.

Like if you could go back in time and tap yourself on the shoulder while you were chugging down that drink, what would you say?

Don't bother.

I'd say don't, don't waste your money.

Okay, so our last question for today is: can eating a bunch of protein help you lose weight?

This is a big one because this is all over the internet and just seems to be in like popular culture.

And it is a very compelling idea because protein has this reputation for being really filling, like more filling than carbs or fat.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely feel that.

Like, I feel like if I do eat a steak, I'll feel fuller for longer.

But is that just feeling?

Is it true?

So I called up someone who knows.

This is Faythan Makos.

Faithen is a professor at the University of Copenhagen.

And this question was right up his alley.

My heart really beats for understanding metabolism and how our bodies respond to different diets and exercise.

Well,

we sure got ourselves a fabulous nerd here.

My heart is beating for

this scientist.

My heart beats for him too.

And recently, he wrote a review looking at this question of high protein and weight loss.

Right.

And Faith and said, scientists have actually tested this idea about protein making you feel full.

One is that we are giving a test meal to our participants, and then we ask them to rate how full they are.

Yeah, so scientists will bring people into the lab and they'll feed them these different meals.

So it'll be either like really high in carbs or really high in fat or really high in protein.

Okay.

And then they give them the survey.

So there is a scale from 0 to 100, and we just ask them to rate how hungry they are or how saturated they feel.

Results from these studies actually do suggest that protein has a more saturating effect than other nutrients.

Aha!

So compared to carbs and fat, protein does make us feel fuller.

Yeah.

And so we have this not just from these surveys, but there's some physiological evidence.

So when scientists take blood from people after they've eaten higher protein meals, they find higher levels of hormones that help us to feel full.

Oh, that's so cool.

So there's that whole thing, like protein making us feel more full.

That's one reason a lot of people suspect that high-protein diets could lead to weight loss.

But there's another reason, actually, which is that our bodies need a little bit more energy to process protein that we eat.

So that actually means that when we eat high-protein meals, we actually burn some extra calories.

So this all suggests that, like, actually eating a high-protein diet could help you lose weight.

So does it?

When you follow people for like three months, six months, we see that high-protein diets do seem to work better compared to other kinds of diets.

On the whole, they suggest that indeed high-protein diets seem to lead to a little bit greater weight loss than the comparator diets.

Little bit.

What does that mean?

And by a little bit, I mean around a kilo, two pounds.

That's nothing.

Right.

Oh.

After months of being being on a high protein diet?

Yeah.

And, you know, just in general, people don't lose significant amounts of weight and keep the weight off on high protein diets.

So this is just like what we see on other kinds of diets, right?

A couple of studies have followed people for several years on a high-protein diet and found that they ultimately lose on average roughly 10 pounds.

Even when people exercise a lot too.

So

why doesn't it work all that well?

What about the

burning?

We asked Faithen about this.

And, you know, he thinks that like the reason these don't really work in the long term is the same reason that diets in general don't tend to work very well long term.

You know, of course, there's the fact that your body's metabolism adjusts after a while and that makes it harder to keep losing weight.

And then two, we know that diets are just very hard to stick to for many reasons.

We don't just eat because of hunger, right?

We eat for a lot of other reasons.

Emotional reasons, psychological reasons, environmental reasons, right?

You really don't have food in your mind and then you just walk by a bakery and you smell the fresh baked croissants.

Or, you know, the American equivalent of that is you're driving on the you're driving down the street or on the highway and you pass a crispy cream doughnut shop and their light comes on, which means that means the donuts have just come out of the oven and you just you could take the next exit exit and you you get a donut exactly and i can totally identify to that so the fact that high protein diets are not a golden ticket for weight loss might seem very disappointing but faithen has put a good spin on it he says it's actually good news because you know basically these ideas come along about how you need to focus on one of the macronutrients for a diet.

You either need to eat high fat or high protein or you have to eliminate carbs.

Right.

But Faithen says that if you're trying to follow a diet like that and it sucks,

he says like you have all the science behind you to just like let that go.

There is actually

no single macronutrient that is a friend or a foe in that regard.

You can actually pick and choose and find a diet that works for you.

And once you find the diet that fits your personality, your schedule, your daily life, then you will be able to follow that for longer time.

And And this seems to be key for weight loss success.

Wendy, do you feel satiated from the information you've digested today?

Yes, I have.

Here's what I've learned.

Most of us get enough protein in our diet without needing to eat muscle MAC and protein water.

Protein can make you feel fuller.

Lots of cool reasons why it does that.

But it might not make you shed the pounds like you want because diets are complicated.

How did I do?

I think you'd agree.

I'm going to go eat an egg now.

Great.

Maybe I will too.

Because I like eggs.

Because I like eggs too.

Yeah.

Not sponsored by the egg company.

Well, thanks, Wendy.

Thanks, Chris.

Um,

how many citations in this week's episode?

This week there are

86.

86 citations.

Yeah.

And if people want to see them in all of their glory, where should they go?

They're all in our transcript.

You can get there by clicking the link to the transcript, which is in our show notes.

Bye, Rose.

Bye, Wendy.

This episode was produced by Rose Rimmler and Michelle Dang, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, and Meryl Horn.

We're edited by Blive Terrell.

Fact-checking by Erika Akiko-Howard.

Mix and sound design by Bobby Lorde.

Music written by Bobby Lorde and Bumi Hidaka.

Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Professor Brad Schoenfeld and Dr.

Nicholas Bird.

And a special thanks to the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.

Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original.

Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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You can also rate and review us on whatever app you're using.

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I'm Wendy Zuckerman.

Fact to you next time.

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