You’re being lied to about protein

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. If you’ve spent any time on the internet over the last several years, you may have noticed the profusion of two closely linked trends — one very positive, the other its warped refraction. Lots of Americans have taken up weightlifting, and partly as a result, protein maximalism has become the macronutrient fad du jour, like the low-fat diets of the 1980s and low-carb in the early 2000s. With the encouragement of fitness YouTubers, social media influencers, and even some opportunistic dietitians, the people are pouring “ultra-filtered” high-protein milk over their protein cereal, dumping protein powder into homemade cookie dough, and rediscovering their taste for meat, not that it had ever really been forgotten. Many of us, the fitfluencers claim, aren’t getting enough protein, the macronutrient that’s essential to building muscle and pretty much anything else structural in the body. To get stronger, they say, you need to eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day (that would be 200 grams for the average American man, who weighs about 200 pounds), or maybe even more. If you’re a woman, especially an older one, be sure to consume massive servings of protein after each workout, they insist. And if you’d prefer to avoid animal products for ethical reasons, too bad, because you definitely, they warn, shouldn’t get all your protein from plants. For a long time, most of the nutrition advice taken as gospel in the online weightlifting world confused me because it was entirely at odds with my own experience. Although my trajectory can only speak for me, and shouldn’t be interpreted as nutrition advice for anyone else, it bears mentioning that I can appreciate the importance of protein better than most: I’m highly active, both running and lifting weights. I’ve built plenty of muscle without tracking my protein intake, without ever consuming protein powder, and without eating any animal protein. (Of course, you should check with your own doctors before starting any new health or diet regimen.) One random, representative day last month, I counted up my protein and found I’d eaten about 90 grams — certainly less than the widely repeated “golden rule” recommending one gram per pound of body weight, but more than enough for my needs. If you learn about strength training from internet gurus, though, you’d be forgiven for thinking that lifting weights is a waste of time unless you’re also crushing implausible volumes of protein. It’s a myth that’s flat-out “not true,” Stuart Phillips, a professor in the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada, and one of the world’s foremost experts on protein for muscle building, told me. “It’s baloney,” he said. “But there’s a generation, particularly young men, and now an increasing number of young women, who are absolutely brainwashed by what they hear online.” I’ll get to what a saner, more evidence-based protein goal would look like in a moment. But first, I hear you asking, what’s the harm in aiming for a nice round number for protein (like one gram per pound of weight), just to be extra safe? For one thing, Phillips pointed out, extreme protein intake recommendations can make exercise feel unattainable. If you think you have to force yourself to wolf down 200 grams to make any progress, why bother? It also promotes needless rigidity and reduces flexibility in our diets. An arguably greater concern is that protein mania pushes people to eat more animal products. While it’s not very hard to get enough plant-based protein to maximize muscle growth (I actually get more protein than the average American woman, according to CDC data, without consuming any animal products) it does get harder to rely on plants when protein maximization becomes an end in itself. Plus, many people simply hear “eat more protein” as “eat meat.” And the meat industry (along with eggs and dairy) is, to put it plainly, a grievous moral tragedy that we should avoid encouraging people to give more money to without reason. It’s also wrecking the environment, and from a public health perspective, most Americans (yes, even those who work out) would benefit from eating less of it and more fiber-rich plant-based proteins. Against this context, there is something downright diabolical about liftfluencers brain-poisoning their followers into thinking that beans are a bad source of protein. Nutrition is a topic liable to scramble even the most rational minds. There are so many variables you could optimize and over-optimize for. It’s also very hard to study, because researchers need to look at associations between foods and health outcomes over entire lifetimes and untangle correlation from causation. It helps to keep in mind that two things can be true at once: Understanding your protein needs undoubtedly matters for physically active people, but sometimes it’s best not to overthink it. Protein deficiency is vanishingly rare in the developed world, and you’re likely already getting enough to be able to gain strength. You don’t have to run on egg whites and chicken breast to be a swole hottie. How much protein do you need? Be cautious about both extremely low and extremely high recommendations. If you want to get into any sort of exercise, first, throw out the one gram of protein per pound of body weight rule, because it is fake. It’s not entirely clear why that bit of bro science has caught on, though it’s possible that it stems from a fatal misreading of the scientific literature. In any case, Phillips explained, for gaining muscle, the evidence indicates that the benefits of eating more protein top out at around 0.73 grams per pound of body weight per day (or 1.6 grams per kilogram, as it’s notated in scientific papers, but for clarity’s sake, I’ll stick to grams per pound). Above that level, he said, “the net gain is so small that for most normal people, you’re not going to find” much difference. Nor do you have to fuss about hitting exactly 0.73 grams per pound of body weight, or creating a large buffer above it. It’s an upper bound beyond which benefits tend to plateau, not a minimum. Eat below that level, and you’ll still build muscle and see plenty of benefits from weightlifting because each incremental increase in protein only yields small gains in strength. Just doing the exercise is more important for gaining strength than piling on more protein. Phillips recommends that weightlifters aim for between 0.54 and 0.73 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. Advanced lifters who have been training for years don’t necessarily need more. For a 170-pound woman (about the national average), that range comes out to between 92 and 124 grams. Compared to the one-gram-per-pound benchmark, which would tell her to eat at least 170 grams, that’s a difference of one to three servings of chicken breast, or two to three cups of plain Greek yogurt (cows suffer a lot for that!). What about if, like many Americans, you’re not very physically active? What’s the lower bound for protein intake? The long-accepted guideline, or recommended dietary allowance (RDA), for adults, is at least 0.36 grams per pound of body weight, or about 61 grams for a 170-pound person. Beyond that, no one really knows what the ideal level of protein consumption is, and Phillips emphasizes that the RDA should only be considered a minimum for preventing deficiency rather than an optimum (it should be noted, though, that the RDA is designed with some slack, so falling slightly below it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically become deficient). Some experts, including Phillips, believe protein intake guidelines should be higher. According to this school of thought, sedentary adults should eat closer to 0.45 grams of protein per pound of weight (25 percent more than the RDA), and older adults, who are more prone to muscle loss and impaired nutrient absorption, should get 0.54 grams per pound. Research on the benefits of higher protein intakes in older adults is mixed, however, as nutrition PhD Alice Callahan recently reported in the New York Times. Seniors have other, related health complications, like not eating enough overall, not getting physical activity, and social isolation. Muscle loss in older adults is “mostly because they’re sedentary,” Stanford nutrition professor Christopher Gardner told me. “To say you could take this depressed, lonely person with lousy teeth and give them a protein powder, that sarcopenia [muscle loss] would go away is ridiculous.” Again, actually using your muscles is far and away the most effective way to keep and grow them. One surprising upshot of all this is that ideal protein intakes for sedentary people and active people may not be as far apart as you might think. Average people might benefit from exceeding the RDA for protein somewhat, while weightlifters, contrary to the meathead stereotype, don’t need a massive amount more. Plant-based protein is great for you and great for the gainz For many, many years, I’ve been getting the most boring question there is in plant-based nutrition: Where do you get your protein? --- How to get 90 grams of protein from plants There are infinite ways to get lots of protein on a plant-based diet. Here’s one way I did it: Breakfast: Oats (1/4 cup dry steel-cut, but regular rolled oats are totally fine) with 3/4 cup soy milk, walnuts, ground flaxseed, and a banana. 16 grams protein, 488 calories Lunch: Lentil soup (1/4 cup dry red lentils) with veggies, a tortilla, and an apple with 1/4 cup peanut butter. 32 grams protein, 776 calories Snack: A plum and a toasted tortilla with 2 tablespoons hummus. 5 grams protein, 200 calories Dinner: Braised tofu veggie stir-fry served with brown rice (about 1/3 cup dry). (Recipe here; I used both extra firm and super firm tofu and had half a block of tofu per serving. I also made some adaptations like adding bok choy and baking the tofu instead of frying it.) 38 grams protein, 757 calories Total: 91 grams protein, 2,221 calories (like I said, I’m an active girlie!) Virtually all whole foods have protein — not just those we think of as protein sources. But legumes are the most protein-dense plant foods, and I often have them at every meal of the day — soy milk in the morning and beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh, or mock meats at lunch and dinner. One last tip: If you’re going plant-based, supplementing vitamin B12 is a must because it isn’t found in modern plant-based diets. It may also be a good idea if you’re reducing animal products — talk to your doctor. --- It’s boring because vegans and vegetarians have no problem meeting their protein needs. But in the field of sports nutrition, where demands on the body are especially great, it’s taken some time for researchers to overcome the cultural bias against plant-based protein. “Everything we have done where we’ve compared plant to animal [protein], we find that the difference falls within the margin of error,” according to Phillips, who says he’s changed his mind about plant-based proteins over the years, after seeing evidence trickle in that it’s just as good for muscle gain as animal protein. Just a few weeks ago, a beef industry-funded randomized control trial from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found no difference in muscle growth between lifters on vegan and omnivorous diets (participants in that study, by the way, ate 0.5 to 0.54 grams of protein per pound of body weight daily). If you’re looking to reduce or eliminate animal products, which is something I’d encourage anyone to try to do, there are a few differences to keep in mind about plant protein. First, while some in the fitness space have perpetuated the idea that on a plant-based diet it’s necessary to combine different foods with complementary amino acids at each meal to get “complete” proteins, this is widely recognized as untrue, Gardner said. Instead, eating a variety of foods — legumes, grains, nuts, vegetables — throughout the day will deliver enough of each amino acid. (It’s also not true that plant proteins lack certain amino acids, he said. Rather, all amino acids are present in all plant foods, but some in smaller quantities.) Second, our bodies absorb somewhat less of the protein from whole plant foods than from animal foods, which is something to be aware of, but it’s not that much less — certainly not enough to make or break a workout routine. The absorption gap attenuates when eating plant foods that have undergone processing — like tofu, tempeh, soy milk, seitan, an Impossible burger, or plant-based protein powder — compared to whole beans and legumes. And although many plant protein sources, unlike meat, come packaged with carbs and fiber and therefore have less protein as a share of calories than animal foods, many vegans (myself included) would tell you that with some basic nutritional knowledge, they find it to be a piece of cake to consistently exceed the RDA for protein, and often double it, on plant foods alone. [Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOP-MbHkZLk] In recent years, Gardner told me, nutrition science’s messaging has shifted away from an emphasis on specific nutrients (“protein good” or “fat bad”) and toward a focus on foods and dietary patterns. And one clear consensus in the field is that diets high in whole plant foods, including fiber- and protein-dense plants like beans, are very, very good for us, reducing our risk of diet-related chronic diseases and early death. Isn’t that, after all, the whole point of exercise? Very few of us are going to become Olympians; far more people want to preserve our strength and vitality for our brief time on Earth. I can think of many better things to worry about than chasing rapidly diminishing returns in muscle growth. And we mere mortals, I’d argue, should count ourselves incredibly lucky that caring for our health, and caring for our planet and fellow animals, don’t need to pull in opposite directions.

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You’re being lied to about protein