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"Also, as someone who used to be heavily into protein, I don't buy the notion that people need more protein than what they are currently getting. A human body r

• arghwhat 8y ago
  Wait, are there people out there that consume absurd amounts of protein for "health" reasons without doing any exercise? Do they seriously think they have a protein deficiency?
  • maxxxxx 8y ago
    Yes! I have seen this a lot in the US. Some overweight guy/gal will proclaim "I need some protein right now" (no idea on what this determination is based on) or ask me (vegetarian) "where do you get your protein?".
    • ravenstine 8y ago
      I've seen cereal boxes that say "good source of protein", and I feel like the sports bars section has a new brand of protein cookie or brownie every time I walk by it. Like yeah, you'll get diabeetus, but you'll have your protein!
      • eeZah7Ux 8y ago
        *diabetes
        • rtisdale 8y ago
          woosh http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/diabeetus http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/diabeetus
    • kieckerjan 8y ago
      Is it me or are Americans are more protein-minded than Europeans? Americans talking about health and food will often bring up protein in the first sentence, whereas a European (at least here in the Netherlands) more often will talk about fats, antioxidants, fibers. Protein is almost an afterthought. This is pure anecdotal evidence of course.
  • freeflight 8y ago
    I think it's a new fad, tons of this "protein food" is popping up everywhere, even at gas stations. Often marketed in the same way as energy drinks are marketed "You do hard work, you need the proteins." And because nearly everybody thinks of themselves as "doing hard work", even in an office, people buy the stuff like an "all-in-one meal" solution. As somebody who works in medical nutrition I'm kinda sour about this, for years I've been telling people at work that this will be a big thing soon and we'd be in exactly the right place, with exactly the kind of experience, to get in early on this. Like most of my ideas it was deemed too far-fetched and so we did nothing, now the stuff is popping up everywhere, sold by companies with no real background in nutrition, kinda similar to Soylent.
    • vidarh 8y ago
      Part of the problem is indeed that people don't understand that if you work in an office you should almost certainly think of yourself as sedentary even if you spend a huge chunk of your spare time on physical activities, as most people seem to exclude those 8hours + commute when they picture who they are in terms of activity. So people plug in their numbers in online calculators and mark themselves as "active" and get numbers out that often make no sense for their actual activity levels.
    • arghwhat 8y ago
      I always found Soylent funny, as my mom had been consuming a similar local product for the past 20 years. Only superficial difference to Soylent was that this product was intentionally low on calories, but otherwise a full meal replacement. Being an entrepreneur is hard, though. It's a huge gamble, so it's hard to pull people in.
  • corpMaverick 8y ago
    Well protein is more filling and you may actually consume less total calories that way. Just guessing.
    • maxxxxx 8y ago
      Too much protein just makes you fat. There is nothing good about it.
      • Semirhage 8y ago
        Too much of any food makes you fat, it’s right there in the label “too much” after all. The issue is to what degree you can use protein and fiber to suppress appetite, not whether it’s possible to overeat protein (it definitely is).
    • jschwartzi 8y ago
      If you combine it with insoluble and soluble fiber it's very filling. Guess what the macros are for beans and legumes?
    • ravenstine 8y ago
      That's true, but it's also a balancing act since after a certain point the body converts protein into glucose. I remember how, after years of eating high-carb low-fat foods, I discovered how satiating protein-rich meal could be. Well, that and one high in fat. No longer did I feel the constant craving, but at the same time it became easy to go "woohoo!" and eat way more protein than was necessary. I'm sure years from now doctors will ask me what the hell I was doing when they find my kidneys have been wrecked.
  • AFNobody 8y ago
    Just look at alot of paleo diets....they try to replace the carb calories with fat/protein. The reality is most people should be eating large amounts of vegetables (not starchy ones like corn), meat once a day, some fruit, some milk products. If people _really_ wanted to be healthy they'd be eating things like riced broccoli with a vegetarian curry with low fat content for lunch/dinner. (i.e. Vindaloo with beans) For breakfast, have some yogurt, meat, carbs.
    • ravenstine 8y ago
      Paleo is a little overzealous IMO, as I don't think there's really a problem with some dairy, some rice, and fruit here and there. All of the foods you mentioned are better than a typical high carb, high sugar diet. I think the main value of any diet, whether it's paleo, Atkins, South Beach, etc., is that they are low sugar. It's really sugar, in my experience, that is a major contributor to keeping people overweight and hooked on unhealthy food. However, I would encourage you to do some research and test your assumption that people shouldn't eat much fat(which seems to be what you're implying).
      • AFNobody 8y ago
        I wasn't discouraging milk products, sorry. I'm not really a pure "Paleo" type. I get all my fat from whole milk, the one-a-day meat dish, cheese, yogurt, and oil/butter I use to cook stuff with. One curry + vegetable dish, for instance, is like 25% of your expected fat consumption. I eat less fat and sugar than a normal American but I still have a couple ounces of fat with every meal. I probably eat about 80% of the recommended about of fat. To me, the thing most fail to notice is how much fat they add to their cooking.
  • Uberphallus 8y ago
    The advantage of protein is that you can build tissue, and also turn it into glucose/fat. You can't build protein out of carbs or fat though. In case of doubt, more protein is the safe option. But I agree more often than not there's no actual doubt.
    • arghwhat 8y ago
      Well, if you're unable to produce all the protein needed for all ongoing tissue building, you have a deficiency. Anything more than that will just be metabolized. And, well, you're very unlikely to be under that limit.
• perpetualcrayon 8y ago
  The companies who are advertising the protein content are probably doing very little if anything to "bump up" their protein content. It's probably all about marketing what is currently selling things. Kind of like how vegetable oils used to (and maybe they still do) advertise that they're "cholesterol free".
  • vidarh 8y ago
    They're doing some. You can taste the difference very clearly in most cases, and people expect high protein bars etc. to taste like saw dust. I've yet to taste a single "high protein" product that does not taste awful. And I've tried a lot, to find the ones I consider sufficiently inoffensive to supplement my diet with. The thing is they don't need to do much. Adding some whey or casein is cheap and easy enough, and they don't need to add much to supplement the protein content that's already there.
• baxtr 8y ago
  0.31-0.36 grams per lbs as recommended by Valter Longo if you are below the age of 65. that’s probably indeed less that many intake https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/ https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/
• vidarh 8y ago
  Even most people who exercise a lot don't need it. I used to lift heavy weights 5x a week. "Heavy" in this context was 190kg squats, 140kg bench etc., which put me withing striking distance of competitive powerlifting levels for my weight class (for drug tested meets anyway). I used protein supplements on and off, and there was really no noticeable difference in performance. For most who lift a lot it is mostly because once you get to that level, your increases have levelled off so much that if it increases your performance 1%, that's significant. Meanwhile, when I first started, I doubled my lifts in the first month or two, and now, after a year off from lifting I'm adding ~5% a week at the moment (those increases will slow down quickly) So if you really want to reach your very peak, you're willing to put up with a lot of things for 1% here, 0.5% there. While if you just want to stay healthy, you just need to be over a fairly trivially achievable minimum. That said, my one reason for still paying attention to my protein intake, is that if you set a rough calorie goal, and make sure to eat a lot of protein, my experience at least is that it's a lot easier to keep my carb intake down (put another way: try eating 500kcal of lean chicken breast vs. 500kcal of chocolate and see which one keeps you from eating more the longest) - making sure my first meal of the day is protein rich makes it a lot easier for me to stick to diets and that's a much more important effect for me than whatever tiny effect I get on my lifts.
• meko 8y ago
  Speaking as a vegan, veg protein powder is very convenient compared to always having to include alt-meats and protein rich foods (like soy, tvp or vital wheat gluten) in my meals. For breakfast I get 30g to start my day with, it's nice. Iirc, my daily recommended intake is somewhere around 50g, which can occasionally be a challenge to meet daily.