Hi Sam.
If you’re eating ‘plenty of meat’ as you say, I’m guessing you also won’t say no to the odd egg or two a day, some cheese, milk, fish, liver and bacon, and the odd Big Mac. Good for you!
Save your money on the protein shakes, they’re way overhyped, overpriced, and unless your over 18 stone of solid muscle and on steroids, totally unnecessary.
You can talk all day about beef protein, egg protein, whey, pea or hemp and so on, but none of it will ever come close to replacing mother nature’s idea of protein.
You’ll notice that when she dishes up protein, she not only throws in every so-called ‘essential’ amino acid you may find in a powder but also all the other amino’s we’ll one day discover are far from non-essential, as we currently class them.
Nature doesn’t provide ‘anything’ that’s non-essential because nature doesn’t worry about profit or bullshit.
In fact, one particular ‘Non-Essential’ amino acid (carnosine) is only found in red meat, and recent research has uncovered its critical in preventing us from fatal glycation.
According to the study published in the journal; Mechanisms of Aging and Development;
. Glycation is involved in disorders as diverse as cataract, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease.
This ‘essential’, ‘non-essential’ bullshit was first classified in 1935, so is in bad need of an update (especially for vegetarians), and says ‘ya boo sucks’ to anyone not adding Carnosine to their protein powder.
Everything in a natural food, like eggs for example, is there to give you an evolutionary advantage, not to fuck you up, and will also come with lashings of minerals, essential fats, vitamins, and all manner of trace elements, all in the perfect balance that nature intended for you, rather than what some geek chemist that works for a nutrition company thinks.
The Devils in the Dosage!
When you read popular fitness magazines suggesting you need 1 to 2 grams of protein for every pound of bodyweight, you may be left wondering how the fuck you could eat that much naturally in a day, especially if you’re a big fella already.
This leads you to the only obvious conclusion, that you must need one or two protein shakes a day, on top of your food, or else you’ll wither and blow away in the wind, like a dried-up leaf.
Actual scientific research, however, done on Olympic athletes no less, proved that they could build and maintain their incredible bodies, on just 1 gram of protein per ‘kilogram’ of bodyweight!
So, 1 gram per 2.2lbs of bodyweight, for an Olympic athlete training 4 hours a day, and yet the fuckers that make the protein powders want you to believe you need 2 to 4 times that amount each day.
I wonder why?
It’s also commonly ‘understood’ by gym goers, that protein only builds muscle, and what doesn’t get used gets pissed, farted, or shat out!
Bullshit.
Every single gram of protein you scoff over and above your daily needs, will be sent to your liver to be converted into glucose, and if there’s an excess of that (and there usually is thanks to carb intake), then the protein will be ultimately converted into fat, and stored away with the excesses of everything else, for a rainy day.
Usually on your arse and thighs if you’re a lady, and around your gut for guys.
So even low carb, low calorie, zero fat protein powders, can and will, make you fat!
That’s the truth of the matter and doesn’t even touch on the strain that excess protein can put on the kidneys, that may already be stressed by sports dehydration, and a couple of ibuprofen, taken for a niggly injury.
About half a dozen athletes die each year from painful kidney (renal) failure.
Usually big young lads, sweating buckets in American football gear, on anti-inflammatory drugs, and drinking protein shakes like they’re going out of fashion.
Protein shakes are great for fussy eaters, vegetarians, sick people who lack appetite, and busy people skipping meals here and there. We sometimes have one for breakfast, for example, we blend our morning coffee in it, and it keeps us going till 2 pm.
Finally, when you eat natural protein sources, you’ll find them very filling and satisfying. So again, Mother nature and your natural body wisdom will tell you when you’ve had enough (You’ll be less likely to overeat in other words).
But I’ve tasted protein shakes that are so delicious, I could drink 3 a day no problem, and with my diet, which I suspect is very similar to yours, that would easily lead me into obesity, and dodgy kidneys.
Weigh all your protein, or count up the egg grams and so on, on 3 random days of one week. Add them together and divide that number by three, giving you your average daily protein grams.
Figure out how many pounds you weigh, and see how you fare against those Olympic athletes.
If you’re a little under 1 gram per 2.2lbs bodyweight, toss an extra egg in here and there, and if you’re a little over it’s ok, just keep an eye on your waistline, but don’t sweat it.
As a general rule, there’s good evidence that around 100 grams a day are needed even for moderately active people if you don’t want to rely on the Olympic study from way back, so you may like to use that as your starting reference point.
The Protein Absorption Myth
One last thing. If you hear that your body can only absorb 30 grams of protein at any one sitting, and that leads you to believe you need to eat 5 or 6 times a day to get your whack, then think again.
Because guess what? that’s bollocks as well.
People think that because most food leaves the digestive tract within 3 hours, and you can only absorb around 10 grams per hour, then 30 grams must be your whack you can absorb in one go. Hence retarded bodybuilders eating every 2/3 hours.
Fortunately, that’s not how the body works at all, and you could probably even eat all your protein for the day in one huge meal and still do ok, that’s because according to a recent peer-reviewed French researcher paper, J Nutr. 2000 Jul;130(7):1700-4., eating 80% of daily protein in one meal didn’t make a lick of difference than when consumed over 4 meals.
Or this study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; Am J Clin Nutr November 2009 vol. 90 no. 5 1244-1251, where eating the whole day’s protein amount inside 4 hours, then fasting for 20, also didn’t affect protein metabolism one bit.
And these studies have been duplicated in numerous studies over the years, though it may not serve the makers of protein powders for you to know this, for obvious financial reasons.
Be well, keep your kidneys happy, and all the best.
Blunt Coach Andy
