So something that never made sense to me, as a fat middle aged man trying to eat healthily. Is why does the nutrition advice you see talk so much about eating enough protein?
It seems to me as a healthy-ish non-vegitarian eating a typical western diet, and isn’t actively trying to gain large amounts of muscle mass, I am never going eat too little protein. In common with most westerners, I eat meat for, at the very least, one meal a day, and cheese or dairy on days I don’t (as well as on days I also eat meat). That seems like a ton of protein, especially compared to my ancestors who were absolutely not eating meat everyday (and definitely not in the quantities even the poorest modern American does)
So I totally see how I am eating too many carbs, too much sugar, too much sodium, too many calories generally, not enough fruit and vegetables, not enough fish, not enough whole grains. All that makes total sense. But I totally don’t get how most of us could be not getting enough protein.
To be sure, you have people going for the carnivore diet and everything (so maybe you’re hearing from the loonies in that particular la la land) but, to my awareness, the official nutritional landscape is pretty set on things like the Mediterranean diet.
You do require a certain amount of protein in your diet but, indeed, if you’re satisfied with the current amount of muscle that you’ve got and you’re healthy, you probably don’t need to increase your intake.
Only in the case of, say, an elderly man who can barely pick up a pencil, you might advise an increase in protein. Just having that extra quantity is liable to help the body add a bit more muscle (as I understand it), though I’m sure that a doctor would advise a strength building program to go with it.
It was the first thing the nutritionist (actually qualified nutritionist paid for by our health insurance, not a quack) my wife spoke to said (she’s in way better shape than me, but is trying to get back in shape after having our youngest child). After hearing she had a scramble for breakfast she said “how many eggs does it have? That doesn’t seem like enough protein”. Seriously that was just breakfast! We had chicken for dinner and probably some kind of meat for lunch too.
I agree with you that a normal, healthy omnivore diet probably gets you all the protein you typically need. I lift weights 3-4 times per week, and get a few long cardio sessions in as well (typically couple hour cycling sessions) and don’t need to add additional protein. Now, when we are doing long days in the mountains as we recently did, yes, I feel the need for more food including protein. But that is 10+ hours of nearly non-stop effort. Same for gigantic cycling days.
I’ve heard the ideal macro is 40/30/30. For your daily caloric intake 40% should be carbs, 30% protein, 30% fats.
Possibly the typical American diet is out of whack from this and comes up short on protein thus the emphasis on it?
This matches the kind of advice I’ve read. But it makes no sense to me. Why would it be a ratio? Surely the amount of protein my body needs is totally unrelated to the amount of other nutrients I eat?
Like if I eat an enormous plate of fries and a small lean steak is that less healthy than eating an enormous plate of fries and a huge lean steak? That small steak probably all the protein my body needs, whether I eat the fries or a salad.
I would think that’s just your basic intake. But if you’re doing a lot of activities that burn a lot of calories, like say… cycling or swimming or something like that, you’re going to need to increase your caloric intake, and I don’t know if you necessarily need that same ratio in that situation.
Like say… a marathoner is probably eating a lot more carbs (low GI probably) than protein in that situation.
Not exactly your question, but: protein does seem to be good at satisfying the appetite for a longer term, if you are trying to consume fewer carbs. I have these bars that have 10 grams of protein for 90 calories, which is the best ratio I have been able to find. I have one as a between-meal snack when I get hungry, and that plus water usually lasts me until the next meal. So, a partial sideways answer is that shifting from carbs to protein can help you lose weight, or help you to keep from gaining it.
But I think OP is correct, that modern humans get plenty of protein for normal needs.
Never mind muscles, my brain seriously needs protein when its gears are churning hard at work. The difference is obvious between when I’m looking through SDMB pages (little mental effort, may even forget food altogether) vs. getting down to serious brainwork. Five to 10 minutes of the latter and I get that hollow feeling in my core that energy reserves are being rapidly depleted. Being lacto-ovo-vegetarian, I stoke up on milk, yogurt, kefir, cheese, eggs, peanut butter, & whole grains. To balance my diet with carbs, I add plenty of fruit and to balance the fats, olive oil or walnuts. If I don’t eat well, I can’t do serious brainwork.
Ah, so you meant “to balance my diet by adding more carbs…” It did sound as if you thought there were few or no carbs in the foods you listed. My apologies for mis-reading or mis-interpreting.
Most of the health advantage of whole grains is simply that they are not refined grains. Many people (myself included) are better off with no grains at all.
Well… The nutrition field is sort of like the nursing field, there’s a wide berth of qualifications and the qualifications are often largely seen as necessary evils to the person most inclined to the position. And, of course, some professional doctors are quacks and cranks, despite all their training and education. Just look at pretty much any doctor on TV or Instagram. I wouldn’t necessarily trust that your insurance company is personally interviewing or reviewing the quality of the certifications, nor their holders, before sending you to them. After all, for most people, probably almost any nutritional guidance of almost any quality that’s at least minimally linked to something that came through the telephone game from science; that’s still probably better than what they were doing on their own. Insurance runs on actuarial correlations over large populations, not on intentional design to do the best for each and every individual customer.
But, in general associations and committees give reliable advice. Individual medical personnel should be trusted, but verified.
Of course, I’m just a rat on the internet, so don’t take my word for it, either.
In general, though, I’d probably recommend tracking your diet for about 3 normal days in a program like MyFitnessPal. Since it’s just 3 days, even though it can be a bit tedious, that’s a long enough time to get a reasonable sample while not being so long that you can’t log every single thing that went in your mouth.
Post your and her numbers - as well as height and activity level - and the great hive mind can see if there’s any clear adjustments that should be made.
The recommended balance of macronutrients is 40-50% carbs, 25-30% proteins, and 20-30% fats. The typical American diet is deficient in the ratio of proteins (generally ~15% proteins) but that is largely because of large amount of ‘white’ carbohydrates and hydrogenated oils in the highly processed foods that make up most of that diet and the excess of calories they provide without satiety. Adults need a minimum of 0.8 g (preferably 1.0 g) of complete proteins per kilogram of lean bodyweight per day, preferably high quality proteins that are minimally processed and readily digestable (lean meats and organ meats, eggs, mushrooms, nuts, dairy for those who can tolerate it) along with a good balance of minimally processed fats and carbohydrates primiarly from whole grains, raw or lightly cooked fruits and vegetables.
Carbohydrates are not “bad for you”; they are the essential source of energy which powers your metabolism. Processed carbohydrates such as refined sugar, white flour, corn starch, processed juices (typically with added sugar or corn syrup) are bad in excess because they are metabolized quickly and result in a spike of blood glucose, and if eaten regularly as the majority of carbohydrates will result in dysregulation of the insulin response. Eating proteins with carbohydrates does not really affect this because they are broken down in different ways and absorbed at different points in the intestine.
The brain is exclusively ‘powered’ by glucose, and one of the reasons that humans in particularly have a very tightly regulated glucose metabolism is to feed the brain (which uses ~25% of all carbohydrate intake regardless of whether is “churning hard at work” or leisurely watching “The Real Housewives of Eau Claire” screaming insults and throwing Jello salads at one another). While protein and (despite their vilification) fats are necessary to construct the brain in childhood and maintain it in adulthood, they don’t generally contribute to glucose blood levels except through the process of gluconeogenesis that occurs in absence of carbohydrate intake. Eating whole fruits does provide polysaccharides (complex starches, indigestible fiber, or cellulose) does tend to mediate the breakdown of sugars into glucose because they take longer, and unsaturated fats also tend to mediate absorption, and furthermore promotes satiety (a feeling of fullness) that makes it easier to concentrate, but these do not provide more energy to the brain.
“[T]he 40/30/30 macros have been popularized by bodybuilders and fitness models seeking a lean, muscular physique,” but of course the diet industry grabbed them and tried to push them for everybody, often scaling the macros for low-calorie diets that are almost the opposite of the original design.
Why the ratios? The omnivore body needs all three types of foods to break down into the simple sugars, i.e. glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids (plus minerals and vitamins) that create, maintain, repair, and power the body. While bodies can run on extreme amounts of most of these, obviously some ratio in the middle would be optimal. Intelligently designed diets can therefore tweak the results.
Most of us do not follow 40/30/30 macros rigorously, which is why people who need to do so professionally do better with them. Professionals also rigorously disdain fast foods, products heavy in sugar and fat, giant chain meals and all-you-can-eat buffets, and hot dogs just to name a few. If you do that rigorously as well, you probably don’t need to worry about exact ratios or what individual meals look like. Most diets will work for you, unless you’re a fruitarian, in which case, good luck.
In early life, 40 to 45% energy from each of fat and carbohydrate and 16% from protein minimizes mortality. In later life, replacing fat with carbohydrates to around 65% of total energy and reducing protein to 11% is associated with the lowest level of mortality.
In general, I believe that it’s generally better to have a higher fat percentage for women, and to vary fats by how active vs sedentary you are (e.g. rucking for 4 hours a day vs being a couch potato and watching TV all day). Likely, the reason for lower fat levels for the elderly is because they tend to be more sedentary.
Personally I find that if I am low on protein during the course of a day, I crave protein. I eat a boiled egg or some cheese and that craving goes away. Not complicated, even for someone who rarely eats meat.
