0.8 grams/kg but then you hear others say, well, really 1.6 grams/kg so twice the Recommended Dietary Allowance is where you want to be. And others would say even more than 2 grams/kg so it depends on what your goals are.

But one thing is clear, the Recommended Dietary Allowance is not your goal. You have to eat more than 0.8 grams/kg for health, for strength, for lean muscle mass.

And actually what made me inspired to write another article about protein, because we've done a lot of videos about protein, is this one article that came out called synergistic effect of increased total protein intake and strength training on muscle strength. A dose response meta analysis of randomized controlled trials and was published in Journal of Sports Medicine. Now this is a metaanalysis of randomized controlled trials.

So it's really considered the highest level of evidence because it's a compilation of randomized controlled trials, which are a very good level of evidence. So it's not observational, it's not one of these nutrition epidemiology kind of studies that's much lower quality. And to cut to the chase, what they found is, one, if you want to increase strength, you need to do resistance training.

Not a surprise there. But two, the best way to increase strength is resistance training and eating 1.5 grams/kg of high quality protein.

Okay, so that is clearly more than the Recommended Dietary Allowance of 0.8. So does that mean everybody should be eating 1.5? Well, I would argue everybody should be eating 1.5

at a minimum. And you can go above that. Now, let's get into some of the details.

So first is high quality protein. And as we've said before, animal protein and plant proteins are not the same. That doesn't mean you can't get the same strength benefits from plant protein, but you just need to eat more.

Now, soy is a complete plant protein, so that can be more equivalent to animal based proteins like meat and eggs and so forth. But if you're combining pea protein and grains and rice and beans, then you're going to have to eat more, but you can still totally get the right amount. Now, they say in this study that the gains in strength plateau after 1.5 grams per kilo of protein now, that's for strength. So here's the next question. What are your goals? Right.

Everybody should want to improve strength, because that's important for function and for preventing frailty. But the other thing is, what about just body composition? So losing fat, maintaining lean mass, what about improving metabolic health? And probably most importantly, what about satiety? What about feeling comfortably full and reducing your hunger there? It's possible that even more protein has a benefit, and we've done other videos on this before that we can link to down below. But one of the things that really strikes me is how the curve for decreased hunger, decreased calorie intake with protein, kind of goes up to about 25% of your calories.

And then the curve flattens. Now, not completely flattens, right. It still appears that your hunger improves your decreased hunger and lower food intake, even at protein intake beyond 25%.

But the steepness of the curve is much flatter, but it's much higher as you get up to that 25%. All right, so that's a bunch of jumble. Sorry if that was confusing.

But the key is, getting up to about 1.5 grams per kilo, 25% of your calories, is really the sweet spot. But it's okay to go beyond that, especially if that helps you with your hunger, with your satiety making you feel fuller, so you eat fewer calories.

Also, as long as you're doing a fair amount of resistance training, you can still get some lean mass goals or some, sorry, some lean mass gains. But again, it's just sort of less benefit for the effort compared to getting up to that 1.5 grams per kilo.

So that was a lot of numbers, a lot of discussion. But I think the take home here, one looking at the study, and two, comparing it to what else we know about protein, is one, defining your goals, and there can be a lot of goals from protein. One is strength, one is lean muscle mass, one is losing fat mass, one is improving your metabolic health, and one is improving your satiety, decreasing your hunger, decreasing your overall calorie intake.

All right, so that's one is setting your goals. Two is understanding the Recommended Dietary Allowance is completely misleading. As a goal, it is a minimum, it is a floor to prevent protein deficiency.

So those people who promote the Recommended Dietary Allowance of 0.8 grams per kilo as the goal, I think just misunderstand what it's supposed to be and misunderstand the literature behind protein, where there's clear advantages to going above that. So it appears that 1.5 grams/kg is likely the sweet spot, although you certainly can go higher. I just wouldn't recommend most people go lower. Now, are there certain situations where you have to be careful about the amount of protein you eat? Yeah, if you have end stage renal disease, if you have advanced renal disease, either on dialysis or almost on dialysis, then you do have to be careful about your protein intake and definitely talk to your physician, because there's a balance.

Those patients also suffer from sarcopenia and muscle wasting a lot of the time. So you could say protein is important there, but proteins also can.

Reducing protein intake can sort of delay the progression of renal failure. So it's a very individualized approach. But if you have normal kidneys or even mildly reduced kidney function, then there's really no concern about how much protein you eat.

Otherwise, it's hard to find really many scenarios where you have to be careful about the amount of protein, especially if you're talking about the 1.5 grams per kilo. As you get up to, like, the 3 grams per kilo, then it becomes a little more complicated because then you have to make sure you're getting enough calories from energy, carbs or fats that you can burn as energy and not all your calories as protein, because then you get into what's called this rabbit starvation, where it's just too much protein.

So those are really the only concerns, and there are a lot of potential benefits. I hope you walk away from this understanding that Recommended Dietary Allowance is not your goal. Your goal is around that 1.5 grams per kilo.