How Much Protein Do We Actually Need?

Probably more than you think.

Illustration by Eddie Guy for New York Magazine.

I have a new feature out in New York Magazine today called Big Food Gets Jacked: How Protein Took Over the American Grocery Store. The story was a bit all consuming, which is why things have been a little quiet here on the newsletter, but now that this thing is finished it’s back to your regularly scheduled programming. All my thanks to my terrific editor Joy Shan and excellent fact-checker Jack Denton for all their sturdy, muscular guidance on this.

Flying into the protein event horizon was an attempt to answer the question: Why is protein suddenly everywhere?

The tl;dr is that proteinification is the coalescence of two main forces: the mainstreaming of fitness culture and capitalism’s remarkable ability to transform garbage into profit. Whey protein, for example, is a byproduct of cheese. Whey was historically treated as refuse, either dumped in our rivers or used as slop to feed pigs and cattle. And then some smart people realized that whey is actually nutrient-dense and could be refined into a powder and jammed into all sorts of stuff we eat, like protein bars. One cheesemaker’s trash is a fitness bro’s treasure.

I also drank a chicken smoothie for the piece, partly out of curiosity, mostly because it was gross and funny.

Another component of the story attempts to figure out how much protein we should be eating in a day, which is something I never used to think about. But if you want to feel strong, have energy, and fight cognitive decline, well, protein is sort of essential to all of that.

The current recommendation for most people is to eat 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight—which is a lot of math, among other things. Here’s the pertinent part:

“The recommended dietary allowance, or RDA, of protein has stayed roughly the same since 1941, when the U.S. National Research Council first set these nutrition guides as part of wartime food-relief efforts. “They basically wanted to check how much protein we needed to not go catabolic—in other words, to not break down our own tissue,” says bariatric surgeon and author Garth Davis. In the decades since, the number has hovered around 0.8 to one gram of protein per kilogram of body weight. For a 130-pound woman who doesn’t exercise very often, this would mean consuming at least 47 to 58 grams of protein a day. In the context of an American diet, where a Chipotle bowl can top 50 grams of protein, this is easy work.”

Recently, there’s been some convincing research that suggests the RDA is woefully out of date, and we should probably be eating more than double the recommended amount. Especially if we do any kind of exercise or weight training, or if we’re in our 50s and hoping to stave off sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss).

A number of researchers I talked to in the piece agree that the RDA, as it currently stands, is dated and insufficient.

So what’s a good rule of thumb for protein intake?

Alan Aragon, one of the OGs in the health space, put it to me this way. (This bit was trimmed in the final version of the story.)

“With the general public, a consumption of about 1.2 to 1.6g per kilogram of body weight is appropriate for just general health and maintaining muscle mass and just sort of living a normal-ish lifespan and healthspan.”

And what about people who are physically active?

“There's some controversy about that specifically as to whether it increases muscle mass, but the benefits that we've seen from consuming protein above and beyond 1.6, above 2.0, all the way up to 3-ish grams per kilogram, we're looking at 1.2 to 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight.”

So, if you exercise semi-regularly, here’s an easy, modern way to think about protein intake: Try to eat around your ideal bodyweight in pounds daily.

So if your ideal bodyweight is 120 pounds and you enjoy lifting the occasional dumbbell, shoot for somewhere between 110 to 130 grams of protein, and don’t sweat it too hard if you don’t hit that. Aragon, for example, is 52 and tries to get in 160 grams of protein a day: “I have 40 grams in the morning, 40 grams at lunch, and then I have my dinner, which is about 40 grams of protein. And then I have a dessert protein shake, which is another 40.”

I weight 140 pounds, which is a little heavy for me, so I’m currently shooting for 120 to 130 grams of protein a day, which basically means a protein shake after a workout in the morning and one more later in the day.

Anyway, if you read the New York story I’d love to hear what you think. I ate a lot of weird shit, spoke to a lot of experts, and went to General Mills headquarters to learn how they jam protein into breakfast cereal. The piece required me to sleep alone in a strange hotel in Minneapolis on election night, which is an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Other news:

• I was in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town recently with HEAVIES favorite Tony Wang and some other friends at the Office of Applied Strategy. I’m on the record saying raw milk “it’s good” and wearing baggy clothes.

I kind of think the illustrated version of me (left) looks like a 54-year-old Chinatown grandpa who can get nasty with the foot reflexology, but who am I to complain.

• A cool SSENSE story that I’m proud of: Very honored to have the amazing visual artist Christine Sun Kim interviewed by the homie E. Alex Jung, on the occasion of her first big Whitney exhibition. The shoot at the museum was kind of magical; just an amazing team all around. Dominick Barcelona, a former stylist at Opening Ceremony, was wearing these sick Y-3 Japan sneakers with minimal drop that inspired me to pull the trigger on a similar pair of Adidas shoes that I’ve been loving. Sleek silhouette, very on trend, and my feet feel strong after a few days wearing them. I’ll write about those soon.

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