Eating Enough Protein

Many people eat unbalanced diets.  Eating sufficient protein from a good source is essential for proper human body development and function.  Consuming enough protein improves body shape and muscle tone, helps prevent muscle loss, improves metabolism and therefore helps lose fat, and even reduces ageing. 

Unlike with fats or carbohydrates your body has no protein storing ability, therefore it is very important to consume protein on a regular basis.  The liver can effectively fuel your body with protein for about 3-6 hours after its consumption.  Therefore, if protein is eaten 1-2 times per day, most of the time the body is being starved of important nutrients.

A lot of the body’s recovery from physical exercise happens during sleep.  If exercising, it is important to consume some protein before bedtime.  Ideally a protein that is slow in digestion.  Milk is made up of whey and casein proteins.  The latter forms a gel-like substance in your stomach, slowing your digestion.  Therefore a glass of milk before bedtime can be beneficial in aiding muscle recovery.

Protein is made up of amino acids.  There are 22 amino acids, 9 of which are essential to your body’s proper functioning.  The remaining 13 amino acids can be synthesised by the body from essential amino acids.  An important thing to understand is that not all protein sources have all essential amino acids and not in the quantities that we need them in.  The majority of vegetable proteins do not have all essential amino acids.  Sedentary adult weighing 70kg should consume around 50g of protein per day from high quality sources – i.e. meat, fish, eggs, milk, whey protein, soya.

If a person is exercising, research has shown that eating up to 1.32g of protein per 1kg of lean bodyweight (bodyweight minus fat weight) can improve results.  There is little supporting research stating that eating more protein than that can be beneficial.  Therefore those extreme high protein diets (i.e. eating 10 egg whites for breakfast) have no proven benefit.  Actually eating that much protein can have adverse effects – excessive work for the kidneys and increased flatulence.