If a question on Family Fortunes asked contestants which things we worry about getting enough of, the survey might say sex, followed closely by protein. Protein anxiety is real, and once drove me to point out to a concerned older relative that my young children had typically consumed the daily recommended amount very shortly after breakfast.
In fact the real protein anxiety should be whether we are having too much. Britain is in the grip of a craze as supermarkets and food manufacturers invest billions in flogging us an ever-growing range of protein-rich products. At the time of writing there are 328 results for “protein” at Sainsbury’s online, from Weetabix Protein to high-protein granola, and more bars, yoghurts and powders than you could shake a stick at.
“Protein has been the golden child of the macronutrients for a while now, and something we need for muscle growth and tissue repair,” says Emily Leeming, a dietician at King’s College London. “But most people were already getting plenty of it. It’s an expensive waste to be overconsuming it and it’s potentially doing us harm if these products displace the other healthy foods that we could be eating.”
So how much protein should we be getting? In the UK the reference nutrient intake (RNI) is set at 0.75g of protein per kilogram of weight for an adult. An 85kg man (the average) and a 72kg woman should therefore be consuming 64g or 54g of protein a day.
Going by food packaging labels, the following amounts of common foods contain about 50g of protein: two and a half pints of semi-skimmed milk, half a block of mature cheddar, one chicken breast, a small bag of peanuts, five boiled eggs, a pack and a bit of tofu, a tin and a half of chickpeas.
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You wouldn’t want to get all your protein from one source, not least if that meant eating half a block of cheese a day, but it’s clear that without trying too hard — and whether or not you eat meat — you’re probably going to get enough. Bear in mind also that there’s protein in almost everything else we eat: sweet potatoes, blackberries and sun-dried tomatoes are all good sources, for example.
There are variations on the 0.75g rule. Pregnant and breastfeeding women should add about 10g to their daily intake, while the RNI for young children is on a sliding scale, from 12.5g a day at birth to 28g for 7 to 10-year-olds. As appetites shrink and veer towards sweeter foods as we get older — a time when ageing muscles need more protein — people are also advised to watch their intakes. People over 65 should be getting up to 1.4g per kilogram per day, almost twice the RNI.
I’m also told that 0.75g per kg of weight should be considered a minimum amount. “A newer technique for assessing protein intake shows that the minimum should be more like 1 to 1.2 grams per day,” says Linia Patel, a registered dietitian and a spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association. Adult men and women could get this by eating a few boiled eggs. If you want to gain muscle mass, the recommendation is a daily intake of 1.6g per kg.
Patel advises obtaining protein from core foods rather than the processed ones that have become mainstream. “Whole foods first is my mantra,” she says. “In chicken or an egg or Greek yoghurt you’re not just getting protein, you’re getting the minerals and vitamins too. When you isolate protein to, say, whey powder, yes, you’re getting protein, but you’re missing out on everything else.”
Leeming worries that the focus on protein, which “has good PR”, as she puts it, can leave less sexy vital nutrients on the shelf. “We have this obsession with protein, yet most of us aren’t meeting the recommendations for a five-year-old for fibre, which is missing from the conversation.”
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On which note, adults should get about 30g of fibre a day to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and bowel cancer. Weetabix is one solid source of fibre, but maybe hold on the protein-rich version — it costs an extra 30p for a box of 24 at Sainsbury’s.
