I wonder what this means for those of us who are casual weightlifters. Our protein intake is much higher than 0.7g per kg, and in fact most come in around double that value.
The benefits of being at one's peak strength are innumerable, but a fourfold increase in cancer risk is startling.
I assume a healthy balance would be to obtain a greater percentage of our intake from vegetable sources. But most of us are wired by evolution to enjoy the taste of animal protein much more than other sources.
Perhaps a foray into endurance sports is in order.
Get a George Foreman grill. Eat mor seafood. Shrimp and veggies go great together.
Also, veggies are just an excuse to eat garlic. Put garlic in your meat. Put garlic in your ice cream. Take garlic pills. And eat blueberries and broccoli if you're worried about cancer. Garlic is nature's formaldehyde.
And let's be clear, that the link between dietary cholesterol and blood serum cholesterol is not established. The idea of low cholesterol foods is therefore dubious, at best.
My doctor has always told me a daily serving of meat is about the size of a deck of playing cards. Shrimp help's me maximize the flavor and fat in that serving. That's about how much shrimp I mix into my giant bowl full of veggies and it fills me up and tastes delicious.
Even if this article were 100% true (which I doubt), I wouldn't follow the advice.
Switching from a low-protein to high-protein diet has had the most dramatic positive effect on my health and fitness I've seen in my short 35 years on this earth.
For most of my life I basically got no real protein in my diet -- cereal for breakfast, pasta for dinner, etc. I was always just a bit out of shape, and no matter how much time I spent at the gym I saw minimal improvements.
A few years ago I was inspired by a weightloss thread on reddit and "rebooted" my eating and fitness. Started running, dumped my carb-heavy diet and moved to a high-protein diet -- Greek yogurt, lots of chicken, cheese, etc.
I've lost 30 lbs and am seriously in better shape than I've ever been. My exercise level went up, sure, but the dramatic change came from my diet reboot.
So frankly, even if this were true, I'd rather live the life I've got now than go back to the low-protein lethargy of my 20s.
You're talking about the difference in how you feel in the short term, in an uncontrolled "experiment", where you started exercising at the same time, versus an increase in long term disease. Of course you're going to feel better if you lose 30 pounds and start exercising. What's to say you wouldn't feel even better than that if you dropped all of those carbs and started eating far more vegetables and other vitamin rich non-proteins instead of all that yogurt? No offense, but do a line of cocaine and you'll feel better for a short period of time, too. It doesn't mean you're healthier or increasing your life expectancy.
The fats are so important and good to your body and brain, that when you eat a lots of healthy fats (and I mean lots) your body and your brain are "high", feeling well, thinking better and increasing your physical performance.
Eating lots of fats and vegetables, medium to high in proteins, and low on carbs (or zero if possible) its the best and healthiest way to live.
In my experience/opinion (of my own short 35 years), exercise is what really makes a difference.
An healthy diet is of course as important, but really can't say I experienced that much of a difference between low-carbs/low-fats/low-calories diets, in terms of effectiveness (they all work, if you exercise and stick to them) and general well-being.
Exercise is and will be always only the 20% of your effort looking for a perfect mind and body. The other 80% is what you put in your mouth. Your eyes, your skin, your hair, your organs, every bite you do does something on each and every part of your body.
>For most of my life I basically got no real protein in my diet -- cereal for breakfast, pasta for dinner, etc
You know both of your examples contain protein right? Pasta contains plenty of protein. Potatoes contain plenty of protein. This bizarre notion that the only way to get protein is from meat is complete nonsense.
Chicken = Around 26g protein per 100g (219 calories)
Pasta = Around 13g protein per 100g (371 calories)
Potatoes = Around 2g protein per 100g (77 calories)
The chicken contains twice as much, for not far off 50% less calories. Add in the fact that the chicken will probably also make you feel fuller for longer - chicken is near enough 0% carbs, versus the pastas 25% carbs, makes eating a chicken breast seem like a more logical choice than a bowl full of pasta to me.
You'd need to eat a hell of a lot of potatoes to get a decent quantity of protein and don't even start me on the modern monstrosity that is cereal.
Most of the protein in the pasta comes from animals anyway...a key ingredient being egg, after all.
I'm confused as to what point you are trying to make. You demonstrated that my statement was accurate, then made a non-sequitur statement about satiety that is incorrect. You would need to eat an adequate amount of calories in potato to get an adequate amount of protein from potato. 26x77=2000 kcal. 26x2=52g protein. Pasta gets most of its protein from wheat. It typically does not contain eggs at all. Pasta made with eggs is specifically called "egg noodles" for a reason.
This article is ridiculous. It never mentions anything about the quality of the animal protein, yet points out that people that follow paleo are probably eating a high protein diet. People that are actually eating paleo aren't just eating any animal protein. And that makes a big difference.
> why do you think this matters. their study studies the relation between protein and longevity.
The article states:
Teasing out the health effects of individual nutrients is notoriously difficult. The apparently harmful effects of a high-protein diet might be down to one or more other substances in meat, or driven by lifestyle factors that are more common in regular red meat eaters versus vegetarians. Other factors can skew results too: a person on the study who got ill might have gone off their food, and seen a proportional rise in the amount of calories they get from protein. In that case, it would be the illness driving the diet, not the other way round.
A lot of people in the US who eat an animal protein rich diet get their protein from red meat instead of say white meat or seafood. There are huge differences between red meat and white meat, and even bigger differences between red/white meat and seafood.
And a lot Americans who consume red meat prepare it in a way that are known to form heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known to cause cancer in animals.
Maybe the type of animal protein doesn't matter but if you don't look specifically at these issues you're apt to reach conclusions that are way too broad (ie animal proteins are bad). I don't think it's sensible to sound the alarm about animal protein before you have a study that factors for which animal proteins are being consumed.
One interesting thing to ponder in light of this study is the Okinawa region of Japan. It has a very high age expectancy (one of the highest in the world) and I believe a much higher than average protein intake, a lot of which comes from seafood. So I think it's folly to just look at protein intake without looking at the source of the protein and the overall composition of the diet. Things are usually more complex than we'd like them to be.
All protein types are not created equal, for one thing.
It's entirely possible that the negative association with protein has a lot more to do with the over-consumption of certain types of meat.
If you live off of nothing but bacon as your source of protein, I'd argue the sodium and cholesterol in your average variety processed bacon are likely to be very dangerous for your health long term. Versus getting your protein from high quality whey or salmon. Did this study control for the source of the protein?
> If you live off of nothing but bacon as your source of protein, I'd argue the sodium and cholesterol in your average variety processed bacon are likely to be very dangerous for your health long term.
Pork fat is among the healthiest of all animal fats (and better than pretty much everything except avocado and olive oil). You can see its chemistry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lard
The link between dietary cholesterol and blood serum cholesterol is not well established. And sodium is typically not bad for you unless you have complicating issues.
Salmon is great for you, especially if it's wild and therefore not fed crap. The research (e.g. http://www.jle.com/e-docs/00/04/61/1C/article.phtml) is beginning to show that our omega-6 to omega-3 ratio has gotten out of whack.
Simply put: we're eating too much crap with cheap, processed, plant oil derived omega-6 that blows away the amount of omega-3 we are eating.
Eat more pork fat, eat more butter, eat more salmon, eat more tuna. For plants, eat more olive oil, coconut oil, and avocados. Stop eating stuff that comes in shrink wrap.
So? How does that in any way invalidate or even call into question their findings? More protein = more likely to die. Nothing in that requires salmon and beef to be identical.
+1 - this is a point a lot of people don't get: it can take roughly 10 times the water and 10 times the energy to produce meat rather than vegetables and grains.
That's because it's a ridiculous statement. Sure, cattle convert grain calories into meat calories fairly inefficiently. But cattle evolved to eat grass, not grain. Grazing cattle on the prairies is far more environmentally friendly than ripping up that prairie to replace it with a wheat monoculture.
Animals that evolved to eat grains, such as chickens, convert calories much more efficiently.
It's true that grass-fed animals don't have the same environmental impact as grain-fed ones. But the problem is that there's no way to produce enough beef to meet worldwide demand other than concentrated feedlots. And certainly no way to produce it at the low cost that the market demands.
Unless the cost of beef can be adjusted to include all the negative externalities that its production entails (topsoil loss, water and air pollution from fertilizers, pesticides, manure, and diesel fuel, antibiotic resistant super-bugs, public health threats from unsanitary slaughterhouse practices, etc) then meat producers and consumers will benefit from cheaper prices while the environment suffers.
The solution is to live in a place of relative ecological abundance where you can buy locally-raised animal products with minimal environmental impact. Hunting your own meat (in my case, deer) is also a good option. I recommend Canada.
I don't hunt, but the fishing's always good (plenty of options, both fresh water and ocean.
Though on the hunting angle, deer would probably be the largest animal you can hunt, then there'd be goats, wild pigs and of course rabbits and possums which you can eat (our possums are different from North American ones).
Edit: also just thought I'd throw in I've got nothing against Canada, you guys and the US, are to us, like we are to Australia (if that makes sense)
This study has absolutely ZERO merit (observational... ppssh!). And it is beyond irresponsible and bombastic to say protein is worse or as bad as smoking!
Apparently everything you do is wrong somehow. When it comes to eating everything is bad and gives you Moar cancer. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading the dailymail. I wonder what the effect of flip flopping from one diet to the next every 12 weeks is.
At this point it's difficult for me to take seriously any study or article attempting to equate animal products with adverse health effects. There's a religious element to food selection now and it's hard to tell what's legitimate vs. lobbying or proselytization.
This is grossly irresponsible. I am pleased to see most of the comments here realize that.
-Muscle tone requires more protein.
-Protein consumption is one of the very best ways to sate hunger, thereby reducing consumption of fat and carbohydrates.
-It takes more work for the body to convert amino acids to glucose and ATP, so the by the time it finishes your 'net calorie' is less than actually consumed.
-Unused protein is often excreted rather than stored in adipose cells (fat).
In short, protein is good for you. Both animal and plant protein. And while your minimum functions don't require all that much, you should probably be eating more. Poor conducted correlation studies don't change that.
No mention of what extras we get in meat courtesy of the feedstock for the animals.
"Most U. S. beef cattle are implanted with synthetic hormones in feedlots prior to slaughter. On January 1, 1989 the European Economic Community (EEC) placed a ban on hormone-treated U. S. meat, preventing U. S. meat products from being sold in any European nations. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has challenged the ban and accused the EEC of unfair trade practices, but the action of European governments raises some important questions about American meat."
As usual nothing about what kind of animal protein...
A bit like claiming 'intake of plant minerals presents severe and acute dangers to human health' after including in the study a variety of species rich in, respectively, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and arsenic.
Milk protein has known detrimental health effects, and probably dominates the effects described here. (But since they don't even make the distinction, how would we know?)
I have yet to see convincing evidence that protein from e.g. muscle is problematic for cancer risk or cardiovascular health at reasonable levels of intake, and I won't be holding my breath waiting for that to show up.
Hyperbolic title doesn't entirely match up with article:
But whereas middle-aged people who consumed a lot of animal protein tended to die younger from cancer, diabetes and other diseases, the same diet seemed to protect people's health in old age.
So you lost weight and feel better on a low carb high protein diet? Good for you! Some of us inherit high cholesterol, diabetes and kidney disease, along with other reasons to keep to a diet high in fiber and low in animal protein, especially beef.
The study says that under 65 a protein-rich diet will basically kill you, while over 65 it's actually beneficial ?
Is explained in any way why it should be so ?
And I assume that this study is serious and other factors are accounted for, since it's likely that people with a lower animal protein intake have a more balanced diet overall, with an higher intake of fruits and vegetables and a lower intake of saturated fats...
It says that early on and for extended periods these things cause heart disease and cancer, which would be bad for somebody over the course of 65 years, and the amount of protein is unnecessary. But when you get older and your body starts to break down, the increased protein is better for you.
And, although it doesn't say it, by the time you're 65 and if you have been eating healthy all of that time, developing cancer from a proten-rich diet is mitigated by the fact that you only maintain that diet for your remaining 15-25 years, not for the 65 leading up to then.
Its incredible how the media pushes us to be as unhealthy as possible.
Eat more natural, thats the only real thing. It doesnt matter if its meat or fats or vegetables or whatever. If its processed its made with the only purpose to taste good so it would be easy to sell.
Interestingly enough, IGF-1 (Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1) is the active ingredient in that deer antler velvet spray that Ray Lewis (NFL player) uses for performance enhancement.
The benefits of being at one's peak strength are innumerable, but a fourfold increase in cancer risk is startling.
I assume a healthy balance would be to obtain a greater percentage of our intake from vegetable sources. But most of us are wired by evolution to enjoy the taste of animal protein much more than other sources.
Perhaps a foray into endurance sports is in order.