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Comment by atomical | Hacker News Reader

Protein isn't a panacea. Eating 2,000 calories of Soylent a day would mean consuming 100 grams of protein. That's unnecessary for the average person.

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Eating 2000 calories of Slimfast notcompletelysugar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^high protein, because it seems to be their only option that isn't giant heaping piles of sugar, would net you 222g (and wickedly overload you on vitamins, but, you know, whatever, right?). Which would you prefer?

Eat some fruit and vegetables.

Man, I wish I needed 100g of protein a day. I try to be very conservative on my intake, and I still need 142g minimum at 180 pounds.

RDA for protein is 0.8g/kg (~0.36/pound), so about 65g in your case if you're sedentary. 1g/pound is an old bodybuilder myth according to this article [0] which goes through various studies: "many review papers have concluded 0.82g/lb is the upper limit at which protein intake benefits body composition". This is for strength athletes and bodybuilders, mind you: most people (even many athletes) need far, far less.

[0] http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-pro...

> 1g/pound is an old bodybuilder myth according to this article

Except that every time I've ever seen/heard it from bodybuilders it has always been 1g per lean pound which fits pretty well with your 0.82 figure accounting for typical bodyfat percentages. So your article is arguing a strawman and they've been right all along.

You're right, I forgot about that. My main point was that parent is probably overdoing it (even if he/she were a bodybuilder), and this seems to be quite common.

What do you mean by overdoing it?

It's hard, although possible, to have too much protein.

That's not a massive ton of protein. It's probably a bit more than the average person is likely to make use of but I'd rather an extra 20g of protein than an extra 20g+ of sugar.

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