Protein mania: the rich world’s new diet obsession | Hacker News Reader

Protein mania: the rich world’s new diet obsession

theguardian.com

45 pointscamtarn86 comments

As someone who does sports professionally, I highly recommend talking to dietitian and doing specialized medical examination before doing any diets or taking food supplements.

Just consuming more protein does not mean "weight loss" or "more muscles" because extra protein will be converted to glucose thanks to gluconeogenesis and then some of it will convert to fat. Too much protein could also lead to kidney/liver issues as well as atherosclerosis or other health conditions.

When you work out regularly or semi-professionally you will grow muscle mass that will lead to weight loss: workout -> more muscle mass -> more energy consumption -> weight loss.

Last but not least, not all protein created equal: you also have to balance animal and plant protein. There're also slow and fast digested proteins (casein/whey).

As they say, do not try this at home and talk to your doctor.

There is actually no scientific proof for the claim that too much protein can harm the kidneys or liver. The science that created that myth was badly flawed.

Edit: see https://examine.com/nutrition/can-eating-too-much-protein-be... for a nice write up including sources

That is trivially untrue just from cats - as obligate carnivores they have "overclocked" kidneys such that they can drink sea water and gain hydration. This serves them regardless of fresh water availability due to their need to break down so much protein for calories and will quickly suffer ammonia poisoning if given they lack sufficient argine while digesting a meal. And yet the kidneys are still a common thing to start failing in old age and call for a lower protein diet to counteract. Again in an obligate carnivore with less intestinal length.

It is true that we aren't obligate carnivores but the underlying mechanism for damage exists regardless of how well it is countered.

Maybe ... but that still does not mean that science proofed a high protein diet is bad for the kidneys of healthy humans.

Well said. And humans definitely need healthy intestinal tracts - and need complex carbs to last long enough to feed beneficial microbiota.

Humans are not cats. There is no data supporting any of what you mention in people. Protien is perfectly safe. Are you going to argue we die without carbs next? Got a single citation to your point?

The dose makes the poision in everything - it is just a statement that it isn't perfectly safe and nothing is. Oxygen can cause cancer. The point was that if even a far more specialized species could have problems with proteins there is a mechanism for damage from too much - what that ammount may be is another question. Just like too much carbohydrates can overwhelm the pancreas too much protein may overwhelm the kidneys and liver.

I had done extensive feline research recently for a fiction side project and will give my links - I had one that described the metabolic process specifically.

Bizarrely and disappointingly I'm finding less than expected when looking through my history. Here are a few relevant bits.

https://pets.thenest.com/lowprotein-cat-food-cats-kidney-dis...

https://feline-nutrition.org/answers/answers-what-exactly-is...

https://www.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajplegacy.1959.19...

This is interesting, can you link to a good resource I could use to read more on this (in cats, to be clear)? Googling just provided me with very shallow explanations for the mechanism and implications.

A low-protein diet might be a useful response to kidney failure, but that doesn't mean that a high-protein diet causes kidney failure. You would ice a sprained ankle, but you don't think that keeping your ankle at room temperature causes sprains, do you?

Thats good advice, usually. But there are doctors out there pushing questionable food practices. Foods a huge industry with many snake oil salesmen/women.

From the reading I've done, gluconeogenesis is demand driven. Protein -> stored fat is the most inefficient macronutrient pathway in the body, something like 50% efficiency, perhaps even less.

I've not seen evidence for protein causing atherosclerosis or kidney issues. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1262767/

Also, keep in mind doctors are taught almost 0 about nutrition in med school. I doubt many keep up on the latest nutrition research.

I think it is often suggested as rule of thumb to eat 20 grams of proteins every 4 hours, with 3 gr out of these 20 gr being compounded of leucine.

But again, if interested in all of this the best is to go see a specialist.

I've been studying the metric Protein Per Dollar for the last 3 years. Some conclusions(feel free to google or check my profile for the link, didnt want to self promote)-

>Lentils and Beans are the highest Protein Per Dollar items, (~100g/$), Flour technically is among this as well

>Chicken Breast and Milk(likely because its government subsidized) are around 50g protein/$. Some pork(around 2$/lb is competitive)

>Eggs, ground beef, and tilapia are closer to 30g protein per dollar

After that, protein gets expensive.

>20g protein per dollar is pretty good for fast food, try the dollar menu.

Most protein powder is crazy overpriced. I found Myprotein Impact and Cytosport are 60-50g protein per dollar.

We eat for 20$/week per person, and we both lift heavy weights.

As mentioned, I have these studies on my website if anyone is interested http://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/

> Most protein powder is crazy overpriced. I found Myprotein Impact and Cytosport are 60-50g protein per dollar.

But according to your numbers, that's better than eggs, chicken breast, milk, pork, eggs, ground beef, and tilapia.

The point is most are overpriced, but Myprotein is reasonable, and it's the only site I buy from, 6 months worth at a time. You can easily spend twice that on other brands at grocery stores or GNC.

> Chicken Breast and Milk(likely because its government subsidized) are around 50g protein/$.

This might be about the feed conversion ratio:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

US chickens need 1.6 g of feed per g of mass; cows, pigs, and sheep don't get much better than 4 g of feed per g of mass.

I tried eating a meat-only diet for a few months, and have mostly continued with some veg added. What I've found is that this is the most satiating diet I've ever tried after five decades of trying. I've also done a lot of high fat paleo, so I'm sure that for me the satiating element is the protein. I've also been a raw vegan and about everything else in between.

Protein fills me up and makes me stop eating far faster than the other macro nutrients. So I'm not worried about getting too much. Unlike with say low quality carbs, high quality proteins are self limiting. My body just tells me no more! If I want to know if I'm genuinely hungry I just ask myself if I want some meat. If not, I'm not.

IMHO, after a lifetime of mostly failed experimentation, (for those of us who can afford it) putting high quality high protein foods at the center of your diet is the most effective way to control and reverse obesity.

I think the satiating element is the fat rather than the protein, no?

I've performed that experiment repeatedly ad nauseum. For me the protein makes me push the plate away faster than the fat and leaves me not hungry for longer.

Protein is considered to be the most satiating. This review article calls it "fairly well established"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092422441...

However, like carbohydrates, protein does trigger ghrelin response whereas fats do not. At least in my case, a high-protein diet did nothing for my cravings.

Have you tried a high-protein vegetable based variant of the diet? Curious if it’s protein in general that works, or specifically meat.

Exactly same experience. Tried vegetarian, vegan, paleo, strict paleo, carnivore.

My actual best was eating beef only. I lost 6kg in a month without trying to lose weight. I had almost no hunger. I ate at 6pm my first meal on a couple of occasions, and normally wouldn’t feel any hunger until 1-2 pm.

No judgment here (do what you need to do) but this is both bad for the environment and bad for your health (cancer, heart disease, etc.)

That is judgy as hell, and untrue. Come back with facts or stop pushing your agenda.

The scientific basis for links between red meat production and environmental harm due to greenhouse gases, and between red meat consumption and harm to individual health, is well established.

I’m not here to criticize the choices of one individual - I genuinely don’t care - but civilizationally a reliance on beef for the majority of our protein requirements would be a singularly poor strategy.

There's one thing I've wondered about beef and greenhouse gases. People say that cows produce co2. They also say that an increase in the human population does not produce co2.

It seems that either one claim is wrong, OR cows are somehow different from humans in their effect on the carbon cycle.

One notable difference is that cows produce more methane than we do. This has the effect of increasing short term warming as methane has a much more powerful warming effect over 100 years.

But other than that, when cow emissions are cited, are people simply adding up the co2 cows breathe? If so, why is this invalid for humans? Or if it is valid for humans, then how are cow emissions determined?

I could see land use change being one reason, but that would seem to apply to humans too. Can anyone clarify this? It would seem that either both humans and cows are net co2 contributors, or neither are. (Apart from methane)

They're talking about the methane, and also about using land to grow grain for feeding the cows.

So in the latter case, more humans do cause co2 to the extent we each need food and land uses changes to provide that food.

In the case of cows, it's the same calculus: land use change to feed us. Just, more land use change in the case of cows.

So, therefore, a cow raised on pasture that isn't suited for other farming wouldn't be especially co2 producing by that measure, correct? Apart from methane.

So, we could reduce cows contributions to:

* Eliminating their methane (seaweed experiments, etc)

* restricting cattle to land suitable for pasture but not so suitable for crops

If cattle were only raised in those cases, that would effectively negate their warming impact?

This would still mean a massive reduction in beef and much higher prices of course.

That is an example of excellent critical thinking skills.

Thanks! The cow emissions thing has had me confused for a while.

I looked into it a bit further, and it seems cows produce more methane on grass, which is not good. I don't know if those seaweed proposals work on a grass based diet, or if they're only for cows largely fed grain.

Humans as primates falls under family that is mostly frugivores (meaning eats more fruits than anything else) and also there is a fact that no other animal on earth needs to cook stuff to make them edible: https://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-cooking-carcino...

Hmm. Why is it that humans spread across the planet to geographically diverse places and climates, many of which are sorely lacking (if not completely devoid) with regard to availability of fruit?

That is nonsense. Lots of population lives in places with zero fruits in the winter.

Inuits live in the north of Canada. Their ONLY food source is seals all year round. They are fine in terms of health. Their health declined with introduction of modern foods brought in by researchers and other visitors.

What about Googling "meat cancer" and then filtering by .edu and .gov domains? Or just go to Google Scholar. Then repeat for "greenhouse emissions meat".

If you're not helpless, out of thousands of papers you'll find some sources you deem "true and hella reputable".

Flamewar comments like this will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.

Losing 6kg in a month seems good if one if overweight, but not a sustainable diet; did you change it after hitting a good weight?

I was skinny-fat. It did plateau when I lost the excess.

Have you tried like, you know, a regular healthy, balanced diet? Real foods, mostly plants, not too much? Just funny you didn't include that. As a side note, the Mediterranean diet has been ranked the top diet by nutritionists several years running.

Is there an official specific Mediterranean diet? Is it the Mediterranean of Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, or Egypt, etc.? And from what era/period, because my understanding is that those places are seeing significant increases in chronic metabolic disease as well.

From what I've read, Mediterranean means something sorta along the lines of "natural whole foods, not much meat, lots of olive oil nuts and salads" -- and this is vague nutrition advice which can apply to almost any non-exclusionary diet.

I really don't know, as I don't really research diets and just see that headline year after year. My point was just that, as you said, the most recommended diet isn't going to be one with some sort of gimmick - limit your cals to this number, your carbs, to this number, only eat during these times, don't eat this one entire food group, etc. The general guidelines of Mediterranean diets seem pretty good to me, and I'm totally on board with a little red wine every day.

I agree that this sounds like a pleasant and sustainable diet. However, like many diets, it all depends on your starting point. I'm skeptical that this is an effective weight-loss diet in the sense that an obese person or someone with a chronic metabolic illness (CVD, T2D, high blood pressure) will lose weight on. Anecdotally 5 years ago I followed this diet about and I put on weight.

I’ve tried many diets. Including, ofc, just what some people would call a “balanced diet” whatever that even means. I’ve been experimenting with diets for fun for about 12y now.

Meanwhile I eat pure vegetarian (almost vegan) diet that’s low in protein (comparatively), am always sated, have a lot of energy, am strong and slim and rarely sleepy during the day.

So one piece of anecdata seems to refute your piece of anecdata. Not to mention I’m willing to bet I’m far less likely to get cancer and kidney problems than you (assuming everything else equal)

There's no need to get defensive. Merely sharing one's experience need not be an attack on yours. You didn't have to refute his anecdata.

I did not read that comment as "defensive": it is merely "powerful" (which is good).

Perhaps because you agreed with his sentiment.

One has a duty to refute poor advice - especially when OP is making general recommendations based one a single data point and where said recommendations are demonstrably bad for the environment, animals and his own health.

If we're going to speak in the language of anecdata, I must say that I tried every diet out there tried for months (all vegan, vegetarian (vegan+eggs+cheese+milk), pescetarian (vegan+salmon), rice and bean based, all meat, all meat + avacado....) And vegan diet was by far the worst (makes me feel bad, did consistently ~40% of my performance working out.) I can go on hours to advocate my own favorite diet, but this is essentially horseshit.

Also there is no conclusive evidence meat correlates with cancer. Unprocessed meat anyway.

Your comment comes of very condescending. I'm sorry, this is not intended directly to you, but this is a problem widely present with vegans. We have 5 people talking about diets, and if one them is vegan, they'll be dominating the whole thing and claim everyone else is unhealthy and clueless. This is not fact based and does not support good discussions.

Regarding not feeling well on a vegan diet, have you considered whether it was due to your gut bacteria not having adjusted yet? I was very much a carnivore for the first 32 years of my life (I was a hunter and came from a hunting family) so it took me a couple of months to adapt to a vegetarian diet due to the greatly increased fibre.

I didn’t mean to come off condescending but I did mean to attack. Recommending a high meat diet in this world is like recommending people drive gas guzzlers. It is irresponsible and selfish. The time for that behaviour has gone and we all need to be willing to give up a few things for the future of the planet.

Regarding vegans being very pushy (I am not one and don’t intend to be) I think that’s reasonable. It is unquestionable scientifically that the world will be better off if people didn’t eat meat. Given that, why would you not want to push hard for change?

On a more individual vegan diets absolutely are more healthy. The longest lived people in the world (subtracting genetics) are vegetarian or vegan. I cannot fathom how you could think otherwise; I mean just look at stomach and colorectal cancers. Figures are very clear.

> I didn’t mean to come off condescending but I did mean to attack. Recommending a high meat diet in this world is like recommending people drive gas guzzlers. It is irresponsible and selfish. The time for that behaviour has gone and we all need to be willing to give up a few things for the future of the planet.

This sort of rhetoric does nothing except taking the guilt from producer and regulator to the consumer. If we think there is a problem with meat production, there certainly is, then we need to regulate meat industry instead of harshly judging meat-eaters with hope of making them feel enough guilt to turn vegan. This is childish. The reality is we don't have enough power to regulate meat industry so we just turn into shaming our peers, something we do have power to. But this is an ineffective method.

> On a more individual vegan diets absolutely are more healthy. The longest lived people in the world (subtracting genetics) are vegetarian or vegan. I cannot fathom how you could think otherwise; I mean just look at stomach and colorectal cancers. Figures are very clear.

No they are not clear, vegan diet is absolutely not the healthiest period. The research on this matter is very vague and pretty much no one knows, pretending otherwise is intellectual dishonesty. Up to last 20 years we thought fats are evil and cause heart disease, which is wrong and now we know fats and cholesterol do not correlate with heart disease. We thought fibers are important to prevent constipation, which recent research shows otherwise. We learn more and more every day how important Omega 3 is.

The only countries in the world with a significant vegan and vegetarian population are India and Mexico [1] and the rest only has vegans as a single digit percent minority. Also, pretending "Mediterranean diet" is meatless is horseshit. I was grown up with Mediterranean diet, and people do eat fish or meat quite regularly, except proportionally much much less. Pretty much everyone I know from my childhood ate Mediterranean diet, and I know absolutely no vegans except the ones I met in US. I do not necessarily advocate eating meat every day, but there is simply no evidence suggesting taking it completely out of your diet is a good idea. Hell, there is substantial evidence suggesting taking fatty fish out of diet is a bad idea.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country

I can definitely confirm this, meat only I can go 23h+ without eating and not be hungry, consuming ~2000kcal at a meal.

There's some good evidence that protein is more filling on a per-calorie basis than other foods [1].

But there's also a lot of other foods that are primarily carbohydrates and more filling than meat. Boiled potatoes, oatmeal, apples, and oranges all beat beef, eggs, and lentils in the above study.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7498104 and full text https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Petocz/publicatio...

"if you are worrying about the amount of protein in your diet, then you are almost certainly eating more than enough."

I wonder where that author got that from... last I checked whenever I don't eat enough protein my hair and nails get brittle and fall, my skin gets dry, and I get random muscle pain...

I had those issues for years and years of my life, and tried everything, only after I went to a almost zero carb diet (that at the time I didn't even knew it had a name, it was just something random I tried after trying everything else) that those issues went away... and as soon I eat "recommended" level of protein instead of eatingn "too much", the problems return.

I respect your anecdote, but there are many other factors that could be in play here (for example vitamins that you get along with whatever protein source you use).

If you'd like to suggest that everyone is eating too little protein, you should setup a double-blind study with a few hundred participants.

From my understanding, if I were a doctor I'd want to check on the person's B vitamin levels, particularly biotin. There are metabolic disorders that affect the body's ability to absorb biotin, and it could be that there's something off with the intestinal bacteria that normally produce the bulk of our needed biotin.

> if you are worrying about the amount of protein in your diet, then you are almost certainly eating more than enough. This is the paradox of our new protein obsession.

This is off to a very bad start. Enough is not the same as optimal. Some of us strive for more than enough.

What's the difference between enough and optimal in this context? What results would each level produce?

If someone is working out regularly but not over the top strenuously, but feels sore the next day every time, the first course is to increase protein.

This is, quite simply, horrible advice.

If you are strength training regularly and slowly increasing the weights you are using, mild muscle soreness should be expected. If the soreness is bothering them, there are several options that are known to help - stretching, additional warmup or cool down exercises, ice, heat, or massage.

The signs that could suggest a protein deficiency are decreasing muscle mass, weakness, and/or swelling, but even then you would suggest a trip to the doctor, not simply to increase protein intake.

I'm not sure how does that answer my question. Is that enough or optimal? And what is the other?

More is not always better. It seems quite common among gym-bros to believe that because such and such study says olympic athletes do better on 160g of protein per day than 60g/day that means they should eat at least 250g/day. But from what I can tell, studies vary quite wildly on the base level of protein necessary for adequate health, let alone the usefulness of additional protein.

How can the protein obsession be called new when I remember it being all the rage in the early 2000s? I’ve been hearing constantly about Atkins like diets since that time.

I consider myself pretty normal(although I do lift weights), and I have meat protein with every meal. Protein Per Dollar, you can get chicken breast at 50g/$, making it very affordable.

That is the 'obsession' being discussed.

If you have lived in Europe, you know how absurd this sounds.

Because it's a fairly recent thing that every freakin thing has to be labeled with protein in big letters on the box now. Cereal, waffles, whatever you can think of comes in these high protein versions, or just more visibly advertises the protein which has always existed in it. Low carb started popularly as an Atkins thing exclusively, now there tons of variants of low carb diets.

We in the first world are overcomplicating eating. This leads to food obsession and disordered eating overall. Restrictive diets as such are more of problem than a solution as they again create unhealthy food focus. Diet industry is an extremely powerful entity as you can see even in the comments here, where every single person has been deeply influenced by contradictory data.

We should focus much more on experiences of living, how our bodies feel when we consume foods overall and looking to balance out natural sources of foods with modern sources without losing quality of life.

"if you are worrying about the amount of protein in your diet, then you are almost certainly eating more than enough."

This is not strictly true for every diet. If you consume a plant based diet and don't eat meat substitutes, you can quite easily come in below the recommended protein level.

In my case, eating a calorie restricted vegan diet to lose weight, consuming sufficient proteins to meet the 0.8g/kg baseline while maintaining a caloric deficit requires daily planning. It's by no means impossible, but you do have to think about it.

Also seitan is your friend.

I love seitan, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily healthy. A lot has to be removed from wheat gluten. Probably soy/tempeh are better for being Whole Foods

Very recently there was an article in the NYT about the benefits of eating protein, and more so than the recommended amount, if you're trying to increase strength (something that's != body building). It benefits everyone, esp at older age.

A review of studies showed a clear advantage of high protein diet.

It's amazing how easily people are alienated. I'm immune to this protein fad. As I still have a working rational mind. But people are obsessed with protein. Dozens of eggs. Whey protein. Chicken, chicken etc. It's appalling.

Post an average day of eating, someone(or I) will calculate your protein/day.

Its because nutrition science reporting is actually even worse than other science reporting. Every day I can pull up an article that contradicts the article making the rounds the day prior, it's awful.

So people do what people do: believe whatever it is they want to. People like bacon, so they convince themselves that high-protein high-fat diets are a panacea for the worlds ills, and the bad reporting lends fuel to the fire.

what food groups is your body designed to process?

https://www.webmd.com/diet/a-z/blood-type-diet

Whenever the vegan/protein fight begins, I always wonder if the vegan has considered their body design and chemical composition.

What enzymes are best supported by their natural internal chemistry?

How does this affect the internal biome that breaks down the food they eat and how their body uses the results?

Speaking as an old-fashiioned O+, the more ribeye's I eat, the better I feel, but my body craves the fast acting sugars that are so destructive to my endocrine system.

I was looking at a traditional Portuguese recipe book and (besides the sweets!) it’s steiking how protein rich their food is. If it doesn’t have fish, chicken or meat, it’s got beans, vegetables, lupins etc

What's the problem with being aware? It's difficult to accidentally eat the minimum requirements for protein, without overeating carbs/fats.

No one talks about the side affects of eating meat. :)

What are the side effects of eating meat?

Meat sweats.

Fogo de Chao....mmmmmmm

It's probably worth remembering that high-protein diets (remembering that western diets tend to already be quite high-protein to begin with) are a risk factor for kidney stones. Generally I'm predisposed to being quite skeptical of fad diets with extreme elements like focusing on one macro nutrient group almost to the exclusion of others.

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