One quote from an interesting article from the Nutrition Coalition about “The Erosion of Protein in the US Dietary Guidelines”
6 ounces of meat per day? Ah…I’m waaaaay over that.
Thought this was interesting too:
The entire article is worth reading, as they discuss how there’s a push to using plant-based proteins, but at the same time, they have to limit the amount because calories go up to get the same amount of protein as you could get via animal protein.
Well I am 76 been eating animal protein my whole life as well as plant protein. The US guidelines are do bogus, ad they are controlled my by the food industry trying to sale the garage they create in a chemistry lab and saying it is better for us. I believe in nothing but real food. If it is a box it is garbage and be longs in the garbage bin.
By the way at 76 I have never been hospitalized and the worst illness I have ever had is a mild flu.
Why do people call protein sources protein I can’t comprehend. Actually, 5 ounce of protein (protein meaning protein) is about my target. But I need it on a 1000, 2000 and 4000 kcal days alike. My protein need doesn’t get halved or doubled if my energy intake changes that way.
Do (first world) people nowadays weigh their food…? Even with my many years on/off tracking, it doesn’t seem properly living life to me. I understand some people may need it for reasons but normally we just eat and listen to our body if it’s possible and take those cues, not dietary guidelines… Guidelines for items is one thing, it’s very noticeable which item we grab but the numbers? I can’t possibly know my actual protein intake, it’s inaccurate even if I weigh absolutely everything but if I eat elsewhere, it’s a mystery. And it’s not a problem if I get satiated and feel when I had enough. It doesn’t work so great if I eat “everything” but for protein? I always am in an okay range, no way for me to eat a really wrong amount of protein as long as I have food available. (It’s so odd for me so many people - who has no food access problems - undereat protein, truly, not just compared to the huge numbers some people think right. But on a really good diet it’s probably harder to do…? I don’t know. It depends on what is a good diet for someone and many other factors. But I would think without eating a ton of sugary starches it’s easier to get enough protein - for the people who don’t have my urge to eat protein. I need my high protein on any diet, I just stay or get hungry until I get it.)
I have no idea about protein recommendations here, if one exists, I never met it in my life. Not like I need it, it’s not like I have any particular control on mine (but it’s automatically good anyway) but now I know how I should eat to get a really good modest number: 400-700g meat, some eggs and little dairy does the trick. I don’t even really need to track at this point (but I do as I am curious), these give me good macros too unless I overdo the fattiness. And great nutrition and everything (unless I overdo liver as it’s way too nutritious).
I only know the fat recommendations here and the fact Hungarians just couldn’t care less about it. That’s fun, the high carb intake with the high fat intake not so much. I eat as much protein as the highest protein eater groups here (males in some age bracket). I loved to read the statistics, they were quite interesting. Too bad there were only averages, it would be interesting to see some smaller, special groups and their numbers. Many people eat way more protein than I do as they need it (or think they do) but they are invisible in the average age and gender group data.
Well, in the US, the DGA have tremendous power. For instance, in my kids’ schools, they can’t get full fat milk and the food is supposed to meet the DGA’s guidance. The food, therefore, is low fat crap. Not a lot of meat. But you can get high-sugar chocolate skim milk. Yum.
If they further erode guidance for protein, that means even less meat.
Poor kids 
Here there is no salt shaker on the table I have heard… (Well, it’s easy to bring our own, at least.)
We barely had any meat when I was a kid (I mean, we often had it but the amount was pitiful), it was just normal for school food being bad (and cheap). I ate well at home (I mean, I got satiated and liked it, it was too carby…etc. for me but I had no idea). At some point Mom and I realized it just doesn’t worth it for me to wait hungrily for an hour for the subpar school food… Thankfully, she had a flexible schedule and I could eat freshly made food (not like a not freshly made one would have been bad but still, even better). Mostly vegetarian food but there was no problem with that.
We often bought our elevensies in the school. Like, ishler with cocoa. I have difficulties to wrap my head around that as I am not the type to eat sweets for a meal (it was for the end of every meal) but I remember eating that sometimes (maybe because the alternative was some sandwich and I disliked the common sandwiches, close to no substance). Poor kids with too poor choices. I was smart but not at all regarding my food.
facepalm
I see no problem with little meat (though some people seem to need it…? it’s different for them then) except people probably wouldn’t get enough protein without it for some reason. I ate high protein on my vegetarian diet because I love and need protein and I crave it so hard. A big part of it was animal protein, just as good as meat protein. Surely there is some nutrients where meat shines more and even though eggs have almost all of them, I just can’t eat a ton of eggs with the same easy as I can eat a lot of meat but when I was younger, it wasn’t the case. But people seem to eat meat easier than eggs. In normal food, I mean, not some sugary dessert thing for eggs but even in them, eggs have a lowish ratio for others. My strongly egg based desserts aren’t what they eat. They even mess up the traditionally very eggy sponge cakes with a lot of problematic (and if you ask me, unnecessary) stuff. So… Knowing these about people, yes, meat probably helps a lot with protein. (It made me overeat protein even more so I quickly banned meat on keto but that was me in the past, things changed since. Now I know how to eat much meat and getting nice macros.) But there are still so many other protein sources.
And I do think less carbs could help with protein too… Some people lack my protein eating urge and they may feel a stomach full with sugary starches and whatnot and stop eating. I may eat a ton of fat and carbs and still crave protein, my body knows what it wants. It should be normal even if not to the extent I have it (why can’t I wait until the next day to get ALL my high protein? it’s annoying sometimes) but look at many people, eating low protein and not feeling any urge to eat more protein. So at least the ones who would track or otherwise figure out a proper protein need, could try to eat more protein sources.
Not like it’s easy to tell what is a proper protein need. I would think it’s the luckiest macro in that regard, I have found some nice range many years ago (1-2g/kg for LBM, I pretty much agree with that. our energy intake doesn’t matter, activity level do and there are individual differences but this range isn’t bad for most people) and it’s well accepted by many. It’s normal protein have this and the other two don’t as they don’t have such a natural upper limit but even the individual needs aren’t so wildly different. So we have this - but we still can find very different ranges. Some vegan sites are quite horrible, I hope not many believes in that but knowing humankind… Yes they do. Bodybuilders may go into the other direction…
By the way, 5-6 ounces of “protein”, what do they mean? 5-6 oz meat and a ton of other protein sources sounds good to me, 5-6 ounces or protein (yeah they don’t mean it) is unnecessary high for many of us… Almost everything we eat have protein. Yes, plant protein has its problems without completing it but we eat so much complete animal protein beyond meat, at least I always did. And oz of protein source isn’t informative at all as some contains less and some more. And even if it’s meat with its smallish protein content range, is it raw or cooked? It is NOT informative. It’s as useless as “portions” or calorie density. Our bodies want a certain amount of protein and other things. Mine wants 130+ g protein and that’s it. It doesn’t care which animal product gives me the protein or if it happens in 1 or 6 meals, it just wants it all until bedtime. But it accepts plant proteins too, actually, it is just not what I normally do nowadays. But I have the most experience with mixed animal and plant protein (without meat) and I had to eat the same amount then. But I mostly get my protein from animals and anyway, it’s possible I only need this much for satiation and my body gets enough from all essential amino acids if there is a limiting one. If one depends on plant proteins very much, I consider it right to do some completing and rather eating more protein than trying to stay at the minimum, that’s never a bad idea anyway unless one has the condition where very little protein must be eaten (how they function with that little I don’t know but that’s true that we may overestimate our protein need. my SO got very muscular thighs eating half as much protein as I did. a man doesn’t necessary need 100g protein at all, not even when gaining though that is more and more rare as we lower the protein, of course. I really love to eat way more and I encourage to eat more than strictly needed, we may not digest it all, we don’t know the actual numbers anyway, aging people should have more, people eating a lot of plants should have more, probably, eat more when losing fat, getting more active, wanting to gain, obviously… My SO couldn’t donate blood plasma often with his smallish intake, too bad my veins aren’t good enough for it, I so wouldn’t have that problem… So that’s another reason to consume more… But we don’t need to force-feed ourselves high amounts either especially if we suspect or experience that our individual body is just fine with less. So stay safe but don’t go too far. Not like many are prone to that but some are especially when they try to meet some inflated target numbers highly incompatible with them.)
This is very sad and disturbing but fits with observations I’ve been making of elderly people in general.
If I see an older (let’s say over 70) couple, the woman is frequently more frail than the man. The woman is more likely to have postural problems than the man. In general, women are more likely to get osteoporosis than men, and it kicks in at an earlier age than in men. I believe this is because:
I look at what my mother-in-law eats for breakfast, usually a bowl of oatmeal, and the quantities of meat she eats at lunch and dinner are not even close to the RDA. I know she is not an outlier.
And… the RDA should be higher for older adults, since it becomes harder to assimilate protein the older we get. Even though my MIL is very healthy, she is slowly becoming misshapen. She doesn’t get enough protein and she doesn’t do resistance training, so her muscles are not maintaining her posture/bone structure. I don’t know her osteoporosis status.
The other problem I see where women are concerned is according to the excerpt posted above, for women to get those 5.5 ounces of protein a day, it requires eating 2000 calories a day. I bet there is not one middle-aged or older woman I know who actually eats as much as 2000 calories a day.
The messages sent by the government and those pushing the vegetarian agenda are especially doing a disservice to women and the elderly. It’s no wonder falls are the leading cause of death as we age. We are not eating enough protein to keep our bodies strong and stable, and the government is promoting that. 
Fortunately that’s no problem, I get at least 100g protein on my super rare 1000 kcal days too, without even trying but it’s me… Who eats according to guides? Most people don’t even track (of course, why would they)… It’s concerning that they don’t crave the necessary protein, that probably would solve the problem (and maybe not eating so much carbs? but HCLF may work, it allegedly does to some). Other animals instinctively eat enough protein if they have access to enough food (not only meat eaters, even hummingbirds!!! they catch insects when they need it), why can’t humans?
The importance of protein is very well-known, IDK what the average person think about the amount though. As I wrote, I never even heard about a guide for that here. Or anywhere else until I started to dig up numbers regarding that (I have found all kind of numbers then but it’s not that hard to find places where the people seem to have some idea about it. I thought smarter bodybuilders will know it, the numbers made much sense to me and I adapted their range, I just can’t use it for my own protein intake as I don’t have that kind of control but maybe it’s better in my case, I probably need a lot and I have no way to undereat it).
It’s quite sad that people who have problems from protein undereating don’t even get the help from their doctors at least. Eat more protein, they should say and the one in question should do it… Is it that hard?
The equation for break a hip, die of pneumonia! Or… breaking the hip in the first place!
Fighting my mother on this for over a year now!
Every woman should have Gabbie Lyon as their doc!
