nftu2 hours ago
It's funny that protein everything is taking off just as more data seems to come out that you really don't need as much protein as previously thought, even for vigorous weightlifting (~0.82g/lb of lean body mass seems to be a sufficient number), which isn't really all that hard to get from regular old high protein food. There's no good reason to infuse it in everything. I've been lifting for many years now, and have not noticed a difference from when I used to follow the old 1g/lb of body weight rule.
source: https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein...
scosman17 minutes ago
Most folks (at least in North America) get no where near the recommended level. It's silly to have protein infused junk food, but a shake or protein powder make it a lot easier to get to the right level than remembering to have 3 hard boiled eggs.
michalu10 minutes ago
0.82g/lb is a lot of protein. That's basically what what bro science was saying for years (2g per kg) and it's not easy to hit if you count quality protein that's bioavailable so I don't know what the point is here.
For averge Joe to hit 0.82g/lb he would need to eat 600g of lean beef every day. Or 33 eggs.
... also Menno Henselmans while he does a lot of great work that outweights everything he posts tons pseudo-scientific where's often clear he just did a basic Google Scholar search. Plus he seems too eaeger to "debunk" but often barely even understands deficiencies of many of the studies he references. A lot of people take his website for some holy grail of "scientific bodybuilding" because he's trying too hard to market it that way and he's been wrong many times and built arguments on foundations he barely understands.
Examine.com for example has different figures and it's a website where studies are reviewed by actual PHDs and graded by their strength not just simple Google Scholar search.
Melatonic7 minutes ago
600g of lean beef is how much protein ?
michalu4 minutes ago
about 150g
YZF42 minutes ago
Isn't age also a factor?
What's "regular old high protein food"? Do you mean something like meat every meal? When I recorded my meals I found my protein intake to be quite low (I don't eat meat. I eat fish but not every day.).
IsToman hour ago
And somehow all the people I've met mentioning figures from papers (be it 1g, 1.4g or whatever) always seem to skip the "lean" part of "lean body mass" part, which is again a decent difference.
LanceH44 minutes ago
In the imperial vs metric conversation, the protein debate has my favorite use of units: 1 gram per pound.
mattmaroon41 minutes ago
I laugh every time, but also, Americans know their weight in lbs but nutritional panels are in metric. It’s sensible nonsense.
al_borland35 minutes ago
All the people on GLP-1 drugs are told to make sure they get enough protein. My dad, who is on one of them, was saying his friend (also on one) was saying he felt it was like a cheat code for being able to eat pasta... so I think a lot of people are eating the same old stuff, but just feeling less guilty about it.
They still want to eat Doritos, and now they can buy the protein Doritos and act like they are following the doctor's orders, even though that's not in the spirit of what the doctor was saying. There are also a lot of products that change little to nothing, but still slap a "Protein" label on the front of the box.
We saw similar things with "low carb" versions of everything during the Atkin's craze. Before that we saw everything made into "low fat" in the 80s, which we're still suffering from. It's likely a big reason why we as a society have a need for weight loss drugs in the first place.
Melatonic10 minutes ago
Wasn't that always bro science ? From what I remember when I looked into it most people couldn't digest more than approximately 1.7g of protein for every kg of body weight. At the very upper end. And that's just digestion - not even actual use - and it had to be spread out across the day.
hellojimboan hour ago
Your priors on what normal amount of protein amounts to is way off of the general public, at least as of 5 years ago.
ngaiorn24 minutes ago
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sp4cec0wb0y5 hours ago
The next wave will be "fiber-maxxing", with the increased rate of colon cancer in millenials and gen z. Seriously guys, get your fiber intake.
armchairhacker2 minutes ago
That was last wave. Personally, I’m wary of products with added fiber, but always choose whole wheat or whole grain. If needed, you can supplement with psyllium.
wunderlotus30 minutes ago
I work in the grocery industry and can say fiber era is already here. It maybe hasn’t reached most consumers yet but food companies are making the products and trend forecasters called it years ago. It’s going to be a tsunami. And not necessarily a bad one bc it’s an easy sell. Lots of ppl really do need more fiber.
vmg124 hours ago
Thankfully I think demand will have to grow a lot for legumes to rise in price much since legumes are basically a byproduct required for growing other more valuable crops.
It's great that beans look kind of gross because otherwise people would learn they taste really good and are healthy at the same time.
belorn17 minutes ago
Taste is very individual. I personally can't stand the taste of dry beans, to the point where I have a strong aversion just to the texture itself. Fresh green beans can be fine (usually has a sweet or acidic taste), and beans used in Asian food like glass noodles or soy source don't taste like beans at all to me.
When people talk about eating more beans, or when people talk about using it as an ingredient, it usually only mean dry beans.
halflife4 hours ago
Beans look gross?
vmg123 hours ago
Not dry but they don't exactly look appetizing when cooked and covered in bean juice if you don't already like them.
Izikiel434 hours ago
I think the problem with beans is not looking gross, it's that they cause you to contribute a lot of methane to climate warming (you fart a lot).
gumby3 hours ago
Now I have to go to the lab and check (we have a ringdown sensor tuned to CH4/CO2/H2O precise into single digit ppb).
Some humans have methanogens in their gut and these people exhale methane (gut->bloodstream->lungs) and they can emit quite a lot, at least enough to completely fuck up our lab work. Our lead scientist is such a person, and the effect is so bad that he exhales into a bin liner when setting up an experiment.
Or he did: this was so inconvenient that we automated all our instruments, valves, etc so we could run experiments from the kitchen or even at home (lots of RPis which I wouldn’t normally use for anything important). Fortunately this also automated all the data collection.
But now I have to run a trial to see if my diet modulates anal CH4 emissions. Thanks HN!
Izikiel4335 minutes ago
Let me know how it goes, I have a home sensor I'm married to for that (and she is very loud with alerts)
gumby6 minutes ago
The sensor she likely uses is only good in the hundreds of ppm. Fortunately the LFL for methane is roughly 50,000 ppm so there’s no need to give up smoking when a bout of methane-heavy flatulence occurs.
adonovan3 hours ago
The methane quantity from human legume consumption is negligible, and beans are just about the most greenhouse-efficient source of protein there is.
Cow “farts” (actually rumen belches) are something else entirely.
Izikiel4335 minutes ago
Wooosh
vmg123 hours ago
That's only if your not acclimated to a high fiber diet.
luke54414 hours ago
Are there studies showing the increased cancer rate is caused (or at least correlated with) reduced fiber intake? Or is this just a guess of yours?
sarchertech3 hours ago
Low fiber intake is very heavily correlated with an increase in all cause mortality.
Every 10g per day is correlated with a 10% reduction in all cause mortality (up to 30g). Mostly from a reduction in cardiac and cancer deaths.
gumby3 hours ago
There’s an enormous amount of data on this topic. So much I’ll just tell you to do a web search rather than pointing to some papers in is response: it’s just so pervasive and going back for decades.
Use a conventional search not an ai-generated summary as that will have influencer slop mixed in. Though oddly, I’ve never seen an anti-fibre influencer, but have seen lots of pro-fibre influencer posts!
llm_nerd26 minutes ago
> There’s an enormous amount of data on this topic.
FWIW, the evidence demonstrating that fibre is protective against colon cancer is limited, and when studies try to adjust for behavioural differences, the colon cancer reduction disappears.
Actual RCTs that randomly assigned subjects found no difference in polyp rates between high and low fibre diets.
For decades it was indeed widely observed that the people who ate a lot of fibre tended to have a lower incident rate. But the sort of person who has a high fibre diet almost always has a lot of other protective habits and norms: They're less likely to smoke, less likely to drink to excess, they tend to eat less red meat, they eat less sugar and UPFs, and so on.
As is often the case, these habits don't tend to happen in isolation, and this is where observational studies fail. So if you take someone with a lot of bad habits and supplement fibre, they'll have better cholesterol control, glycemic benefits, and of course regularity benefits, but it won't measurably move the needle on colon cancer rates.
This is all just conversational, but the current consensus is that fibre, or lack thereof, is not a contributor behind the rise in colon cancer among younger subjects. There are many suspected causes, all moving the needle enough that incidence rates jump.
gumby8 minutes ago
Thanks!
hobo1234 hours ago
In Germany they already started. There's protein XYZ everywhere, but I've recently seen ads for high fiber drinks.
joshdavham4 hours ago
I’m pretty puzzled honestly at how many people are fiber deficient.
I once did the calculation for my daily fiber intake and it was well beyond the daily recommended minimum.
What are people eating (or not eating) that leads to a fiber deficiency?
vmg123 hours ago
If you don't eat legumes or whole grain bread it's not hard to be fiber deficient.
dfxm124 hours ago
Of course. These things are cyclical. Some might remember the f plan diet or similar.
sp4cec0wb0y5 hours ago
I know no one asked but if you're a gym bro and looking for easy fiber intake, get the carb balance tortillas from mission. 17g of fiber per tortilla.
ipsento6064 hours ago
that "fiber" is chemically modified resistant starch
the FDA allows it to be called fiber, but it acts differently in the body to the soluble and insoluble fiber that most people are familiar with
IMO, it's a mistake to treat fiber as a single, fungible food component, rather than as a family of different substances with different health effects
if you're looking for "easy fiber intake", there is much more and stronger evidence for psyllium-based soluble fiber, widely available in cheap and convenient drinks like metamucil (I prefer formulations without the dye and maltodextrin, but that's getting into the weeds)
anjel4 minutes ago
Metamucil (and it's unbranded brethren) are decidely un-cheap
scotty7917 minutes ago
> that "fiber" is chemically modified resistant starch
So basically toss a shovel of potato starch into your protein shake and be done with it. It's flavored so strongly to make whey protein palatable that you won't even notice.
chneu4 hours ago
Just eat real food.
Stop substituting and finding short cuts. Just eat a balanced meal with vegetables.
nojito4 hours ago
You’re grossly underestimating how much fiber a person needs to eat.
nradov4 hours ago
How much fiber does a person need to eat, as measured in weight or volume of common vegetables?
slifinan hour ago
Millions of people have gone years without fiber intentionally or not
I wouldn't sweat it - just focus on eating unprocessed food fiber or not
Izikiel434 hours ago
Men around 40g per day, it's like 2 pounds of a balanced mix of legumes, beans, vegetables, whole grains and fruits.
loehnsbergan hour ago
That is a lot of food. Even if I’d eat just that, I’d have to very consciously force myself to eat one kilo of that, unless it’s something like watermelon.
UncleOxidant5 hours ago
And OliPops have 6 to 9g per can.
dyauspitr4 hours ago
That’s the difference between protein and fiber though. You can essentially spam the amount of protein you take in and the excess just gets expelled. The same is not true of fiber too much fiber has downsides.
jjtheblunt4 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezoar
presumably is what you allude to?
pull_my_finger3 hours ago
That doesn't happen magically, and "spamming" protein can definitely damage your kidneys.
dyauspitr3 hours ago
This is really only a concern for people that already have damaged kidneys.
Izikiel434 hours ago
> spam the amount of protein you take in and the excess just gets expelled.
Not true? It becomes fat if you are above your caloric intake.
Fiber on the other is just undigestible, so you always expel it, though I agree that too much fiber will cause issues.
dolorian5 hours ago
Fiber is indigestible and not required for human health. It's also a cause of bloating, constipation and gas... because it's indigestible. Fiber does have the benefit of slowing sugar digestion, but you can and should just eat less sugar. Some forms of fiber can be converted to fatty acids by bacteria in your colon, while also producing other byproducts. You can get those fatty acids by eating more meat without the added stress on your digestive system.
Compare the human digestive system of a human being to a wolf (carnivore), a pig (omnivore) and a gorilla (herbivorous hindgut fermenter). The human gut by proportions sits somewhere between wolf and pig.
Look up the actual studies on fiber rather than pop science articles, and examine them critically. They'll do things like assume that pooping more often and having a greater volume of poop is healthier, with no basis. Things like how easy it is to poop or feelings of being bloated are harder to quantify, so they're typically ignored.
Or you get the extrapolating cancer risk based on some vaguely understood biomarker, which is one step below "in mice" as far as science goes.
iosjunkie5 hours ago
My LDL numbers beg to differ.
crisdux5 hours ago
I think there are two main philosophies at play. Either you give the gut bulk through eating fiber, or you eat foods to maintain a fast transit time. I lean toward the transit time approach by eating plenty of easy to digest simple carbs. Personally I've never felt better.
I think eating hard-to-digest, crappy proteins(like all the protein added to shakes, bars, etc)... paired with fermentable bulk fiber... is actually the recipe for inflammation, irritation and colon cancer.
deadbabe4 hours ago
No studies show protein has anything to do with colon cancer and in fact it could even have protective effects.
Alive-in-20254 hours ago
But we do have endless studies showing not eating enough fiber increases your chance of having colon cancer, and we also know a lot of people today don't have nearly as much fiber as people did in the past.
crisdux4 hours ago
mainstream science literally links heavy meat consumption to colon cancer all the time.
deadbabe3 hours ago
There are other sources of protein.
chneu4 hours ago
Won't happen.
The main reason protein is highly sought after is that it's an ego/prestige thing associated with excessive self care.
Our diets are very heavily connected to our social status. Being able to consume that level of protein is all about excessive self care.
Fiber is cheap and viewed as a poor person thing. Nobody is holding up their expensive grass fed fiber to brag about the environmental toll it takes, like folks do with their meat and whatnot.
A lot of the protein fad can be traced back to dairy farmers pushing whey into every product they can.
conorcleary4 hours ago
Not the farmers; the producers, distributors, and everything on the way to the consumer. Research labs and marketing agencies construct fads and push it through their magazines and media IP.
tracerbulletxan hour ago
I'd argue it was when biochemical reactions started building self replicating micro-organisms out of it, but a health craze is fine too I guess.
mattmaroon41 minutes ago
I can’t read the article because of the paywall and thought that’s what it would be about.
anjel8 minutes ago
Hope you like cricket flour!
armchairhacker4 minutes ago
Actually, I believe bugs have been tried and turn out less efficient than whatever we have now. I believe soy is cheapest.
adrian_b5 hours ago
The actual content of the article is about the great increase in the price of whey protein concentrate since last summer, until now, apparently due to greatly increased demand for it.
Where I live, in the European Union, the price of whey protein concentrate had doubled around the beginning of 2026 and now it has reached even a triple price in comparison with a year earlier.
For a few years in the past, before the price increase, whey protein concentrate had been cheaper than the cheapest meat, per its content of protein. Now it has become about 50% more expensive than chicken breast, per protein content.
This is annoying for me, because where I live there were only 2 ways for achieving a diet satisfying simultaneously 3 criteria without including meat: sufficient daily protein intake, not exceeding the calories threshold that would cause rapid gain of weight and price not greater than an equivalent diet with meat (there are a lot of plant protein concentrates, but all are many times more expensive than cheap meat, at least here).
One way is to extract at home gluten from wheat flour, which is an activity that wastes too much time and too much water, the other way was to use whey protein concentrate as an ingredient for various dishes made from vegetables, to increase their protein content.
At the current price, the use of whey protein concentrate is no longer attractive, despite the fact that whey protein is the ideal source of protein, with optimum amino-acid composition and perfect digestibility.
The FT article believes that this sudden increase in the demand for whey protein concentrate was caused by the widespread use of drugs like Ozempic for weight loss, which also causes loss of muscular mass, leading to the use of protein supplements to prevent it, and also to the new US dietary guidelines, which recommend an increased consumption of protein (the old US recommendations for daily protein intake were notorious as much too low, i.e. they were at a level that prevents death, without ensuring good health, but the new recommendations might have jumped on the other side of an optimum intake).
The only possible positive consequence of this huge price increase is that it might convince some people to invest in the production of whey protein concentrate from cultures of genetically-modified fungi, instead of from cow milk. There already exists a strain of the fungus Trichoderma, whose genome was modified to secrete cow whey protein, instead of an enzyme secreted by the wild fungi.
Unlike with "lab-grown meat", there is no doubt that it will be possible to produce protein powders of whey protein or of egg-white protein in a cheaper way from fungal cultures than from milk or eggs.
n4r934 minutes ago
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but 1kg of whey protein on Amazon seems to cost around £20, which is roughly what I remember it costing back when I used to use it 7 or 8 years ago.
axelthegerman4 hours ago
> where I live there were only 2 ways for achieving a diet satisfying simultaneously 3 criteria without including meat
If you want the same price or cheaper than meat, why not eat meat then?
I'm celiac, I cannot eat gluten and a GF diet can be up to 600% the price of a gluten diet - too bad for me (but not just because of the price)
adrian_b4 hours ago
It is likely that in the near future I will return to eating a moderate amount of chicken meat, after I will finish my reserves of whey protein concentrate, which were bought a long time ago, when it was cheap.
Most plant protein concentrates are not an acceptable substitute for meat, because their very high prices make obvious that their production is less efficient than that of meat, i.e. it requires a lot of extra energy and chemical reagents.
More than half of my protein intake comes from plant sources like lentils and wheat, but I cannot raise that percentage to 100%, because I gain weight immediately.
Fortunately, I do not have any problem with gluten, so I can enjoy bread that I bake at home, which is tasty and which has a negligible cost per protein content.
boothby5 hours ago
I was hoping this would be an article about molecular evolution
clayhacks5 hours ago
I’ve definitely noticed this in my diet. I am a gym rat so I eat a lot of protein, but I’ve seen an uptick in other protein focused snacks and foods around. At my office the protein shakes in the fridge disappear pretty quick compared to the soda, perhaps due to folks who want to get more protein easily more than other gym rats
Lyngbakr5 hours ago
CBC's Front Burner podcast also covered this recently in a great episode. Recommended!
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/209-front-burner/epis...
surfmike5 hours ago
> setting a daily target of 1.2–1.6 grammes per kilogramme of body weight, 50-100 per cent above the longstanding recommended dietary allowance of 0.8g
This is a good range for improving for maintaining your body composition; preserving or building muscle. Fitness coaches are recommending 2.2g/lb (1g per lb) or even more which doesn't have much scientific backing. 1.6g/kg seems to be the max that will benefit muscle gain.
On the other hand, there are some (Valter Longo, biologist at UCLA) who say that such high protein will reduce your overall longevity. He recommends 0.36g protein per lb body weight.
I don't know what to do with this info. Personally, I stay around 1.2g protein/lb (and exercise) as a middle ground.
happytoexplain5 hours ago
> 2.2g/lb (1g per lb)
Did you mean 2.2g/kg?
al_borland43 minutes ago
I had been seeing the protein marketing push and largely ignored it, until I went to go buy some protein powder and it was triple the price of what I expected/remembered. I went to look at that time and found this as the answer.
I'm annoyed by it, but like every other food fad, I assume it will be temporary... unless GLP-1s make it a mainstay. I also wonder if we'll see prices return to normal if demand goes down, or if this is the new normal and companies will just pocket the margin.
iJohnDoe44 minutes ago
100% due to marketing, influencers, and people wanting to make money.
I remember reading an article from a couple that were professional body builders. It was pretty insightful. I also will not forget that they said they never once drank protein shakes. All of their protein came from their diets, such as eating turkey and other foods.
Also, most people don’t work out hard enough to need a protein shake. It’s usually just extra calories and ultimately turning into fat.
mawadev5 hours ago
If I go to the store, I can buy extra protein milk, it is the most absurd product. Its like taking vitamin pill supplement tier marketing
redanddead4 hours ago
Genuinely, we were all deficient for so long
Look at our fucking food! We have smooth brained governance in food, why do we still have real sugar in candy when we can (AND DO) use fake sugar.
We of course fucked up protein intake, this is a CORRECTION towards healthier food as it always should have fucking been
We literally have 1/8 of the US population, and possibly hundreds of millions of people globally, on fucking peptides to protect themselves from the insane food we don’t want to regulate
smooc28 minutes ago
Now, why would eggs be so expensive?
cosmotic3 hours ago
Except in China where it's very hard to find protien supplements or lean meat. I visited two years ago and really struggled.
JTbane4 hours ago
I mean this is not a bad thing, I personally feel more sated eating protein-enriched food and am less likely to snack excessively.