Americans Are Obsessed with Protein and It's Driving Nutrition Experts Nuts
48 comments
·April 18, 2025fabian2k
basch
It's about feeling satisfied and full too. Satiety. With the demonization of carbs and fat, protein is all that's left for calories. And its the most satiating/satiefying. Which every article like this seems to gloss over.
Protein does two things. The minimum amount required is necessary to replenish amino acids and proteins. The excess is spent on calories. At the end of the day, calories are sort of calories. The body needs energy and it needs one of the three and protein is really the third best of the three, but has the least bad reputation. This is where marketing has overtaken science and fact based decision making.
Complex carbs are the best energy but they need to be cut with bran and fiber to regulate their absorption speed. That kind of gets left out of the fiber discussion, that fiber is part of a pairing with carbs.
The other option for raw calories once nutritional goals are met is raw fat, which historically was called salad dressing. Instead of downing absurd amounts of protein for calories, or covering every carb in fiber; one can douse everything with https://www.walmart.com/ip/La-Tourangelle-Organic-Sunflower-... or https://www.amazon.com/Oleico-Certified-Verified-Expeller-Sa... or https://www.costco.com/chosen-foods%2C-100%25-pure-avocado-o...
The seed oil hysteria (which is really only focused on omega6s/polys anyway,) along with the perception of "fat" making you fat, has steered people away from monounsaturated fats being a primary calorie source despite being cost effective, healthy, and quick to consume.
Another place where marketing/blognutrition has overtaken reality is the idea of every protein needing to be complete, vs just eating complete protein over the course of a week or day. Collagen is missing tryptophan, which is abundant in whole milk, yet collagen is wrongly extolled as "not a source of protein and shouldn't be counted."
The other part of satiety is learning mindfulness, and being ok with hunger, and being mindful of not letting hunger control behavior mindlessly..
spudlyo
I find protein and fat to be an excellent combo of macro nutrients for controlling my hunger, and one of my favorite natural groupings is eggs.
Eggs are nutritionally such a good deal. For the cost of about 77 calories you get 6.3 grams of protein, <1g of carbs and 5.3 grams of fat, and a nice dose of vitamins, phosphorous, and selenium. The protein you do get too, has a high biological value, meaning the amino acid composition is pretty ideal for human use. Even at the crazy prices, I still happily manage to eat 2-4 hard boiled eggs a day.
Keeping a bunch of hard-boiled eggs in my fridge means I always have a reasonably healthy snack at hand.
63
At least in my case, vegetarianism + being underweight means I need to pay an awful lot of attention to protein. What a strange thing to complain about, given the imo more pressing issues in the standard American diet.
collingreen
Being vegetarian and underweight puts you pretty far from the average American diet and nutritional needs.
jhanschoo
Your case is very different from the demographic that the article is discussing about where people are consuming primarily protein for macros.
castlecrasher2
>The 28-year-old sales representative is big on protein. “I found that if I prioritized protein and half-assed the rest of everything else, it gave me the body I wanted,” he said.
This is all that matters, though. If it works, it works, and for those who use it as a way to eat more candy, nothing will work.
astura
It's all great until cholesterol starts leaking thru your skin.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/01/...
tastyfreeze
6 to 9 pounds of cheese a day is not moderation.
Kirby64
Someone who has a blood cholesterol level in excess of 1000 should have been on heavy dose statins years and years ago. Plenty of people can eat all sorts of diets and not have blood serum cholesterol levels like that.
astura
I was responding to
>This is all that matters, though. If it works, it works
This guy thought his diet "worked" too, even though it silently lead to dangerously high cholesterol levels.
>He lost weight, increased energy and improved mental clarity, the journal article said.
Human physiology still applies.
hombre_fatal
Nutrition topics with bait headlines are the worst submissions on HN.
The comments section is always like going to a family reunion and your doughbody uncle has locked you into a convo about how you need to try keto (he's on his 5th day).
littlexsparkee
Which part of it is bait? Clearly there is an emphasis on protein lately and the article highlighted some downsides people might be overlooking.
spudlyo
That's why this article got flagged. The system works.
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turkeygizzard
The title seems a bit hyperbolic compared to the article. It does briefly mention cardiovascular risk, but I was able to immediately find a meta-analysis showing no correlation.
If the gripe is with processed foods containing protein, then sure maybe there's a risk compensation argument, but personally speaking I buy Halo Top when I'm craving ice cream, not as a way to avoid eating chicken.
I also imagine that the target audience for these products are people who are relatively active and in that case the ideal protein consumption numbers are generally accepted to be significantly higher than the 0.8g/kg cited in the article.
geor9e
It's been an annoying trend to people with allergies too, since allergens are often proteins. The various protein powders are basically pure raw allergens, about as potent as possible. People don't expect random junk foods to contain protein powder - but in recent years, here we are. I saw a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips with whey protein isolate in the ingredients. I don't understand the sudden popularity of it - whey used to be a waste product cheesemakers drained into the sewer. Now they add it to junk foods.
collingreen
I think that's your answer right there. Lots of food additives are just ways to turn waste products into a good thing (when the stars align and marketing is good like your protein example or "vitamins" in cereal) or at least not a cost center for disposal.
BiraIgnacio
According to this conversation between Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, protein has an important role in overall health and longevity. Don't take my work for it, of course. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-gabrielle-lyon-how-to...
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OptionOfT
Isn't all of this just a marketing ploy to sell you more food?
Isn't the focus on protein in the diet more of a weightlifting thing? The amount of protein often recommended for building up muscles is quite a lot, at least double the amount mentioned in the article as the recommendation. If you're trying to hit that amount I can imagine it getting very hard with a regular diet.