Don't Fall Into The High Protein Marketing Trap!

Most people have realised that protein is important for health, fat loss and muscle building, which it is!

Protein is made up of amino acids and these are essentially the building blocks of life. They are used to build and repair muscle, bone, enzymes and hormones as well as being used as an energy source.

When trying to lose weight, a high protein diet is important and recommended for many reasons including;

1. It keeps us feeling full when we are in a calorie deficit

2. It takes more calories to digest than carbohydrates and fats. In fact, 30% of the calories within protein are used to digest it!

3. It helps us keep hold of as much muscle as possible as we lose body fat, which helps us stay strong and keeps our metabolism high.

Equally, if we are trying to build muscle, its essential we eat enough protein to support this and help build new tissue!

However where a lot of people fall down, is knowing what counts as ‘high protein’ foods and how much that actually is?

Let’s start here.Depending on your goal, gender and activity level, it’s recommended you eat 1.4-2.4g/KG body weight of protein.

Let’s take roughly 1.4g for a women to maintain health and support muscle growth and 2g for for a male. So a 60KG women would need roughly 84g per day and a 90 KG man would need 180g.

This give us a great starting point!

Now where do we find this protein?

This is where I want you to be carful with food packaging and marketing and avoid falling into this trap. Many foods are now marketed as ‘high protein’ but do not actually contain high amounts, they just have some within the food.

I would class anything with 20-30g of protein as a serving of protein. So that would include;

-A large chicken breast (150g)

-A large cod fillet (150g)

-A scoop of whey protein

-3 oz steak

-3 large eggs

So if someone had 3 servings across a day from the list above they’d get roughly 90g protein which would be perfect for the 60KG women but we would simply need to double up on portions for the 90KG man.

Many foods however that are marketed as ‘high protein’ have a mere 8 or 9g! Take this trek bar for example, advertised as a protein flap jack. You’d need a hell of a lot of those to hit your goals!

So we also need to look at how much of that food we have to eat in order to get that protein serving and what else is in there. We’d need 3 to be classed as a serving and over 18 of those bars to hit our daily target for the 90KG man! But that comes with 4,140 calories from the other ingredients. Not great if we are trying to lose weight!

This can be compared to something like a scoop of whey protein which has 23g for 110Kcals meaning we could technically get our daily goal from 8 scoops and 904Kcals (not that you would, but you get the idea!). It would be a much more calorie efficient way of hitting our target and so especially when trying to lose weight, its important we choose good sources of protein that are actually high in content.

Take a look below at these pancakes as another example. They advertise 20g of protein which seems great. But you then realise you have to eat the whole pack of 4 to achieve this and this is around 400 Kcals. Again compare that to something like a chicken breast, where you could get 20g protein for around 120Kcals, it’s a much less efficient way of getting your protein.

The take home here is not to be fooled by packaging and always look a little further.

Consider these three things;

1.What are you own protein needs per day to match your goal?

2.How much protein is in the food per serving? Is it 20-3 g minimum?

3.What are the calories to achieve that protein.

Hopefully this will help you navigate the shops a little easier and stop you falling into the high protein marketing trap!

Have a great week

Lizzie

The One Percent Club