How Much Protein Can You Absorb In One Meal? (20g? 30g? 100g?)

[Music] okay welcome everyone to a new episode of myth-busting where every Monday we're gonna take a look at some fitness or nutrition myth look at where that myths got started and then why it's actually wrong based on the most recent scientific evidence um you guys may notice I'm actually in a hotel in Orlando right now so excuse the a typical background this week we're gonna be looking at the idea that there's a maximum amount of protein that you can absorb in one city and what that number is will depend on who you ask but usually it's something like 20 to 30 grams of protein and the reason goes that because there's a limit on the amount of protein you can absorb it's a good idea to space your meals out or space your protein out across five or six meals throughout the day because if you were to just lump it all in one or two meals then a big chunk of that protein would be going to waste so first where did this myth come from um well the true myth is that only 20 to 30 grams of protein can be absorbed and the word absorb is the key player the key error because in reality we have virtually an unlimited capacity to absorb amino acids from protein according to a 2009 paper on digestion and absorption virtually all ingested protein is absorbed by healthy humans so the terminology is important here and we're using absorption to simply refer to the passage of nutrients through the gut and then through the intestinal wall and into circulation in the blood and absorption isn't the issue here you could eat say 300 grams of protein and absorb all or nearly all of that just fine but I think what people really mean when they ask this question is whether or not protein intakes over say 20 or 30 grams in a single meal is actually used to support muscle building and that the literature actually doesn't have a perfectly clear answer on this question but there is a lot of data out there and I think that it can give us a pretty good idea um so let's go ahead and dig right in so in 2015 dr. stu phillips research group published a review article hinting at the existence of a so-called muscle full effect the idea that with increasing protein doses you'll eventually hit a seal Pass which increasing protein further doesn't do anything extra for muscle protein synthesis the ceiling has been previously proposed in a pretty large body of literature to be roughly 20 grams the first study to show this compared 20 grams of whole egg protein with 40 grams of whole egg protein following a leg workout and they found no significant difference between the two groups suggesting that you get all the anabolic bang for your buck that you need with just 20 grams similar results were found in another study where 30 grams of beef protein was just as effective as 90 grams of beef protein at stimulating muscle protein synthesis and still more research showed that protein consumed beyond 20 grams resulted in increased oxidation meaning the amino acids were being burned off for energy and increased urea production further indicating that there is some sort of limit on the amount of protein that can be used for muscle protein synthesis in one sitting so so far based on this scan of the literature it really seems to be the case that that upper ceiling of how much protein you can utilize in one meal seems to be about 20 to 30 grams however I think that in practice it isn't really quite that simple because how much protein you can use in a single meal depends on at least three factors first of which is the size of the person seems to be the case that folks with more muscle tend to need more protein to max out the muscle protein synthesis ponds so to account for this and general inter-individual variability the phillips review suggested 0.4 grams per kilogram or about 0.18 grams per pound as a reasonable upper limit so for a 120 pound person it would be about 22 grams but for a 200 pound person it'd be more like 36 grams so for bigger guys 22 30 grams may actually not be enough protein to fully max out that protein synthetic response the amount of protein needed also depends on the amount of muscle mass being trained in contrast to the earlier studies a 2016 paper showed that 40 grams of whey protein was in fact better at increasing muscle protein synthesis than 20 grams and because of many of the earlier studies used lower body training only and this study used a full body training routine this led the authors to believe that when you activate more muscle mass and a workout you require more protein to max out the protein synthetic response a third thing that definitely seems to drive the number up is age and as we get older a well-established phenomenon known as anabolic resistance occurs and this basically means that you need more protein to get the same muscle protein synthesis so these factors in mind that the ceiling is no longer looking quite as strict at the twenty or thirty grandma and I think some individuals especially those who are older who have larger muscle masses and perhaps you do full body training could easily stand to benefit from say 40 or even 50 or perhaps more grams of protein in a single citizen but this answer still doesn't seem to satisfy many experts in the field and there seems to be something just wrong with the idea that you ate say 80 grams of protein in a single meal at least half of that would be going to waste when it comes to building muscle and I think a big part of this intuition comes from the idea that most of the research we've been looking at so far is based on acute measures of muscle protein synthesis not long term trials in this investigating full scale muscle hypertrophy so some would argue is just a little too speculative to make any strong conclusions about a true protein sealant and I think a lot of this pushback comes from the intermittent fasting community where it's common to see folks the huge bonuses of protein say 75 or a hundred grams of protein so based across one to two meals in a say four to eight hour eating window and I will admit that in the real world this feeding schedule doesn't really seem to affect their ability to add me mass in any way and I think that there's some literature to support this idea as well one intermittent fasting study from soldiers and colleagues found that assuming on average 101 grams of protein in one four-hour eating window versus a more conventional spread out pattern resulted in no differences in lean mass preservation between the groups and another paper found that consuming one meal per day with roughly 86 grams of protein actually showed improvements in body composition when compared to that protein being spaced out more evenly across three meals I think a few obvious limitations with this research are the use of bioelectrical impedance which is pretty unreliable and the fact that total daily protein intake was pretty low which I think draws into question its applicability in the real world so coming full circle on this I don't think we have a perfectly clear answer on how many grams of protein the body can use for building muscle in a single meal we do know that we have a virtually unlimited capacity to absorb amino acids from protein how much of that is actually utilized in terms of building new muscle will depend on a whole bunch of factors not limited to your age the amount of muscle mass that you're exercising your actual body size and also really importantly the quality of that protein so for something a little bit more tangible here's my personal take on this after reading through all this literature I think it's clear that the most important factor when it comes to building muscle apart from resistance training is total daily protein intake and I think most of the experts on this issue would agree and even though they may disagree about exactly how much protein you need I think that one gram per pound for relatively lean individuals is plenty meaning that's more than enough and next I think assuming your protein is of sufficient enough quality may be a good idea to space that protein out somewhat evenly across say four to five meals and I think that this is probably slightly more optimal than say bola Singh at all in one or two huge protein doses somebody you are someone who does follow intermittent fasting I wouldn't say that just because you do skew your protein intake to be mostly consumed in one or two massive feedings I wouldn't say that most of that protein is going to waste and this is just based on my observations in the field that people who practice intermittent fasting and some of this intermittent fasting research and I think that there's a few reasonable explanations for this it's possible that in the case of mixed meals where you have a ton of calories coming in from multiple different sources with lots of different macronutrients digestion and absorption is going to be slowed to a great degree anyway and it seems perfectly plausible that those extra amino acids that may not necessarily be contributing to muscle protein synthesis may have a positive effect on limiting muscle protein breakdown but again ultimately I think it comes back to your goals if you're someone who's trying to get every morsel of muscle that you possibly can it may be more optimal for you to space out your protein across say four or five meals with maybe thirty to forty grams of protein in each meal but if you're someone who is just looking to you know improve your general shape and size and I think that you should focus more so on hitting your total daily protein intake and whatever protein scheduling it is that allows you to hit that best is what you should go okay so the rabbit uh the real myth here is that you can only absorb thirty grams of protein in one sitting in reality you can absorb at least ten times that amount no problem but the real question is whether or not you can use that much protein in one sitting and I think that looking at the literature we just don't really have a clear answer on this I think that if I were to look at just a muscle protein synthesis something around 30 to 40 grams is probably where you start to see that ceiling or that muscle full effect however looking at the intermittent fasting literature it could be the case that those extra amino acids that aren't contributing to protein synthesis are limiting muscle protein breakdown and I think that the body is smart in that way and I think that it can find a way to use that extra protein provided total daily protein targets are being hit alright so guys that's going to conclude this week's myth-busting day another that isn't quite black-and-white but I think that there is a lot of nuance and a lot of complexity to this issue so I hope that you guys really found it informative and before we go I really want to thank audible for sponsoring this video I'm one of the questions I get asked all the time is what books do I read and how the trial one we do and just constantly being on the go and without busy I am and it's not always easy to read books in print form so i will use audiobooks to help get more of my reading in and one book i'd like to really recommend to you guys is the gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee and this audiobook is actually read by oh Siddhartha himself and it comes highly recommended a really good survey of all that we know basically on human genetics starting all the way back from Mendel all the way up to our current understanding of genetics and if you guys would like to try out audible you can go to audible.com forward slash Jeff nippers or if you text Jeff Nippert to 500 500 and you can get a free 30 day trial and a free audio book of your choice personally been using audible for three or four years and I think it's a great service you guys would like to check it out I'll have the first link down there in the description you can get started on your free trial today so thank you so much audible for sponsoring this video I really appreciate it thank you guys so much for watching if you liked the video please leave me a thumbs up subscribe if you happen to be new and I will see you guys all here next Monday

Channel: Jeff Nippard

Views: 1,267,555

Rating: 4.9448366 out of 5

Keywords: vlog, vlogger, iifym, science, bodybuilding, legs, arms, chest, back, fit couple, build muscle, jeff nippard, christian guzman, summer shredding, lean, ripped, abs, diet, lose weight, fat, fitness, flex, biceps, shredded, gymshark, alphalete, physique, motivation, natural bodybuilding, canadian, how much protein can your body absorb per meal, protein absorption, protein, protein limit, myth, myth bust monday, myth busted

Id: tJpdPYedWjc

Length: 11min 28sec (688 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Idontlooklikeelvis]

Lol my dinner every day consists of like 140 grams of protein, plus a shake 3 hours before. Am I doomed for fasting?

[u/danny_b87]

Some interesting food for thought and I agree with most of his points at the end.

How it was explained to me in my graduate nutrition classes is that ~30g (more specifically ~2.7g leucine) every ~3-5 hrs is recommended because that is how much is required to activate your muscle protein synthesis (MPS) pathways and once it is activated more protein does not activate it further. Also there is a refractory period to where it cannot be activated again for awhile, hence the 3 hr min recommendation. So more than 30g is fine and can be absorbed no problem, it just does not provide extra benefit.

Jeff makes a good point that most studies only look at this short term MPS and not the long term effects on hypertrophy so that is something to look for in the future.

I agree aiming to fairly evenly space out your daily protein requirements is best and for most people that will probably be every 3-5 hrs anyway and will be 25-35g/meal so really only a concern for people doing non standard diets.

[u/Askinnycook]

I’m a big boy. 210#. I feel like 1.1-1.3grams/lb is solid

[u/Askinnycook]

Thanks yall

[u/[deleted]]

Tbh Jeff just seems to rehash what most of us already know. His videos bring nothing new to me that I don't already know.