How Much Protein?

Kwashiorkor: You can keep all that...

A friend's father was an eminent doctor. As I remember he was pretty much responsible for allocating NHS funding in the North of England.

Dr Allen was a very clever man, and hip with all the latest research in 1988, and his family lived on margarine and olive oil and polyunsaturated fats and other posho foodstuffs that did well in studies. They ate things I'd never heard of, none of which were desperately appetising to my unsophisticated tastes, even though Mrs Allen was a good cook who cared about food.

They never put HP sauce on anything! They didn’t have a chip pan!

I note in passing that his two children were whip thin. I'd have described them as scrawny if I'd ever thought about it. In flat contradiction to "PUFAs cause obesity", although I don't know how long they'd been on the margarine... And they're still pretty healthy today.

As a teenager about to head for university, I asked him what we knew about nutrition, because I was about to have to make these decisions for myself, instead of eating whatever Mum and Gran made.

Dr Allen said: “What we know is that you need to get adequate supplies of vitamins, and you need a certain amount of protein. If you don’t do that, you’ll get all sorts of horrible deficiency diseases. Nothing else is known. Everything else is just hunches based on flimsy evidence. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t.”

I gave Dan his first bacon sandwich at college (white bread, pepper, butter, my Gran’s recipe) and it was a revelation to him. He immediately renounced all healthy foods.

I have followed Dr Allen's advice all my life. It's not too hard as long as you don't start doing weird things.

---

The sun’s come out and I’ve decided to take my boat out into the fens and swim and smoke a load of cigars before going home to visit Mum and Dad. Boat trips are much more fun with fags. It was the French that taught me how to smoke while swimming.

So I can sneak in a quick bout of ex150ish before going home, in case it really does act as a switch somehow.

My attention is turning to the protein content.

On ex150ish, I’m adding 2 of these: https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/mince-44/sainsburys-beef-mince-20-fat-500g-7715235-p-44 to my stew each week,

Sainsbury’s claim 23.7g of protein in 100g of this, and so:

(1000/7)*(23.7/100) = 33.85

call it 34g of protein per day.

I’m about 94 kilos, probably 80kg would be my ideal weight in my old age.

You need protein. This is settled science. But how much?

Men's Health (Oh God, how far have I fallen? I am reading Men's Health.....) says:

Protein’s recommended daily allowance is a modest 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, a number formulated during World War II in order to safeguard public health during a possible shortage and ensure the nutritive value of military rations.

So 0.8*80 = 64 grams/day

And they think that's the minimum amount required to prevent a protein deficiency.

And ex150ish is about half that, plus maybe some from things like beans in the stew.

Hmmm.......

Symptoms of protein deficiency (same source)

Losing muscle and strength

Feeling drained

Crazy cravings

Breaking bones

Taking forever to heal

Getting a belly

Hair and nails thin and weak

Well, I broke a rib the other week, but that was more of a symptom of getting so pissed I cycled into an iron bollard.

Some of the other symptoms are just a description of my last decade...

But crazy cravings I do not have. I will keep an eye out for them, and satisfy them if they occur.