Comically, Attia dropped another episode on protein today, but unlike last week, I thought this one had some substance and I got a lot out of it. It’s with Rhonda Patrick.
The biggest take away for me is he finally explained why he tells everyone they need 2 grams of protein per kg per day. It’s so if he tells his patients to have 2, and if that is a day they fall short, then they probably consumed the 1.6 that he believes everyone should have. I feel much better that he finally explained the 2, even if it’s not a satisfying answer.
Obviously, it’s an entirely different discussion why someone who uses such scientific vigor doesn’t simply tell the listeners what the number is he actually recommends vs giving us a padded number because he knows we will fail at times. This is where his conflict of interest is a problem because I have not personally noticed he does this on any other subject, but?
Rhonda actually references Stu Phillips in her defense of a min of 1.6 vs 1.2, but he himself has said 1.2 is probably fine for most people…. Perhaps he has said 1.6 at a previous time?
Rhonda also points out how people are not getting enough protein due to the RDA, but everything I’ve ever heard, and most recently from Christopher Gardner, is most people are consuming way more than the RDA anyway. This leads me to question the validity of their argument that having the ‘proper’ amount will finally prevent sarcopenia in the future elderly if they were already consuming more than the RDA anyway (perhaps there is some evidence out there that the people with sarcopenia were only getting the .8?).
I’m not confident that I heard this part correctly because it was so surprising, but they said if you are older and do resistance training, you gain almost as much muscle as when you were younger? Please take this sentence with a grain of salt becasue I feel I might have misinterpreted what they said, but I’m sharing it incase anyone else can correct me. It’s wonderful if it’s true. But either way, this demonstrates resistance training trumps excess protein.
Also, she seemed to say the 1.6 (or whichever number you choose) should be based on lean mass. To me, this means that people who are consuming x grams are already really consuming more than that number if non lean mass is taken into account. I have not done the math, so maybe that is a trivial number.
He did say if you are sedentary, you don’t need as much.
He emphasizes that consuming more protein than you need causes no harm, but I would say once you pass the useful threshold, you are consuming protein at the expense of fiber and all the other goodies plants offer … but of course, if it’s in order to consume more twinkies, he is correct. Perhaps there is no science that backs up my theory and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt he might ‘technically’ be correct.
There were a couple of other things that struck me but I was driving and couldn’t take notes 
