How much protein is needed and where to get it?
Athletes spend millions of dollars per year in protein powders, protein bars, protein shakes and many types of amino acid supplements
All believe they need tremendous amounts of proteins for use as fuel for exercise and to help build muscle protein. Manufacturers of these supplements claim that protein only “high quality” can provide optimal growth of the musculature, or only the amino acids are absorbed quickly into the blood to stimulate the building up of proteins in muscles.
As is common in the dietary supplement industry, “there is a kernel of truth, and a ton of lies” in these claims.
Here are some points on the protein requirements and complementarity:
Most of the fuels used to provide power in sports are carbohydrates and lipids, proteins normally contribute about 2% of the energy required, and the maximum contribution of proteins to provide energy in sports is less than one 10%.
It is true that athletes need more protein in their diets than the inactive. But except for very few athletes, the amount needed per day from -1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight-is still very small. Moreover, this amount of protein can be almost always obtained from ordinary meals into the athlete’s normal diet, without having to rely on expensive supplements.
There are few athletes, especially wrestlers, gymnasts, dancers and others trying to lose weight or at least not increase, they could possibly need to eat more protein to compensate for the increased use of protein to provide energy. Still, the maximum amount of protein required for this type of athletes would not exceed 2.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
It is true that some food proteins, eg.: Eggs, milk and meat, provide a more complete mixture of amino acids necessary that the proteins of other foods such as peas, corn or wheat. The quality of the amino acids of these proteins is often expressed as “biological value”, “chemical score”, “score of use of a protein” or “reason of effectiveness of the protein. Then, if all dietary protein an athlete should come from a single food source, it would be best to consume only eggs or milk or meat. However, this reliance on a single protein would become food for many other nutritional failure. While the athlete choose a variety of foods — even if all of plant origin, have sufficient quantities of the necessary amino acids in the diet, and the quality of a given protein is not of great consequence. So athletes who spend large amounts of money on protein supplements, for example, arguably that are not intelligent, they could achieve the same incorporation of amino acids into proteins in their muscles by eating a variety of food each day, none of which should necessarily contain high quality protein.