As I talked about before, to help keep cancer promoting growth factors like IGF-1 in check, we need to maintain an adequate, nut nonexcessive protein intake. I talked about what was excessive, but what’s adequate?
We used to think that the average person needed about .3 grams of protein per healthy pound of body weight (or, for those metrically minded, .66 g/kilogram). So it was easy, you divide your ideal weight in pounds by 3 and that’s about how many grams of protein most people should average in a day, the EAR, or estimated average requirement, but to be on the safe side they recommended closer to .4 for the RDA.
Well recently, a group of researchers published a paper arguing that there may be fundamental flaws in the way protein requirements have been calculated in the past based on some faulty assumptions. Taking that into account, the new recommendations based on this preliminary evidence would be about 25% higher. They think most people now probably need about .4 grams per pound, and so to be safe shoot for .5. At least that makes it easy to calculate: that would be half our ideal body weight in grams of protein per day, or about 1 to 1.2 grams per kilo.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Kerry Skinner.
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