Strength By Fitness
Why Do People Continue to Regurgitate The Flawed Idea That 1.6 Is the Be All, End All of High-protein intake.
Welcome to another fact-based coaching article from Strength by Fitness.
Vox article incorrectly claim that scientific studies make it clear that there are no benefits to a higher protein intake than 1.6g per kilo of bodyweight & day.
There is this partially flawed claim that no one needs to consume more than 1.6 grams of protein per kg of bodyweight and day, because there´s hardly any additional benefits for protein synthesis and hypertrophy happening at higher intake levels. Well, the later half of that claim is partially true as far as protein synthesis for young, omnivores go, but it is also a highly flawed take on protein consumption and its impact on human health, and fitness.
This is based on an incomplete understanding, or at least a limited perspective, on food, health, aging, and fitness. Yes, it is true, protein synthesis, and its effect on hypertrophy will, on average, for most people be reasonaby maxed out somewhere around 1.6 to 1.8 grams of protein per kg of bodyweight, and day.
This is clear as day in study, after study.
But, pay attention to the finer details in what I just said.
Some people still get hypertrophic benefits from higher amounts, something which is also visible in the very same studies. So, the claim that there are no benefits at all from a higher than 1.6 intake falls already on the first point of order, but there´s more to consider, because protein affects so much more than hypertrophy, and protein synthesis. Neither are those things nearly as black and white as many portray it to be.
Follow along with Strength By Fitness in this article, as we take you on a vastly more complete journey across protein and its effect on all these domains.
We will ground this entire article in the following foundation.
You see, protein synthesis & its role in hypertrophy is first of all not the be-all, end-all of higher protein intake benefits.
So neither 1.6 nor 2.0g/kg/day represents a hard stop with no additional benefits from a higher protein intake. The reason why some people can claim that 1.6 is all that’s needed depends on how complete you want the conversation to be. But, when they make that claim, they are always, and only, talking about healthy, younger omnivores, and they are only looking at protein synthesis and hypertrophy. Seemingly doing so because they are convinced that human health, nutrition, and fitness never, ever go beyond these two things and that everyone happens to be young, and a omnivore.
I previously covered the study I will reference in this article of ours. But people continue to write confused stuff that somehow conflates the benefits of a high-protein food approach down to protein synthesis & hypertrophy and nothing else.
So, in the light of these ongoing claims and confused articles, such as this Vox piece, here we go again.
Hägele, F.A., Herpich, C., Koop, J. et al. Short-term effects of high-protein, lower-carbohydrate ultra-processed foods on human energy balance. Nat Metab (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-025-01247-4
You see, protein synthesis & its role in hypertrophy is not the be-all, end-all of higher protein intake benefits. So, neither 1.6 nor 2.0g/kg/day represents a hard stop with no additional benefits from a higher protein intake.
Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness
In a recent article, we covered how 1.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight and day is far better for endurance athletes than an RDA protein intake, and with measurable benefits compared to 1.5g. But that benefit did not come to a stop at 1.8g/kg/day. 2.0 grams of protein/kg of bodyweight/day during both periods of lower carbohydrate training and rest days after a harder workout, yet again provided measurable benefits compared to 1.8g for endurance athletes.
This elevated protein requirement reflects the need to replenish the exercise-induced loss of amino acids.
While also demonstrating the important energy-glycogen role of higher-SPC carbohydrates. All this is of importance, not only for endurance athletes and recreational runners, but strength training too, and all sorts of team sports, and interval-based sports and exercise forms.
This fact-based reality matters for the purpose of not just this article, but for the importance and role of higher-protein consumption, far beyond 1.6g per kg and day.
When we consume fewer higher-SPC carbs, a higher-protein intake allows the body to enjoy the benefits of a high-protein intake, while also using some of that protein as fuel, together with the healthy fats and fibers you also consume. Because, as we stated at the beginning of this write-up, protein synthesis and hypertrophy are not the be-all, end-all of why a higher-protein intake is so beneficial for human health & fitness outcomes.
No need to worry, this too is not the end of reasons why you should embrace a healthy, nutritionally rich, higher-SPC intake of protein beyond 1.6.
The fewer carbs you consume the higher your exercise related protein need. A Energy deficit also ELEVATES your protein consumption need just to maintain MPS.
Strenuous exercise & Post-recovery Price.
As our previous article detailed, highly active exercise-related protein requirement increases to > 2 g/kg/day during the first day of recovery after strenuous endurance or strength exercise.
Simply put, your body needs more nutrients per unit of energy to recover from the effort and exhaustion you have caused, as well as to progress and improve upon its current physical capacity. And that recovery does not just involve muscles; it is your entire system, from your brain to organs, mitochondria, muscle fibers, tendons, and bone mass.
But let us leave the symbiosis of fitness and protein and move on to other pastures, such as plant-based foods. Because, as you should know already, we plant-based folks need to consume more protein than our omnivore selves could get away with, just to get the same outcomes.
This is not a burdensome issue, but while it’s easy to get right, it’s an often overlooked piece of reality amongst both plant-based people and omnivores.
The reasons for this are that plant-based nutrition is, on one hand, much harder to absorb. It´s slightly less bioavailable as it is called.
But there´s more, amino acid levels in plant-based protein are also slightly less ideal for many food items. Once again, this is super easy to fix, you just need to eat A. More plant-based protein in total per day, and B, make sure you get your protein from more protein sources than just 1 or 2.
If you do this, amino acid levels will be just as complete as the best omnivore dish ever, and the higher intake will make up for any difference in absorption, providing you with the same protein synthesis and hypertrophy as the most dedicated and educated omnivores.
Having said that, what we are left with is yet another fact-based reason that destroys the claim that there is no benefit in consuming more than 1.6 grams of protein per kg and day. Plant-based people need to consume quite a bit more. So much so that I do not believe that anyone who’s interested in health and fitness should get less than 2.0 grams of plant-based protein per kg of bodyweight and day.
I mean, what’s the point, if you think about it?
Could you theoretically cover your needs with 1.94 or 1.53? Sure, you might.
But the next person might need 2.0, or even 2.1. And why bother even trying to find the ideal intake level when there are no upsides to doing so, or even a realistic way for people to measure the exact protein intake that’s ideal to a gram for them?
There´s no health or fitness, or body composition penalty from consuming 0.2g excess protein. Heck, plenty of studies have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that it is perfectly safe to consume more than 3.0 grams of protein per kg and day, and neither your kidney health, cancer risk at large or mortality will suffer. And no, excess protein does not turn into fat, unless your total energy intake is at a big enough surplus for long enough.
And if that’s the case, protein is still the hardest macronutrient for your body to store as body fat.
Of course, I am also not saying that there is a major difference in health and fitness outcomes between 1.6 and 2.0. That is not what I am saying. You can build strength and muscle mass with an RDA intake, too. But what I am saying is that there are measurable benefits of going far beyond RDA, and there are measurable benefits of going beyond 1.6, too. Less so for young omnivores that’s already managing to eat in a healthy balance.
But, for people who are plant-based, there are easy, measurable benefits, and for people who are eating at an excess and piling up increasingly excessive levels of body fat, there are easy benefits to get from a much higher protein intake.
Same for elderly people, and serious athletes and fitness enthusiasts. Or just hungry people who have the hardest of times to eat in a balance or deficit due to hunger.
Not that a higher-SPC range is all about protein, fiber is another big pillar, as is micronutrient completeness. But a higher protein intake than 1.6 has many benefits beyond increasing protein synthesis and hypertrophy. Especially so when it happens within that health-friendly higher-SPC context of nutrient-rich foods with a lower amount of energy per unit of nutrients.
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The conundrum continues.
Older people, plant-based people, obese, and hard training people and their mutual benefit from a higher protein intake than both the RDA as well as 1.6g/kg/day.
To get a more complete picture and to put an end to the endless regurgitation of the flawed idea that 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight and day is the max, min high-protein intake anyone should be at, let us consider the following.
A.
In the cited study in question ( and many others ), 1.6g is indeed a good, broad stroke average max intake level because most people topped out their protein synthesis and lean muscle mass progression at these levels.
But in these very same studies, some people benefit from both 2.0 and 2.2g/kg/day. So, most younger, omnivore people on average do not equal all people, even when we only consider protein synthesis and the impact of protein consumption on hypertrophy.
As you can see, we have already moved from a hard stop at 1.6 to a measurable benefit that goes from 1.6 to ~ 2.4 depending on the unique individual, and that’s just from 1 study.
Of course, there won’t be a huge difference between 1.6 and 2.2, but for some, there is a measurable difference. And hold your horses, because we have many more aspects of human health to consider.
| Human N1 | Recommended Protein Intake (g/kg BM/day) | Notes |
| Regular Exercise, 20 to 40 age group, Omnivore | ~ 1.6 to 1.8 | General minimum, high-protein recommendation for daily intake to cover protein synthesis, hypertrophy, and good health, body composition outcomes. Decent SPC & nutritional completeness per unit of energy. |
| Carbohydrate-Restricted Training, 20 to 40 age group, Omnivore | >2.0 | Increased need due to increased reliance on protein for energy. The higher your protein intake and SPC range, the less energy in total you will consume. This requires some balance. But it also show that many can consume 3.0g+ of protein to eat a nutritionally rich diet in a energy balance or deficit to reach, or maintain a healthy body fat percentage. |
| Plant-based | >2.0 | Increased protein consumption need due to lower absorption, bioavailability & uneven amino acid levels. See ablve flr my commentary on SPC and body fat. |
| The 40 and up age group | + 0.4 | Increase your protein intake no matter if you are an omnivore, keto, plant-based, high-carb, or low-carb. As we age, we absorb nutrients in a less efficient way, and might have a tiny bit harder time building strength and lean muscles, while it might also get a tiny bit easier to store fat. Higher-SPC with a higher fiber & protein intake are the big two pillars against this. More nutrients, per unit of energy, and maintained strength training. |
As exercise level & effort ramps up, benefits from a higher protein intake increases too. A higher protein intake also scales with better health & mortality outcomes. And a leaner body.
Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness.
A higher protein intake provides more of the needed amino acids that are responsible for the repair and adaptation of skeletal muscle proteins, connective tissue, and even our organs.
Muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown are stimulated during and after endurance exercise and resistance training. This powers the resulting outcome of skeletal muscle adaptation to all fitness modalities, which you do on a regular basis, even more so when you provide sufficient stimulus, nutrition ( getting enough protein & energy are major food pillars ), and recovery over time.
The bigger the exercise stimulus per session and weekly volume, the bigger your price of recovery, which has to be paid by rest, sleep & nutritionally rich, higher-protein foods.
But as the image directly above this paragraph visualizes, a higher protein intake powers much more than protein synthesis, hypertrophy, and muscle breakdown. From organ health to our brain, our skin, eyes, hair, our mitochondria, our hunger system, natural hormone production, and disease risk.
While we can zoom all the way down to a singular amino acid and cross-check that against one specific disease, and that way conclude that eating too much protein can lead to a higher disease risk, that’s for 1 singular disease. When we instead zoom all the way out and look at all known diseases, a higher protein intake leads to vastly lower disease risk, better health outcomes, and lower mortality risk, too.
As if all this is not enough, obese people consequently lose a lot more fat mass the more protein they consume, and they retain more organ mass, bone mass, and lean muscle mass the more protein they consume during their fat loss cut. Well, this applies to very lean athletes, too.
But obese people still get the problematic recommendation to base their protein intake levels on their desired body weight or lean mass weight, and that is not helpful. Take your body weight and ramp up your protein intake to 2+ grams per kg of bodyweight and day and aim for your meals to be as high-SPC as you can take, rich in nutrients and fibers.
This simple approach is a much healthier piece of advice.
a High-protein, and higher-SPC intake universally PROVIDES better fitness progression, health, body composition, cognitive and exercise recovery outcomes
In the above image, we have visualised another treat with the SPC-range.
In Strength By Fitness recipes, the higher the SPC range, the more macro and micronutrients you are consuming per unit of energy. And yes, the opposite applies.
The more energy your food contains per unit of nutrients, the less protein, carbs, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals you are going to get from your daily food choices, potentially driving yourself obese and nutritionally deficient at the same time.
These two statements are universal. Albeit, there is of course a breakpoint at the upper range of higher-SPC foods where a very active person might need to slightly scale the SPC-range back in order to maintain a high enough energy intake to sustain their sports performance and body mass.
Very few people exercise that much, and hard, however. Not to mention that billions of people consume way too much energy per unit of nutrient foods, ie, lower-SPC foods with to little nutrients. This is why protein-rich, higher-SPC foods are for most of humanity the perfect, diet tribe neutral food life approach.
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Maintain that nutritionally rich, high-protein, higher-SPC food intake for life, Health is a habit, not a 8 week diet.
Maintain a nutritionally rich, higher-SPC, high-protein intake, all year round.
For all of life.
Better health, body composition, and fitness come from regular habits across your entire health span, not from 8-week diet phases.
Worry less about 1.5 or 1.9 grams being the optimal for you. Aim for a steady, rough 2.0 g+ of protein per kg of bodyweight, and day, all year round. Unless you have a medically diagnosed health issue that is severe enough that you need a low protein intake, such as CKD levels 4 and 5.
If you have already reached such a low body fat percentage that going lower in body fat will harm your health, and your capacity for recovery and fitness performance, either add one or more extra meals if possible, or add easy energy and micronutrients in the form of fruits and berries primarily. Our homemade higher-SPC protein bars are excellent choices for this situation. Loaded with nutrients and protein, yes, but also higher in energy per unit of nutrients than most of our other meals.
Extreme athletes can, as a last resort, make use of low SPC high-energy food sources during their exercise session, and race, as well as immediately after, but never forget the negative health impact of consuming a steady stream of daily low SPC foods with way too much energy per unit of nutrients.
![Protein requirements of endurance athletes and team sport athletes estimated using the indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO) technique across a variety of applied settings. A IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in endurance-trained male individuals (n = 6) immediately following a 20-km treadmill run [47]. B IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in endurance-trained male individuals (n = 6) 24 h after completing a 60- to 90-min run or bike ride [49]. C IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on phenylalanine oxidation rates in endurance-trained male runners (n = 8) following a 10-km treadmill run completed in a carbohydrate-restricted or carbohydrate-fed state [50]. D IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on phenylalanine oxidation rates in endurance-trained female individuals (n = 7) during the mid-luteal phase of their menstrual cycle following a 20-km self-paced outside run [65]. E IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in male team-sport athletes (n = 7) immediately following a 75-min bout of intermittent exercise [9]. F IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in female team-sport athletes during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle (n = 6) immediately following a 75-min bout of intermittent exercise [10]. G IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in untrained male individuals (n = 8) at rest [39]. BM body mass, CI confidence interval, EAR estimated average requirement, IAAO indicator amino acid oxidation, RDA recommended daily allowance; value inside each bar refers to an habitual protein intake (g·kgBM−1·day−1) of the corresponding category of athlete based on Gillen et al. data [35]; estimated %TEI percentage of total energy intake derived from protein; dashed line denotes current protein RDA (0.8 g·kgBM−1·day−1); dotted line denotes current protein EAR (0.62 g·kgBM−1·day−1)](https://strengthbyfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/protein-and-endurance.png "Protein requirements of endurance athletes and team sport athletes estimated using the indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO) technique across a variety of applied settings. A IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in endurance-trained male individuals (n = 6) immediately following a 20-km treadmill run [47]. B IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in endurance-trained male individuals (n = 6) 24 h after completing a 60- to 90-min run or bike ride [49]. C IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on phenylalanine oxidation rates in endurance-trained male runners (n = 8) following a 10-km treadmill run completed in a carbohydrate-restricted or carbohydrate-fed state [50]. D IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on phenylalanine oxidation rates in endurance-trained female individuals (n = 7) during the mid-luteal phase of their menstrual cycle following a 20-km self-paced outside run [65]. E IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in male team-sport athletes (n = 7) immediately following a 75-min bout of intermittent exercise [9]. F IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in female team-sport athletes during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle (n = 6) immediately following a 75-min bout of intermittent exercise [10]. G IAAO estimate of protein requirement based on 13CO2 excretion in untrained male individuals (n = 8) at rest [39]. BM body mass, CI confidence interval, EAR estimated average requirement, IAAO indicator amino acid oxidation, RDA recommended daily allowance; value inside each bar refers to an habitual protein intake (g·kgBM−1·day−1) of the corresponding category of athlete based on Gillen et al. data [35]; estimated %TEI percentage of total energy intake derived from protein; dashed line denotes current protein RDA (0.8 g·kgBM−1·day−1); dotted line denotes current protein EAR (0.62 g·kgBM−1·day−1)")
Cited study.
1. The 2005 high-protein study.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16002798/
2. Human evolution, energy expenditure.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409674121
3. Genetics matter but habits own the driver’s seat.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167494323002601?s=09
4. Protein for Endurance Athletes.
5. Trends in nutrition and health between 1900 and now.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213434423000221?via%3Dihub
6. Chronic Kidney Disease and High-protein. Improvements in health and mortality outcomes.
Kidney Disease, & High-protein Intake What´s The Health And Mortality Outcome. — Strength By Fitness
7. Low SPC, UPF and high-protein.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-025-01247-4
8. High-protein myths.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002916525002540?s=09
You can also read this article over at Medium if you are a paying Medium Member.
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