I think it seems sort of arbitrary to classify foods by protein content as though it were critical to our nutrition. Like, we could classify foods by colour and then get concerned when we don’t have enough purple food, and track how much purple per calorie or gram we get for each food, and publish charts on that basis, but it wouldn’t be telling anyone anything they can actually use, no matter how much they might be concerned about getting enough purple. But the fashion might become, “you need purple food to have big muscles,” and then people start thinking that charts that aren’t arranged by colour are comparing arbitrarily different things.

I know it sounds pretty wild and fringe, but have you ever seen or even heard of someone ever suffering from the consequences of insufficient protein in their diet who wasn’t also suffering a massive calorie deficit? Every fitness store in the world sells protein, protein, protein, but they also sell a hundred other kinds of bunk. Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow, adding this protein REALLY increased my gains!” This space is really vulnerable to snake oil.

All our favorite health-based researchers tell us that the protein goals specified by body building culture are wildly beyond what the body actually uses.