While you will always get some people who are heavily involved in their weight training thinking they need extreme volumes of protein to build muscle mass, there are other people who still struggle to get in the minimums.

Many have heard that they require one gram per pound of body weight and shun this off as being too high because they have read that the Dietary Reference Intake recommendations are set much lower at 0.66 to 0.8 kg/day. For the average 150 pound person, this works out to a measly 45 to 55 grams per day.  They take that as their guide though because it’s backed by the ‘DRI’. Recently a review was conducted by the research institute in Toronto in conjunction with the Food and Nutritional Sciences department of the University of Alberta to assess the validity of this information.

The researchers noted that traditionally the total protein requirements in adult humans were based using nitrogen balance using a single linear regression analysis.  These researchers however re-analyzed the existing nitrogen balance studies using a two-phase linear regression analysis instead and obtained from their findings a safe protein requirement of between 0.91 and 0.99 grams per kilogram per day.

The researchers stated that the two-phase linear regression analysis is considered to be more appropriate of a measure when applies to humans and also developed an alternative method for assessing protein requirements by using the amino acid oxidation technique. From this technique they arrived at safe reference intakes of 0.93 to 1.2 grams per kilogram per day, which as you can clearly see are much higher than the previous recommendations.

So from this we can conclude that before you set your protein intakes to the standard DRI, you may want to rethink that.  There is certainly no harm in bringing them higher and in almost all cases, you will see positive benefits from doing so. With the wide variety of protein-based supplements available today, there is no reason to not meet your protein requirements and maximize your ability to build lean muscle tissue.

Reference:
Ball, RO. Et al. (2009). Evidence that protein requirements have been significantly underestimated. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. Oct 16.

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