He asks what I ate for lunch; cautiously, I tell him lentil soup. “So if you add a handful of pumpkin seeds, you'll get 6 grams of protein, but you also get zinc, magnesium, vitamin E, fatty acids that are anti-inflammatory, as well as the amino acids.” Fortunately, the book also includes a calculator for hitting those protein gains within its pages, but as he says, “as a general rule of thumb, the minimum that you should be aiming for is 1.2 g per kilogram of body weight, per 24 hours.” For a 50kg person, that’s around 60 grams, whereas the official guidelines state it’s only half of that (or as he puts it, “a chicken breast a day.”) Are there any downsides to consuming too much protein? Not really – despite the pervading myth that it damages the kidneys. “It’s completely untrue,” he adds. “If your kidneys are healthy, or you consume more protein that is surfeit to your requirements, your body will simply excrete out the excess protein.” No excuse, in other words, for not going to town on all the protein you can fit on your plate.
